Lecture 9
Lecture 9
Introduction
Job satisfaction - attitude an employee has toward her job
Organizational commitment - employee identifies with and is involved with an organization
D. Is the employee a good fit with the job and the organization?
Employees consider how well they “fit” with a job or an organization; their values, interests, personality, lifestyle
and skills match those of their job, org, coworkers and supervisor.
An employees who perceive a good fit with their organization, job, coworkers, and supervisor tend to be satisfied
with their jobs, identify with the org, remain, perform better, and engage in org citizenship behaviors
Certain signs to which an organization should pay attention that indicate a job/person mismatch: signs are:
o Does not seem excited when first hired or assigned to job
o Starts asking for some task to be given to other employees
o Application for other jobs in the organization
o Begins to ask for new projects
o Appears bored or unchallenged
H. Are rewards and resources given equitably? - is employees perceive to being treated fairly?
Equity theory - our levels of job satisfaction and motivation are related to how fairly we believe we are treated in
comparison with others, if we believe we are treated unfairly, we attempt to change our beliefs or behaviors until
the situation appears to be fair.
Organizational justice:
a. Distributive justice - perceived fairness of the actual decision made in an org
b. Procedural justice - perceive fairness of the methods used to arrive at the decision
c. Interactional justice - perceived fairness of the interpersonal treatment employees receive
Since the relationship between perceptions of justice and employee attitudes and behaviors are so strong, it is
essential that employers be open about how the decisions are made, take time to develop fair procedures, and
provide feedback to employees who might not be happy with decisions that are made.
It is important that employees base their judgments on factual information - to increase perception of equity
To increase equity - allow employees access to the salaries of other employees
o Public sector - salaries are available to the public but do not out their way to publicize salary info
o Private sector - keep confidential; manual forbids employees from divulging their salaries to one another;
employee’s permission must be obtained before such info is released
I. Is there a chance for growth and challenge?
Job satisfaction is affected by opportunities for challenge and growth.
Need for growth and challenge leads/labelled as to self-actualization
Job rotation - employee is give the same number of tasks to do at one time, but the tasks change from time to
time
Job enlargement - given more task to do at one time; can be enlarged in two ways:
o Knowledge used/knowledge enlargement - employees are allowed to make complex decisions
o Tasks performed/task enlargement - given more tasks of the same difficulty level to perform
- satisfaction increase in knowledge used and decrease with task enlargement
- Job rotation and job enlargement accomplish two main objectives:
o Challenge employees by requiring them to learn, once employee mastered task they can move to
the other task
o Job rotation alleviated boredom by allowing an employee to change task
Job enrichment - employees assume more responsibility over the tasks
- Job characteristics model by Hackman and Oldham theorized that enriched jobs are the most satisfying
- Self-directed teams or quality circles - employees meet as a group and discuss and make recommendations
about work issues; this increase in private but not in public sector
B. Measures of Commitment
a. Allen and Meyer Survey
- most commonly used measure of org commitment with 24 items, eight each for the three factors of affective,
continuance and non-normative commitment
b. Organizational Commitment Questionnaire (OCQ)
- 15-item questionnaire by Mowday and colleagues to measure 3 commitment factors: acceptance of the org’s
values and goals, willingness to work to help the org, and desire to remain with the org; most people use
scale combine factors to yield one overall commitment score
c. Organizational Commitment Scale (OCS)
- 9-item survey by Balfour and Wechsler that measures aspects of commitment: identification, exchange and
affiliation
C. Turnover
a) Cost of turnover
employees with low job satisfaction and low org commitment are more likely to quit their job and
change careers
cost of losing an employee is estimated at 1.5 time the employee’s salary
Cost that determine the estimate:
A. Visible cost - advertising charges, employment agency fees, referral bonuses, recruitment travel
costs, salaries and benefits associated with the employee time spent processing application and
interviewing candidates and relocation expenses for the new employee
B. Hidden cost - loss of productivity associated with the employee leaving - other employees trying to
do extra work, no productivity occurring from the vacant position - and the lower productivity
associated with a new employee being trained.
higher turnover rates will result in lower organizational performance - negative correlation
turnover is health in the organizational - u-shaped relationship between turnover and perf,
like very high or low turnover result in lower organizational perf, but a moderate will result in
higher performance
b) Reducing turnover
first step is to find out why employees are leaving, then administer attitude survey and conduct exit
interviews
It is important to understand that employee turnover is a process of disengagement from org that can
take a days, weeks or months - they have thinking about it for a period of time which means
communication between employees and management might prevent the ultimate decision to leave.
Employees typical leave for 5 reasons
A. Unavoidable reasons - like school starting or ending, o transfer of spouse, employee illness or
death, family issue
B. Advancement - pursue promotion or better pay
C. Unmet needs - to avoid this, org consider person/org fit when selecting employees
D. Escape - from people, working conditions and stress
when conflict arise and becomes unbearable; as well as conditions are unsafe, dirty,
boring, too strenuous, or too stressful; to avoid this, provide mentor
E. Unmet expectation - reality does not match expectation - to avoid this provide realistic job
preview.
F. Employee remains in the org even though characteristics of their job suggest that they would
leave.
G. this lack of turnover is visible through “embeddedness” - employees have links to their jobs
and community, the importance of these links, and the ease with which these links could be
broke and reestablished elsewhere