Chapter 10 : Employee Satisfaction and Commitment

Job satisfaction—the attitude an employee has toward her job

Organizational commitment—the extent to which an employee identifies with and is involved
with an organization.
 Satisfied employees tend to be committed to an organization and employees who are
satisfied and committed are more likely to attend work, arrive at work on time, perform
well and engage in behaviors helpful to the organization than are employees who are
not satisfied or committed.
 For complex jobs, there is a stronger relationship between job satisfaction and
performance than for jobs of low or medium complexity.
 For employees who have strong, consistent beliefs about their level of job satisfaction
(called affective-cognitive consistency), the relationship between job satisfaction and
performance is much stronger than it is for employees whose job satisfaction attitudes are
not so well developed.

Three motivational facets to organizational commitment

 Affective commitment - the extent to which an employee wants to remain with the
organization, cares about the organization, and is willing to exert effort on its behalf.
 Continuance commitment - the extent to which an employee believes she must remain
with the organization due to the time, expense, and effort that she has already put into
it or the difficulty she would have in finding another job.
 Normative commitment - the extent to which an employee feels obligated to the
organization and, as a result of this obligation, must remain with the organization.
What Individual Differences Affect Job Satisfaction?
Individual difference theory - postulates that some variability in job satisfaction is due to an
individual’s personal tendency across situations to enjoy what she does.
 For individual-difference theory to be true, it would be essential that job satisfaction be
consistent across time and situations.

Genetic Predispositions
 Job satisfaction not only may be fairly stable across jobs but also may be genetically
determined.
 Inherited personality traits such as negative affectivity (the tendency to have negative emotions
such as fear, hostility, and anger) are related to our tendency to be satisfied with jobs.

Core Self-Evaluations
  Judge, Locke, and Durham have hypothesized that four personality variables are related
to people’s predisposition to be satisfied with life and with their jobs:
 emotional stability
 self-esteem
 self-efficacy (perceived ability to master their environment)
 External locus of control (perceived ability to control their environment).

 That is, people with a tendency to have positive emotions (positive affectivity) tend to
be more satisfied with their jobs than do people with a tendency to have negative
emotions (negative affectivity).
 Emotional stability and extraversion were significantly related to job and life satisfaction.

 Bright people have slightly lower job satisfaction than do less intelligent employees in
jobs that are not complex.
 In complex jobs, the relationship between intelligence and satisfaction is negligible

Are Employees Satisfied with Other Aspects of Their Lives?

 Not only that job satisfaction is consistent across time but that the extent to which a
person is satisfied with all aspects of life is consistent as well.
 Job satisfaction is significantly correlated with life satisfaction. Thus people happy in life
tend to be happy in their jobs and vice versa.
 People who are unhappy in life and unhappy on their jobs will not leave their jobs,
because they are used to being unhappy. But for people who are normally happy in life,
being unhappy at work is seen as a reason to find another job.

Is the Employee a Good Fit with the Job and the Organization?
 When employees consider how well they “fit” with a job or an organization, they
consider the extent to which their values, interests, personality, lifestyle, and skills
match those of their vocation, job, organization, coworkers, and supervisor.
Indicators of a job/person mismatch
 does not seem excited when first hired or assigned to a job
 starts asking for some tasks to be given to other employees
 applies for other jobs in the organization
 begins to ask for new projects
 appears bored or unchallenged
Are Coworkers Outwardly Unhappy?
Social information processing theory/ social learning theory - employees observe the levels of
motivation and satisfaction of other employees and then model those levels. It supports the
idea that the social environment does have an effect on employees’ attitudes and behaviors
Equity theory - our levels of job satisfaction and motivation are related to how fairly we believe
we are treated in comparison with others.
 Distributive justice - the perceived fairness of the actual decisions made in an
organization.
 Procedural justice - the perceived fairness of the methods used to arrive at the decision.
 Interactional justice - the perceived fairness of the interpersonal treatment employees
receive.
o It is essential that employers be open about how decisions are made, take time to
develop fair procedures, and provide feedback to employees who might not be happy
with decisions that are made.
Although few of us would disagree with this approach, it is difficult to implement for several
reasons.

 Practicality – company has no control over where he lives, how many friends he has
and;
 Employee’s perception- perceptions on the input and outputs over actual input and
output.
 To increase perceptions of equity, organizations need to do a better job of explaining their
compensation systems.

Self- Actualization – the need for growth and challenge

To help satisfy employee self-actualization needs, organizations can do;

 Job rotation- the employee is given the same number of tasks to do at one time, but the
tasks change from time to time.
 Job enlargement- employee is given more tasks to do at one time.
 Job enrichment - employee assumes more responsibility over the tasks.
 Hackman and Oldham - theorized that enriched jobs are the most satisfying.
 Quality circles increase job satisfaction and commitment for employees in the private sector but
not for those in public agencies.

Integration of Theories
 Individual-difference theories- lahi lahi ang pre-dieposition sa tawo towards satisfaction
 Discrepancy theories – dapat congruent ila expectation sa job ug ang actual job
  Intrinsic satisfaction theory – makahatag satisfaction ang interesting ug fun na job but
lahi lahi tag sense of “interesting” and “fun”
 Job characteristics theory
 Equity and justice theories – how fairly we think gina treat sa sa ato supervisor and
coworker and if ang ato ba work is gina compensate fairly base sa quality sa ato work,
like dapat mas taas kag sweldo kaysa adtong wala nag perform well.
 Maslow’s level of self- actualization – ang job satisfaction is naka depende sa iya
current level of need.

Measuring Job Satisfaction and Commitment

Measures of Job Satisfaction
 Faces Scale- lacks construct validity
 Job Descriptive Index (JDI) – commonly used today, -- series of job-related adjectives
and statements that are rated by employees on supervision, pay, promotional
opportunities, coworkers, and the work itself.
 Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (MSQ), -contains 100 items that yield scores on
20 scales.
 Job in General (JIG) Scale - measure the overall level of job satisfaction rather than
specific aspects.
Measures of Commitment
 Allen and Meyer - 24 items, eight each for the three factors of affective, continuance, and
normative commitment.
 Organizational Commitment Questionnaire (OCQ) – 15 items and it measure three commitment
factors: acceptance of the organization’s values and goals, willingness to work to help the
organization, and a desire to remain with the organization.
 Organizational Commitment Scale (OCS) – 9 items, measures three aspects of commitment:
identification, exchange, and affiliation.

Consequences of Dissatisfaction and Other Negative Work Attitudes

Absenteeism - The top three reasons for taking the time off were attending to personal errands,
catching up on sleep, and relaxing.

- Can be decreased in several ways: rewarding attendance, disciplining absenteeism, and

keeping accurate attendance records.
- Increasing Attendance by Reducing Employee Stress
- Increasing Attendance by Reducing Illness
- Reducing Absenteeism by Not Hiring “Absence-Prone” Employees

Turnover
 - Very low or very high levels of turnover will result in lower organizational
performance, but a moderate amount of turnover will result in higher
performance.
- Turnover will most affect organizations that don’t invest in their employees and
will least affect organizations that spend time and money to develop their
employees.
- Employees typically leave their jobs for one of five reasons: unavoidable
reasons, advancement, unmet needs, escape, and unmet expectations.
Counterproductive Behaviors – if dili sila ka leave sa company di sila magtarong, either e direct
nila na sa individual or sa whole organization.
Organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) - are motivated to help the organization and their
coworkers by doing the “little things” that they are not required to do