Faultimore School District 1
Running head: EMPLOYEE ATTITUDES AT FAULTIMORE
Faults in Faultimore? Understanding Job Satisfaction, Leadership Support, Justice Perception and Turnover Intentions at Faultimore School District
Michael J. Walk
University of Baltimore

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Faults in Faultimore? Understanding Job Satisfaction, Leadership Support, Justice Perception and Turnover Intentions at Faultimore School District (Case #1D)
Faultimore School District has been undergoing a series of rapid changes implemented by its newly hired superintendent, Dr. Stuart Hamm. These changes ensued with little or no interaction or discussion with school employees. This unilateral use of power could have detrimental effects on school employees. If teachers, principals, and other key staff are dissatisfied with the working environment, a dangerous level of turnover (not to mention a serious decrease in work motivation) could result. A thorough assessment of key variables must be obtained in order to appraise the extant psychological climate within the school district. No school district can afford to lose teachers for any reason. If there is the possibility that
Faultimore’s teachers and staff are dissatisfied with the current situation, it needs to be accurately investigated. The excruciating cost in recruiting and training new teachers as well as the loss in quality of education are expenses that will nullify any positive outcomes that Hamm intended to effect with his multifaceted change program.
The Recent History
In order to better understand the present situation in Faultimore, I will present a brief account of the recent events. Dr. Hamm is the newly hired superintendent. He has wrought widespread changes in order to address “the education needs in the coming decades.” These changes include redistributing teachers to needier schools, evaluating school principals using his own unique methods (this resulted in the demoting of 30 principals and the reassigning of several others without discussion or negotiation), and incorporating special education students into the mainstream classroom.

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While these changes, in themselves, pose no threat or danger to the successful operation of the district, the method by which they were executed made impossible any feedback and/or discussion from employees. Dr. Hamm was not interested in receiving feedback about his changes, nor was he open to any such comments. In fact, staff seem to fear reprisal for expressing their dissent.
However, given the concerns of the union and the rumor of discontent among staff,
Hamm desires to prove that all is quiet on the Faultimore front. He has asked his personnel department to create, distribute, and analyze an “employee morale” survey. He also desires that this procedure be done in such a way that will, in the words of Hamm, “make us look good.”
Hamm denies that the survey will uncover any sort of problem at the district because employees will fear repercussions. He has asked for a complete plan with procedures and timeline.
Possible Solutions
One way to assess “employee morale” is to conduct a job satisfaction survey. This survey could be made from scratch in order to ask questions that would deal specifically with the current domain (i.e., the educational system). While this approach recommends itself to addressing domain-specific ideas, it also has may weaknesses. For example, constructing a new survey that is reliable and valid is a painstaking and costly process—more than one entire book as been dedicated to this procedure. (For an example, see Babbie, 1990.)
Another option is to use a previously created and researched instrument to assess job satisfaction. Two possible instruments include the Job Satisfaction Survey (JSS; Spector, 1985) and the Job Descriptive Index (JDI; Smith, Kendall, & Hulin, 1969) with or without the additional job in general scale (Ironson, Smith, Brannick, Gibson, & Paul, 1989). All of these measures have been extensively used in previous research (for an example of JSS research, see

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Coté & Morgan, 2002; for a review and meta-analysis of the JDI, see Kinicki, McKee-Ryan,
Schriescheim, & Carson, 2002; and for an example of the job-in-general scale in research, see
Acker, 2004).
It is also important to consider the various facets of job satisfaction. That is, different satisfaction instruments assess varying facets of job satisfaction. For instance, the JSS measures satisfaction with pay, promotion, supervision, fringe benefits, and many others (Spector, 1985).
However, the JDI assesses satisfaction with the work itself, supervision, people, pay, and promotion (Smith, Kendall, & Hulin, 1969).
While choosing the satisfaction instrument is an important step in the current situation, an even more important decision is what other variables to measure. For example, if the data suggested a high level of satisfaction among employees at Faultimore, why is this the case? And, what can be known or predicted from this level of satisfaction? Low turnover? Not exactly; in fact, Cordery, Mueller, and Smith (1991, as cited in Landy & Conte, 2007) found that employees high in job satisfaction may have higher rates of absenteeism and turnover due to other workplace factors. Therefore, it is important to measure other relevant variables in order to gain a fuller picture of the organizational climate and employee attitudes.
Recommendations
The pace and quality of the recent change at the Faultimore School District suggests that several consequences are likely to ensue. First, almost any type of organizational change is usually resisted (either overtly or covertly) by employees (Brown & Harvey, 2006). Changes tend to be viewed negatively when an employee’s psychological climate is negative (Martin,
Jones, & Callan, 2005) and when leadership is not supportive of employees during the change
(Rafferty & Griffin, 2006). Also, when changes are seen as unjust, trust in the organization,

Faultimore School District 5 intentions to remain, and feelings of obligation toward the organization decline (Korsgaard,
Sapienza, & Schweiger, 2002).
These findings are especially relevant in the current situation since Hamm has shown indifference to employee perceptions and attitudes during the change process, he provided no chance for either notice or dialogue about the changes, and the employees have felt fear at speaking out against his procedures. It is probable that there is a great deal of unrest among the staff, that satisfaction is low, and that the results from the proposed survey will uncover a serious problem at Faultimore School District.
I recommend that, in order to obtain the most valuable information from the survey administration, measures of not only job satisfaction, but also turnover intentions, perceived leadership support, and perceptions of justice be included in the survey.
Measures
Job satisfaction.
I recommend that Spector’s (1985) Job Satisfaction Survey (JSS) be used to measure job satisfaction. This measure is composed of 36 items, all using a six-point
Likert-type response scale ranging from (1) disagree very much to (6) agree very much . The JSS measures 9 facets of job satisfaction: pay, promotion, supervision, fringe benefits, contingent rewards, operating conditions, coworkers, nature of the work, and communication. These facet scores are summed to create a total satisfaction score. The breadth of information available from the JSS make it uniquely suited to the present situation. Also, it was developed specifically for employees in “human service, public, and non-profit sector organizations” (Spector, 1985, p.
693).
Turnover intentions.
Turnover intentions will be measured by using the same scale used by Aryee, Budhwar, and Chen (2002) (which was an adaptation of a scale by Camman, Fichman,

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Jenkins, and Klesh, 1979). This scale is composed of three items. Two of the items (i.e., “I often think about quitting my job with my present organization” and “I will probably look for a new job within the next year”) will have a 5-point response scale ranging from (1) strongly disagree to (5) strongly agree
. One item (i.e., “How likely is it that you will actively look for a new job in the next year?”) will have a 5-point response scale ranging from (1) not at all likely to (5) extremely likely .
Leadership support.
Leadership support will be measured by using three items from
Rafferty and Griffin (2004). The seven-point response scale for these items ranged from (1) strongly disagree to (7) strongly agree
. An example item is: “My leader sees that the interests of employees are given due consideration.”
Perceptions of justice.
Justice will be measured using Colquitt’s (2001) multidimensional justice questionnaire. This instrument measures four dimensions of justice—the five-point response scale for all items ranges from (1) to a small extent to (5) to a large extent .
Procedural justice is measured by seven items (e.g., “Have you been able to express your views and feelings during those procedures?”); distributive justice is measured by four items (e.g., “Is your (outcome) appropriate for the work you have completed?”); interpersonal justice is measured by four items (e.g., “Has he/she [authority figure] treated you with respect?”); and informational justice is measured by five items (e.g., “Has he/she [authority figure] explained the procedures thoroughly?”).
Methods
A proposed timeline for the survey administration is included as Table 1.
Pilot testing.
A small convenience sample of employees ( n = 30) will be used to pilot test the initial survey design. Problematic items and directions will be identified through focus

Faultimore School District 7 groups composed of subsets of the 30 employees. The survey will be revised and retested until no serious problems emerge. After this is complete, a randomly selected sample of 50 employees will complete the survey from start to finish using the procedures discussed below in order to uncover any problems that may occur in the full-scale distribution and collection of the survey.
Survey design.
The survey will be designed using the above mentioned measures. Given the amount of material present in the survey, it will be about six pages in length plus a cover sheet with a complete description of the purpose of the survey, how respondents were selected, due dates, etc. In order to control for order effects (e.g., fatigue), the respondents will be divided into three groups. These three groups will each receive a different page order. The pages of the survey will be divided into sets of two pages, making three sets of two pages each: A, B, and C.
Group 1 will receive the survey in the order A-B-C; Group 2 will received the survey in the order
B-C-A; and Group 3 will receive the survey in the order C-A-B.
Sampling.
Employees from all levels of the school district will be included in the survey.
In order to obtain a representative sample of employees, the district employee roster will be stratified by gender and job category (e.g., administration, teacher, support personnel, etc.) to create the sampling frame. Systematic sampling of every 10 th
employee (with random start) will be used to obtain the sample. This will result in an initial sample of approximately 500 employees.
Procedure.
The survey will be sent to the sample through the school district’s internal postage system. Dr. Hamm’s suggestion of an pre-survey “support the chief” message will not be implemented for the possibility that such a message may bias the data—either positively or negatively. A postage-paid envelope for returning the survey will be provided—all returned surveys will be returned through U.S. mail to a P.O. box in order to decrease respondent anxiety

Faultimore School District 8 about loss of anonymity. After two weeks, follow-up postcards will be sent to all respondents, thanking them for completing the survey if they have done so and reminding them to complete the survey if they have not. After three weeks, another wave of follow-up postcards will be distributed. After six weeks, survey collection will end and analysis will begin.
Security.
All data will be kept secure, and no identifying information will be on the surveys themselves or in the data files. All electronic data files will be kept on a passwordprotected computer and will be regularly backed up onto CD-ROMs every two days. These CD-
ROMS will be kept in a locked filing cabinet along with the surveys.
Analysis.
Univariate descriptive analyses will be calculated for each survey measure.
Also, bi-variate correlations between all survey measures will be calculated. Depending on observed relationships, other post-hoc relationships may be examined (based on theoretical grounds) in order to better understand employee perceptions and attitudes at Faultimore School
District.
Conclusion
It is likely that the data obtained from the proposed survey may cause a great deal of concern among school district administrators, including Dr. Hamm. However, understanding and addressing any extant issues is a far preferable alternative to ignoring them and allowing them to burden the district with employee and monetary loss or a decrease in the quality of provided services. Measuring variables such as leadership support and justice perceptions may help school leaders comprehend and adequately address the problems while they are still manageable.

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References
Acker, G. M. (2004). The effect of organizational conditions (role conflict, role ambiguity, opportunities for professional development, and social support) on job satisfaction and intention to leave among social workers in mental health care. Community Mental Health
Journal, 40 (1), 65-73.
Aryee, S., Budhwar, P. S., & Chen, Z. X. (2002). Trust as a mediator of the relationship between organizational justice and work outcomes: test of a social exchange model. Journal of
Organizational Behavior, 23 , 267-285.
Babbie, E. (1990). Survey Research Methods (2nd ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing
Company.
Brown, D. R. & Harvey, D. (2006). An experiential approach to organization development (7th ed.). Delhi, India: Dorling Kindersley.
Colquitt, J. A. (2001). On the dimensionality of organizational justice: A construct validation of a measure. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86 , 386-400.
Coté, S., & Morgan, L. M. (2002). A longitudinal analysis of the association between emotion regulation, job satisfaction, and intentions to quit. Journal of Organizational Behavior,
23 , 947-962.
Ironson, et al. (1989). Construction of a job in general scale: A comparison of global, composite, and specific measures. Journal of Applied Psychology, 74 (2), 193-200.
Kinicki, A. J., McKee-Ryan, F. M., Schriescheim, C. A., & Carson, K. P. (2002). Assessing the construct validity of the Job Descriptive Index: A review and meta-analysis. Journal of
Applied Psychology , 87 , 14-32.

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Korsgaard, M. A., Sapienza, H. J., & Schweiger, D. M. (2002). Beaten before begun: The role of procedural justice in planning change. Journal of Management , 28 (4), 497-516.
Landy, F. J., & Conte, J. M. (2007). Work in the 21st Century: An Introduction to Industrial and
Organizational Psychology (2nd ed.). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.
Martin, A. J., Jones, E. S., & Callan, V. J. (2005). The role of psychological climate in facilitating employee adjustment during organizational change. European Journal of
Work and Organizational Psychology, 14 (3), 263-289.
Rafferty, A. E., & Griffin, M. A. (2004). Dimensions of transformational leadership: Conceptual and empirical extensions. Leadership Quarterly, 15 (3), 329-354.
Rafferty, A. E., & Griffin, M. A. (2006). Perceptions of organizational change: A stress and coping perspective. Journal of Applied Psychology , 91 (5), 1154-1162.
Smith, P. C., Kendall, L. M., & Hulin, C. L. (1969). Job Satisfaction in work and retirement: A strategy for the Study of Attitudes . Chicago: Rand McNally.
Spector, P. E. (1985). Measurement of human service staff satisfaction: Development of the job satisfaction survey. American Journal of Community Psychology, 13, 693-713.

Table 1.
Survey Administration Timeline
Proposed Start Date
December 1, 2007
December 15, 2007
February 1, 2008
March 17, 2008
March 31, 2008
April 7, 2008
April 30, 2008
May 30, 2008
June 13, 2008
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Procedure and Steps
Design

Compile items for measures

Create initial survey
Pre-test

Sample 30 individuals, administer survey

Conduct focus groups

Revise and redesign survey if necessary
Pilot

Sample 50 individuals, administer survey using proposed procedures

Identify logistical problems, revise procedures as necessary
Survey Administration

Administer survey to complete sample

Begin entering data from returned surveys
First wave of reminder postcards
Second wave of reminder postcards
End survey collection
Complete data entry and analysis
Present results