Job Satisfaction:
Implications for
Science and Policy
NSF Meeting on the National Accounts of WellBeing
Timothy A. Judge
University of Florida
30 November 2006
1
Preliminaries
Importance of work
• People spend majority of waking hours
engaged in work
• Principal source of identity in Western
world
– reflected in doing (“what do you do?”) and
being (surnames)
• Thus, how people react affectively and
cognitively to the work role might be of
consequence behaviorally
-2-
Preliminaries
Why: ‘might be of consequence’?
• Job satisfaction is an attitude, and
support for attitude-behavior linkage has
been inconsistent in social psychology
– “there is considerable variability in the
degree to which attitudes predict behavior”
(Glasman & Albarracín, Psych. Bulletin, 2006)
• Why might job satisfaction be different?
– Job satisfaction may be more salient
(personal) than typical social attitudes
-3-
Preliminaries
Three imperatives
1. Job satisfaction – outcome relationships
must achieve construct correspondence
2. Affect (mood and emotions) must be
considered in job satisfaction models
and methods
3. Job satisfaction must be construed as a
multilevel phenomenon
-4-
1 Correspondence
imperative
Work outcomes of job affect
• Job satisfaction related to impressive array
of work behaviors
– Job performance (Judge et al., 2002)
– Attendance at work (Sagie, 1998)
– Turnover decisions (-) (Tett & Meyer, 1993)
– Decisions to retire (-) (Sibbald, Bojke, & Gravelle, 2003)
– Psychological withdrawal (-) (Necowitz & Roznowski, 1994)
– Prosocial/citizenship behaviors (LePine et al., 2002)
– Prounion representation votes (-) (Friedman et al., 2006)
– Workplace incivility (-) (Mount, Ilies, & Johnson, 2006)
-5-
1 Correspondence
imperative
Life outcomes of job affect
• Also related to many non-work indicators
of well-being
– Life satisfaction (Judge & Watanabe, 1993)
– Physical and mental health (Cass, Siu,
Faragher, & Cooper, 2003)
– Other’s benefits: student learning, customer
satisfaction, etc. (e.g., Homburg & Stock, 2004)
– Quality of marital interaction (Rogers & May,
2003)
-6-
1 Correspondence
imperative
However…
• Correlations with work behavior are
reliable but not particularly strong
– Most r’s .15 ≤ r ≤ .35 (.32 ≤ d ≤ .74)
• Why?
– Correspondence (Fishbein-Azjen)
• Attitude-behavior linkages often have failed to
achieve correspondence (Hulin & Roznowski, 1993)
– Specific attitude predicting broad behavior
– Broad attitude predicting specific behavior
– Missing affect (thus failing to fully assess job
satisfaction as the social attitude that it is)
-7-
1 Correspondence
imperative
Numbers of studies reporting
d-value in category
Job satisfaction – job performance
.12-.50
Mean r=.31
Mean d=.66
Number of correlations=311
.50-.88
0.88-1.26
-.25-.12
1.26-1.62
Job Satisfaction – Job Performance D-value
Source: Judge, Thoresen, Bono, & Patton (Psych. Bulletin, 2002)
-8-
1 Correspondence
imperative
Results of recent study
• When job attitudes (here, commitment+satisfaction)
and outcome (here, ‘individual effectiveness’) are
both construed broadly, effects are strong
(Values are standardized coefficients)
Source: Harrison, Newman, and Roth (2006)
-9-
1 Correspondence
imperative
Practical nature of effects
• Harter et al. (2002) linked 12-item Gallup Workplace Audit to the
performance of 7,939 business units
– “How satisfied are you with _____ as a place to work?”
– “At work, my opinions seem to count”
– “I know what is expected of me at work
• Business units above the median on employee engagement had a
70% (i.e., [63%-37%]/37%) higher success rate than those below the
median on employee engagement
• Results were consistent across broad criteria of:
–
–
–
–
–
–
Customer satisfaction–loyalty: customer satisfaction, customer loyalty
Productivity: revenue, revenue-per-person
Profitability: profit as a percentage of revenue (sales)
Turnover: annualized percentage of employee turnover (turnover rate)
Safety: lost workday/time incident rate
Composite performance: overall or performance using all outcomes
-10-
1 Correspondence
imperative
Summary
• When job satisfaction is construed and
measured as a broad attitude, and…
• when the behavioral manifestations of
this attitude are similarly construed and
measured broadly, then…
• the attitude – behavior relationship is
strong and theoretically and practically
meaningful
-11-
2 Affect imperative
Historical role in job satisfaction research
• Classical definition of job satisfaction
– A pleasant or positive emotional state
resulting from an appraisal of one’s job or
job experiences (Locke, 1976)
• It has been argued that researchers have
emphasized cognition more than affect
(Weiss, 2002; Hulin & Judge, 2003)
– In theorizing and measurement
– Why is this a problem?
-12-
2 Affect imperative
Theory without affect
Work role contributions
Skills and abilities
Time
Effort
Training
Environmental/
economic factors
Personality
Work role outcomes
Pay and benefits
Status
Working conditions
Intrinsic outcomes
Frames of
reference
Job withdrawal
turnover (-)
retirement (-)
malingering (-)
Job/work role
evaluations
Work withdrawal
absence (-)
citizenship
incivility (-)
Attempts to Δ
work situation
vote for union (-)
job redesign
-13-
2 Affect imperative
Measurement without affect
• Without trying to advance an artificial
dualism between cognition and affect
– Measures of job satisfaction are descriptiveevaluative
Y
N
?
for “Yes” if it describes (scored 3)
for “No” if it does NOT describe (scored 0)
if you cannot decide (scored 1)
SUPERVISION
COWORKERS
___Impolite
___Praises good work
___Boring
___Intelligent
-14-
2 Affect imperative
Implications for research methods
• Emphasizing role of affect poses
problems
– “Measurement of affect should reflect its
statelike, episodic nature” (Hulin & Judge, 2003)
• Unless we revise research design, we’ve
reached a “methodological stalemate”
(Larson & Csikszentmihalyi, 1983)
-15-
2 Affect imperative
Summary
• Affect theoretically important to any
attitude – including job satisfaction
• Theories, measures, and models in job
satisfaction research have cognitive
orientation
• Including affect will require different
research models and methods
• Need to conceptualize job affect as
multilevel phenomenon (next imperative)
-16-
3 Multilevel imperative
Conceptual model
United States
Illinois
Psychology
Michigan State
Economics
Economics
Lucas
Diener
Hulin
Psychology
Monday
Monday
Tuesday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Thursday
Friday
Friday
Ilgen
-17-
3 Multilevel imperative
Role of experience sampling methodology
• One of the most promising means of
conceptualizing job satisfaction as a
multilevel phenomenon is to utilize
designs that capture within-individual
(daily variation); such designs show
– Affective events influence job satisfaction
– Job satisfaction associated with temporallydependent moods/emotions
– Job satisfaction affects daily variation in work and
nonwork behaviors
– Individual differences moderate the associations
-18-
3 Multilevel imperative
Positive Mood at Home
Micro (individual-level) moderator
35
30
25
Extraverts
Introverts
20
15
10
Low job satisfaction at work
Source: Judge and Ilies (2004)
High job satisfaction at work
-19-
3 Multilevel imperative
Macro (cultural-level) moderator
One way to investigate job satisfaction as a
multilevel phenomenon is to aggregate at a
higher (or decompose at a lower) level (than the
typical individual difference perspective)
Another way – on display here – is to consider
higher-level variables as moderators of effects
on, or consequences of, job attitudes
Source: Huang and Vliert, 2004
-20-
3 Multilevel imperative
Conceptual framework
Culture
Organization
Work group
Individual
Intra-individual
Δ
Δ
Δ
Δ
Δ
Cross-Cultural
variation in job
satisfaction
Organizational-level
variation in job
satisfaction
Group-level
differences in job
satisfaction
Individual differences
in job satisfaction
Ml+1
National
competitiveness/
quality of life
Ml+1
Organization
performance/
sustainability
Ml+1
Ml+1
Within-individual
(e.g., diurnal) variation
in job satisfaction
Ml+1
Individual differences
in job satisfaction
Performance,
job/work withdrawal
Emotion-driven
behavior
-21-
3 Multilevel imperative
Summary
•
•
In addition to considering breadth, and
affect, another way to further our
understanding of the importance of job
attitudes is to consider the multilevel
nature of job satisfaction
Need to conceptualize outcomes – and
moderators – that correspond to this
multilevel nature
-22-
Summary
Takeaways
•
Job satisfaction is important to work
and life outcomes
– Especially when broad measures of job
attitudes and outcomes are used
•
Affective and multilevel nature of job
satisfaction have shown further
practical import of construct
-23-
Summary
Recommendations
• Measure it!
– National Longitudinal Surveys suggest what
is possible but measurement is very limited
• Need for more multilevel, longitudinal
research
• Focus on quality of working life is natural
non-partisan issue
– Benefits to employees and employers
-24-
Questions or
Comments?
These slides and my articles available at:
www.ufstudies.net/tim/VITA
25