Job Satisfaction: Antecedents & Consequences

Definition:

Persons attitude towards his or her overall job as well as toward various
aspects of the job.

Predisposition to one’s work environment in a favorable or unfavorable

manner.

MEASUREMENT OF J.S.:

Global approach: employee response to general question measured on a 5

– pt rating scale

Facet approach: Various facets like work environment, pay, fringe benefits,
quality of supervision and other feelings & attitudes

Measured on standardized scale summation for overall J.S. score

Determinants of J.S.

a) Job characteristics

• Hackman’s & Oldham’s (1976) model

o Skill variety – degree of freedom for diff task perf

o Task identity – see one’s work frm begng to end

o Task significance – see one’s work as imp

o Autonomy –degree of control on how to conduct one’s job

o Job feedback – wrk itself provides effectiveness feedback

• Growth Need Strength is the extent to which they want the job
to contribute to personal growth

• For hi GNS indiv, r’ship bet challenging jobs & job satisfaction
 • Limitation is our inability to identify whether job satisfaction
measures job caharc or vice-versa

b) Social/organizational factors

a. Social influence processes

b. Supervisor/coworker relationships

c. Equitable rewards

d. Promotion opportunities

• Social information procession model (Salancik & Pfeffer,

1978)

o Employee job satis based on info abt social envir

avlbl to them

o Modeling motivation & satisfaction levels of other

employees

o Ambiguity & complexity of jobs makes modeling

necessary

c) Personal dispositions

• Staw et.al. (1986) - positive affective disposition in

adolescence significantly correlated with overall J.S. at 54
& 62 yrs

• Arvey et.al. (1989) – heritability of J.S. in identical twins

reared apart

• Hulin & Judge (2003) – metaanalysis showing role of self

efficacy & positive affectivity

• Person-job fit Model – r’ship bet persons nature & job

character
Consequences of job satisfaction

1. Employee withdrawal behaviors

a. Absenteeism

b. Voluntary turnover

i. J.S. more predictive of turnover

2. Performance

a. R’ship between J.P. & J.S. by Muchinsky(1985) & Judge et.al.

(2001) contradictory

b. Conceptual flaw in Muchinsky study

c. Organizational citizenship behavior (Organ, 1988)

i. Behavior not recognized through formal rewards

ii. Overall promotes effective functioning

iii. J.S. related to OCB only when fairness is controlled

Integrative model (Judge et.al., 2001)

J.S & J.P. in a bidirectional causal relationship

This relationship is moderated by other factors like personality

INTERPERSONAL PROCESSES IN ORGANIZATIONS

I. COMMUNICATION

Two or more people interacting with each other and transmitting

information

a. Model of communication
SENDER MESSAGE RECEIVER

Encoding Decoding

b. Perspectives on communication

• Krone, Jablin and Putnam (1987) – locus of

communication

• Mechanistic: LOC is channel. Focus on mechanics

of transmission

• Research focus: communication skills

• Effective communicators higher on the corporate

ladder. Why?

• Psychological: LOC is conceptual filters. Attitudes,

cognitions & Perceptions.

• Automatic filtering of excess information, selective

perception

• Incongruent conceptual filters breakdown

communications

• Filters affect encoding & decoding

• People r confident abt what they consider imp info

• Interpretive symbolic: LOC is shared meaning b/w

parties

• Development of categories of thought allowing

communication
 • Categories decided through consensual validation

• Reduces level of uncertainty by imposing order in

chaos

• Theory of social constructionism: realityis

constructed by c.v achvd thru social interaction

• There is a reality apart from social reality

c. Nonverbal aspects of communication.

• Non verbal communication of interviewer can affect n.v.

behr of interviewee

• Face to face interviews more accurate than telephonic

ones

• Consensual validation difficult for those communicating

via electronic media

II. GROUP DECISION MAKING

a. Groupthink

• Flawed decision making that occurs due to strong

pressures among members to achieve agreement

• Prevents careful thorough investigation of all relevant

information

• High cohesiveness, directive leadership, high stress,

insulation from outsiders, exaggerated sense of collective
efficacy – possible antecedent conditions

• Prevention: examine all evidence, avoid rushing into a

decision
 • Leader should prevent GT by staying impartial, voicing
views at the end and encourage all group members to be
critical evaluators

b. Group polarization

• Stoner (1961): risky shift – groups take riskier decision

than individuals

• Later decision relabeled it as group polarization as

decision maybe riskier or more conservative

• Normative influence & informational influence responsible

for GP

• Normative influence: Pressure to conform to expectation

of others to gain social approval and avoid negative social
consequences. Conform to be accepted

• Informative influence: Changes due to info recvd from

others providing evidence about nature of social situation.

• Persuasive arguments theory: Polarization occurs when

most of the members favor one position over another

• May also occur out of a desire to be axptd and due to

exposure to strong arguments favoring one position

c. Decision making biases.

• Cognitive shortcuts or heuristics lead to biases

o Availability heuristic makes people think an issue is

more common than they actually are

o Truth wins when accurate information is available

o Majority wins when demonstrability of solution is low

 • Hindsight bias when people believe that the predictability
of an event was higher than it actually was.

• Confirmation bias

o Seek and pay attention to information confirming

their position

o Ignore contradictory information

• Representativeness bias

o Categorical judgement based on the extent to which

an event object or indiv fits a particular category

o Base rate information in insufficiently weighted

d. Decision making & IT

• CMC – computer mediated communication vs. FTF face

to face

• Less normative influence in CMC

• Greater equality in participation in CMC groups and better

task performance in idea generation activities.