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Job Satisfaction:Implications for Science and PolicyNSF Meeting on the National Accounts of Well-Being

Timothy A. Judge

University of Florida30 November 2006

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PreliminariesImportance 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

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PreliminariesWhy: ‘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

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PreliminariesThree 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

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1 Correspondence imperativeWork 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)

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1 Correspondence imperativeLife 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)

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1 Correspondence imperativeHowever…• 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)

-8-Source: Judge, Thoresen, Bono, & Patton (Psych. Bulletin, 2002)

Job Satisfaction – Job Performance D-value

Mean r=.31Mean d=.66

Number of correlations=311.12-.50

.50-.88

0.88-1.26

-.25-.121.26-1.62

Num

bers

of

stud

ies

repo

rtin

gd-

valu

e in

cat

egor

y1 Correspondence imperativeJob satisfaction – job performance

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1 Correspondence imperativeResults of recent study

• When job attitudes (here, commitment+satisfaction) and outcome (here, ‘individual effectiveness’) are both construed broadly, effects are strong

Source: Harrison, Newman, and Roth (2006)

(Values are standardized coefficients)

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1 Correspondence imperativePractical 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

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1 Correspondence imperativeSummary

• 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

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2 Affect imperativeHistorical 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?

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2 Affect imperativeTheory without affect

Work role contributionsSkills and abilitiesTimeEffortTraining

Work role outcomesPay and benefitsStatusWorking conditionsIntrinsic outcomes

Environmental/economic factors

Frames ofreference

Personality

Job/work roleevaluations

Work withdrawalabsence (-)citizenshipincivility (-)

Job withdrawalturnover (-)retirement (-)malingering (-)

Attempts to Δwork situationvote for union (-)job redesign

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2 Affect imperativeMeasurement without affect

• Without trying to advance an artificial dualism between cognition and affect– Measures of job satisfaction are descriptive-

evaluative Y for “Yes” if it describes (scored 3) N for “No” if it does NOT describe (scored 0) ? if you cannot decide (scored 1)

SUPERVISION COWORKERS ___Impolite ___Boring ___Praises good work ___Intelligent

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2 Affect imperativeImplications 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)

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2 Affect imperativeSummary

• 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)

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3 Multilevel imperativeConceptual model

United States

Illinois Michigan State

Psychology Economics Psychology Economics

Diener

Hulin

Lucas

Ilgen

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

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3 Multilevel imperativeRole 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 temporally-dependent

moods/emotions– Job satisfaction affects daily variation in work and nonwork

behaviors– Individual differences moderate the associations

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3 Multilevel imperativeMicro (individual-level) moderator

10

15

20

25

30

35

Extraverts

Introverts

Pos

itive

Moo

d at

Hom

e

Source: Judge and Ilies (2004)

Low job satis-faction at work

High job satis-faction at work

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3 Multilevel imperativeMacro (cultural-level) moderator

Source: Huang and Vliert, 2004

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

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3 Multilevel imperativeConceptual framework

Culture

Organization

Work group

Individual

Intra-individual

Cross-Culturalvariation in job

satisfaction

Organizational-levelvariation in job

satisfaction

Group-leveldifferences in job

satisfaction

Individual differencesin job satisfaction

Within-individual(e.g., diurnal) variation

in job satisfaction

Emotion-drivenbehavior

Performance,job/work withdrawal

Individual differencesin job satisfaction

Organizationperformance/sustainability

Ml+1

Ml+1

Ml+1

Ml+1

Ml+1

Δ

Δ

Δ

Δ

ΔNational

competitiveness/quality of life

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3 Multilevel imperativeSummary

• 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

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SummaryTakeaways

• 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

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SummaryRecommendations

• 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

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Questions or Comments?

These slides and my articles available at:www.ufstudies.net/tim/VITA