Chapter 10: Employee Satisfaction and Commitment

PSY 3204 - INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY

Introduction
Job satisfaction - attitude an employee has toward her job
Organizational commitment - employee identifies with and is involved with an organization

Why should we care about employee attitude?

 satisfied employees tend to be committed and they are more likely to attend work, stay with the organization, arrive at
work on time, perform well, and engage in behaviors helpful to the organization
 job satisfaction and organizational commitment are related more to a desire to quit, miss work, or reduce effort than
they are to actual behaviors
 Affective-cognitive consistency - employees who have strong, consistent beliefs about their level of job satisfaction will
be committed in the same level

What causes employees to be satisfied with and committed to their jobs?

 work-related attitude are multifaceted; employees may be satisfied with one facet of work but not another
 commonly studied facets of job satisfaction are pay, supervision, coworkers, work, and promotion opportunities; other
facets are equipment, work facility, worksite and company policy
 Three motivational facets to organizational commitment are:
a. Affective commitment - employee wants to remain with the org, cares about the or, and is willing to exert on itself
b. Continuance commitment - they believe that s/he must remain with the org due to the time, experience and effort
that she already put into it or the difficulty she would have in finding another job
c. Normative commitment - employee feels obligated to the organization and, as a result of this obligation, must
remain with the organization - like employee who has given first job, was mentored and trained at great cost to the
org.

A. 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. Factor in individual differences:
o Genetic predisposition - job satisfaction not only may be fairly stable across jobs but also may be
genetically determined. Inherited personality traits such as negative affectivity are related to our
tendency to be dissatisfied with jobs
o Cross self-evaluation - series of personality variables appear to be related to job satisfaction.
 Four personality variables that people became prone to satisfaction with their jobs and life:
a. Emotional stability
b. Self-esteem
c. Self-efficacy - perceived ability to master their environment
d. External locus of control - perceived ability to control their environment
o Culture
o Intelligence - if job are not complex, bright people have slightly lower job satisfaction; but in complex job,
relationship between intelligence and satisfaction is negligible

B. Are employees satisfied with other aspect of their lives?

 Not all 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 correlated with life satisfaction; employee’s need can be meet in a variety of non-work activities
such as hobbies and volunteer work
 People who are unhappy in life and unhappy on their jobs will not leave their jobs because they are used to being
 unhappy; but people who are normally happy in life, being happy at work is seen to have a reason to find another
job.

C. Are employee’s job expectations being met?

 If there is discrepancy between these needs, values and expectations and the reality of the job, employees will
become dissatisfied and less motivated
 If psychological contract breaches occur, job satisfaction and organizational commitment go down and employee
intentions leave organizational increase.

D. Is the employee a good fit with the job and the organization?
 Employees consider how well they “fit” with a job or an organization; their values, interests, personality, lifestyle
and skills match those of their job, org, coworkers and supervisor.
 An employees who perceive a good fit with their organization, job, coworkers, and supervisor tend to be satisfied
with their jobs, identify with the org, remain, perform better, and engage in org citizenship behaviors
 Certain signs to which an organization should pay attention that indicate a job/person mismatch: signs are:
o Does not seem excited when first hired or assigned to job
o Starts asking for some task to be given to other employees
o Application for other jobs in the organization
o Begins to ask for new projects
o Appears bored or unchallenged

E. Are tasks enjoyable?

 Employees who find their work interesting are more satisfied and motivated
 Employees rank interesting work - most important factor in a job; supervisor rank salary and bonus - most
important for employees

F. Do employees enjoy working with supervisors and coworkers?

 People who enjoy working with their supervisors and coworkers will be more satisfied with their jobs

G. Are coworkers outwardly unhappy?

 Social information processing theory (social learning theory) - postulated that employee observe the levels of
motivation and satisfaction of other employees and then model those levels.

H. Are rewards and resources given equitably? - is employees perceive to being treated fairly?
 Equity theory - our levels of job satisfaction and motivation are related to how fairly we believe we are treated in
comparison with others, if we believe we are treated unfairly, we attempt to change our beliefs or behaviors until
the situation appears to be fair.
 Organizational justice:
a. Distributive justice - perceived fairness of the actual decision made in an org
b. Procedural justice - perceive fairness of the methods used to arrive at the decision
c. Interactional justice - perceived fairness of the interpersonal treatment employees receive
 Since the relationship between perceptions of justice and employee attitudes and behaviors are so strong, it is
essential that employers be open about how the decisions are made, take time to develop fair procedures, and
provide feedback to employees who might not be happy with decisions that are made.
 It is important that employees base their judgments on factual information - to increase perception of equity
 To increase equity - allow employees access to the salaries of other employees
o Public sector - salaries are available to the public but do not out their way to publicize salary info
o Private sector - keep confidential; manual forbids employees from divulging their salaries to one another;
employee’s permission must be obtained before such info is released
 I. Is there a chance for growth and challenge?
 Job satisfaction is affected by opportunities for challenge and growth.
 Need for growth and challenge leads/labelled as to self-actualization
 Job rotation - employee is give the same number of tasks to do at one time, but the tasks change from time to
time
 Job enlargement - given more task to do at one time; can be enlarged in two ways:
o Knowledge used/knowledge enlargement - employees are allowed to make complex decisions
o Tasks performed/task enlargement - given more tasks of the same difficulty level to perform
- satisfaction increase in knowledge used and decrease with task enlargement
- Job rotation and job enlargement accomplish two main objectives:
o Challenge employees by requiring them to learn, once employee mastered task they can move to
the other task
o Job rotation alleviated boredom by allowing an employee to change task
 Job enrichment - employees assume more responsibility over the tasks
- Job characteristics model by Hackman and Oldham theorized that enriched jobs are the most satisfying
- Self-directed teams or quality circles - employees meet as a group and discuss and make recommendations
about work issues; this increase in private but not in public sector

Measuring job satisfaction and commitment

 Job satisfaction - measured in two ways:
o Standard job satisfaction inventories
o Custom- designed satisfaction inventories

A. Measures of Job Satisfaction

a. Faces scale (Kunin)
- rate using face templates to how satisfied are you
- easy to use but no longer administered due to lack of sufficient details, construct validity and because it is
simple that is demeaning to employees
b. Job Description Index (JDI)
- most commonly used scale today by Smith and colleagues
- consists of a series of job-related adjectives and statements that are rated by employees with five dimensions
such as supervision, pay, promotional opportunities, coworkers and the work itself
c. Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (MSQ) Weiss and colleagues
- contains 100 items that yields scores on 20 scales
- both a and c measure specific aspect of job satisfaction
d. Job in General Scale (JIG)
- measures the overall level of job satisfaction rather than specific aspects
e. Nagy Job Satisfaction Scale (NJSS)
- include two question per facet: one asking how important the facet is to the employee and the other asking
how satisfied the employee is with the facets

B. Measures of Commitment
a. Allen and Meyer Survey
- most commonly used measure of org commitment with 24 items, eight each for the three factors of affective,
continuance and non-normative commitment
b. Organizational Commitment Questionnaire (OCQ)
- 15-item questionnaire by Mowday and colleagues to measure 3 commitment factors: acceptance of the org’s
values and goals, willingness to work to help the org, and desire to remain with the org; most people use
 scale combine factors to yield one overall commitment score
c. Organizational Commitment Scale (OCS)
- 9-item survey by Balfour and Wechsler that measures aspects of commitment: identification, exchange and
affiliation

Custom-Designed Satisfaction Inventories

 Advantage: org can ask employees questions specific to their org

Consequences of dissatisfaction and other negative work attitudes

1. Absenteeism
 employees are dissatisfied or not committed to org are more likely to miss work and leave their jobs
 organizations are concern with this, not only because of its high monetary cost but as well as turnover - it is a
warning sign intended to turnover
 wellness programs will increase attendance only if absenteeism mostly the result of illness

A. Linking attendance to consequences

- weighing the consequences of going to work against the consequences of not going

B. Reward for attending:

a) Financial incentives
i. Well pay - paying employees for their unused sick leave
ii. Financial bonus - employees who attain a certain level of attendance will have a bonus - perfect
attendance.
iii. Games
b) Time off
i. Paid time off program (PTO) or paid-leave bank (PLB) - vacation, personal, holiday and sick days are
combined into one category - paid time off
 *Buy-back programs, paid-leave banks and disciplinary action as the most effective absence
control methods.
ii. Recognition programs - providing perfect-attendance cert, coffee mugs, plaque, lapel pins, watches and
so forth
c) Discipline for not attending - giving warning or a less popular work assignment to firing an employee
d) Clear policies and better record keeping - by counting the number of days missed or frequency
e) Increasing attendance by reducing employee stress - the greater job stress the lower the job satisfaction
and commitment, greater the probability that most people will want to skip work.
a. Employee assistance program (EAP) - use professional counselor to deal with employee problems
f) Increasing attendance by reducing illness - wellness program
g) Reducing absenteeism by not hiring “absence-prone” employees - looking into the set of personality traits
they posses
 compulsive, rule-oriented personality - best predictor for student attendance
 high in conscientiousness and low in extraversion were least likely to miss work
h) Uncontrollable absenteeism cause by unique events - absenteeism is unavoidable like bad weather - org
can do little to control weather - the accessibility to the plant or office can be considered in the decision of
where to locate
 shuttle service
 good weather - most employees attended
 inclement weather - only those employees with high job satisfaction attended

C. Turnover
a) Cost of turnover
 employees with low job satisfaction and low org commitment are more likely to quit their job and
change careers
 cost of losing an employee is estimated at 1.5 time the employee’s salary
 Cost that determine the estimate:
A. Visible cost - advertising charges, employment agency fees, referral bonuses, recruitment travel
costs, salaries and benefits associated with the employee time spent processing application and
interviewing candidates and relocation expenses for the new employee
B. Hidden cost - loss of productivity associated with the employee leaving - other employees trying to
do extra work, no productivity occurring from the vacant position - and the lower productivity
associated with a new employee being trained.
 higher turnover rates will result in lower organizational performance - negative correlation
 turnover is health in the organizational - u-shaped relationship between turnover and perf,
like very high or low turnover result in lower organizational perf, but a moderate will result in
higher performance

b) Reducing turnover
 first step is to find out why employees are leaving, then administer attitude survey and conduct exit
interviews
 It is important to understand that employee turnover is a process of disengagement from org that can
take a days, weeks or months - they have thinking about it for a period of time which means
communication between employees and management might prevent the ultimate decision to leave.
 Employees typical leave for 5 reasons
A. Unavoidable reasons - like school starting or ending, o transfer of spouse, employee illness or
death, family issue
B. Advancement - pursue promotion or better pay
C. Unmet needs - to avoid this, org consider person/org fit when selecting employees
D. Escape - from people, working conditions and stress
 when conflict arise and becomes unbearable; as well as conditions are unsafe, dirty,
boring, too strenuous, or too stressful; to avoid this, provide mentor
E. Unmet expectation - reality does not match expectation - to avoid this provide realistic job
preview.
F. Employee remains in the org even though characteristics of their job suggest that they would
leave.
G. this lack of turnover is visible through “embeddedness” - employees have links to their jobs
and community, the importance of these links, and the ease with which these links could be
broke and reestablished elsewhere

i. Counterproductive behaviors - two types:

 Aimed at individuals - gossip, playing negative politics, incivility, workplace violence,
harassment and bullying
 Aimed at the organizations - theft and sabotage

ii. Lack of organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs)

 Employees who engage in OCBs are motivated to help the org and coworkers by doing the
“little things” that they are not requiring to do.
 Employees who are satisfied with their jobs and committed to the org are more likely to “go
the extra mile”.