Job satisfaction and

organizational
commitment
Presented by: bba-5

Group members
Tania Shaheen
Marya Sabir

FA13-BS(BA)-019
FA13-BS(BA)-039

Organizational psychology
Industrial and organizational psychology (also
known as IO psychology, ) is the scientific
study of human behavior at their workplace
and

applies

psychological

theories

and

principles to organizations and individuals at

their workplace.

Core concepts of I-O psychology

Organizational or industrial psychology has two core topics/concepts
which are illustrated as under:
Job satisfaction
Organizational commitment

What is job
satisfaction?

What is job satisfaction?

Job satisfaction is typically defined as:
an employees level of positive affect towards his or her job or
job situation

Components of job satisfaction

There are three components of job satisfaction and these are as
follows:
Affective/ evaluative component ( feelings)
Cognitive component (beliefs)
Behavioral component (behaviors)

Components

Theoretical approaches to job satisfaction

Job characteristics
approach
Social information
process approach
Dispositional
approach

Job
satisfaction

Comparison
Job characteristic approach
approach(1991)
Job satisfaction is primarily

Hulin

measured by nature of employees

job or by the characteristics of the
organization in which they work.

Job satisfaction develops in

response to job conditions. (
period and work schedule)

work hours, rest

Job characteristic model

Common theme among these

approaches

job satisfaction is largely determined by employees comparison of what

the job is currently providing them and what they would like it to be
provide

Basis of perception
The perceptions of employees about the
job satisfaction are based upon the
following factors:
Employees skills
The amount of time they have put into
the job
Availability of other employment
opportunities

Lockes argument
According to him:
job characteristics approach was oversimplified because it does
not account for the fact that employees differ in the importance
they place on various facets of work

Range of affect theory (Locke

1976)
The basic premise of range of affect theory is
that:
facets of the work are differently
weighted when employees make their
assessments of job satisfaction

Facets of job

Major Challenges
First major challenge to this approach came in late 1970s in form of social
information processing theory (SIP).
It was criticized on two points:
It was based on assumption that job characteristics were objective

components of the work environment. However jobs are social constructs

which exist in the minds of employees not the objective components.
This approach was based upon the need satisfaction.

Social information processing approach

According to this approach:
verbal comments about the task characteristics, had at least as
powerful impact on job satisfaction and perceptions of task
characteristics as the objective characteristics of the task

Social comparison theory

Festinger (1954) proposed a theory named as
Social comparison theory to define job
satisfaction. This theory states that:
people often look to others to interpret
and make sense of the environment.

Social comparison theory

Example:
When a new employee interacts with the
dissatisfied employee of an organization would
also likely become dissatisfied and vice-versa.

Challenges to SIP approach

According to Hulin:
This approach is more successful in laboratory rather then field
studies, because they simplify the social influence process. It only
explains the information in terms of discrete data like positive or
negative
It does not tell anything about the conflicting information that
employees may receive form various sources.

Disposition approach
According to this approach to job
satisfaction:
some employees have tendency to
be satisfied (or dissatisfied) with their
jobs, regardless of the nature of the
job or organization in which they
work.

Important evidence for dispositional

approach
Most important evidence for dispositional
approach was provided by Arvey, Segal
and Abraham (1989).
In this study they found approximately
30% of variance could be attributed to
genetic
twins)

factors.

(by

experimenting

Limitations
A major limitation was that:
it was imprecise as to exactly which
dispositions are related to job satisfaction
(Davis Blake and Pfeffer, 1989)

limitations
This approach have been failed to explain
the practical implications of dispositional
effects.
This approach is ignoring the situational
factors which affects the employees job
satisfaction level.
It might be assumed that job satisfaction is
linked with specific traits of the person
but we cant apply this logic while hiring the
employees.

Which approach is more

appropriate to job satisfaction?
Job characteristics approach
Social information processing
Dispositional approach

Construct validity
Construct validity defines how well a test or
experiment measures up to its claims. It refers
to whether the operational definition of a
variable actually reflect the true theoretical
meaning of a concept.

Tests for construct validity

In general there are three tests of construct validity and these are:
Convergence
Discrimination
Nomo logical networks

Measurement of job
satisfaction
There are several measures of job satisfaction. Some are described as under:
Faces scale
Job descriptive index (JDI)
Minnesota satisfaction questionnaire (MSQ)
Job satisfaction survey (JSS)

Faces scale

Faces scale
Advantages
Simplicity

Disadvantages

Respondents need not possess a high

It does not provide information

reading level in order to complete it.

about the employees satisfaction

It can be used for the employees

having low level of education.

with different facets of job.

Job descriptive index (JDI)

JDI
Advantages
It provides score for individual facet
of job like pay, benefits, supervision
etc.
Great deal of data supports its
construct validity.

Disadvantages
It does not help to measure the
overall
employee.

satisfaction

level

of

Minnesota satisfaction
questionnaire
(MSQ)
It has two forms which are as follows:

Long form:
It consist of 100 items to measure the 20 facets of work.

Short form:
It consist of 20 items. This form is not designed to provide the score of the facets.

S.NO

ITEMS

S.NO

ITEMS

01

Activity

11

Ability utilizations

02

Independence

12

Company policies and practices

03

Variety

13

Compensation

04

Social status

14

Advancement

05

Supervision (human relations)

15

Responsibility

06

Moral values

16

Creativity

07

Security

17

Working conditions

08

Social service

18

Coworkers

09

Authority

19

Recognition

10

Supervision (technical)

20

Achievement

MSQ
Advantages
The MSQ provides quite extensive

Disadvantages

employees

The only disadvantage is its length.

satisfaction with various facets of

At 100 items the full version is very

job or work environment.

difficult to administer.

information

on

Even the shortened form is also

longer than many others measures.

Job satisfaction survey (JSS)

It was developed for measuring job satisfaction levels of Human
Service employees.
It consist of 36 items measuring the 9 facets of job and work
environment.

Relationship of job
satisfaction with other
variables
Job satisfaction is related with four other variables that have both theoretical and
practical implications. These variables are:
Attitudinal variables
Absenteeism
Employee turnover
Job performance

Attitudinal variables
Attitudinal variables are as follows:
Job involvement
Organizational commitment
Frustration
Job tension
Feeling of anxiety

Relation with job

satisfaction
According to Spector (1997):
job satisfaction is positively related
with

the

positive

variables
affect

involvement,
commitment

that

such

reflect
as

job

organizational

Negative relation
According to Jackson (1985) and Spector
(1996):
job satisfaction is negatively related to the
variables such as frustration, job tension and
anxiety

Absenteeism
The

study

of

absenteeism

important for two reasons:

Theoretical perspective
Practical perspective

is

Two perspectives
Theoretical

Practical perspective

perspective

Absenteeism is a very costly

Absenteeism
common
employees

represents

way
may

in

which
withdraw

from their jobs (Hulin, 1991)

problem to many organizations.

When employees are absent ,
work may not get done or may be
performed by less experienced
employee.

Job satisfaction role in

absenteeism
According to Hackett and Guion (1985):
after conducting meta-analysis on 31 studies, they found that
correlation between job satisfaction and absenteeism is -.09. This
suggests that job satisfaction may play some role in employee
absenteeism but the role is marginal

Reason for weak relationship between

job satisfaction and absenteeism
1.

The basic reason is measurement of absenteeism itself. There are

two types of absence that is:

. Excused absences (allowed for illness and funerals)

. Un-excused absences (employee does not show up at work)
One could argue that job satisfaction would be more likely to play a
role in un-excused than in excused absences.

Continued..
2. Ajzen and Fishbein (1977) proposed a theory to define the weak relationship
between job satisfaction and absenteeism named as Theory of Reasoned Action
This theory states that:
a complex pathway links general attitudes (such as job satisfaction) to actual
behavior
Job satisfaction may be weakly related to absenteeism because of a failure to account
for unmeasured variables such as normative standards etc.

Continued.
3. Another reason is that ; absenteeism is a behavior that
has low base rate (i.e. it does not occur frequently)
Low base rate is problematic because different statistical
analysis like regression n correlation analysis are based
on assumptions that variables are normally distributed,
and according to different researches it was found that
absenteeism is variable which is not normally distributed.

Continued.
In case of absenteeism the distribution may be skewed.

Employee turnover
Employee turnover is defined as:
the number or percentage of workers who leave an organization

Impact of employee turnover

Basically there are two important impacts of employee turnover on any
organization and these are illustrated as follows:
High level of turnover can be costly in terms of recruiting, selecting
and socializing a new employee.
High level of turnover may also have an adverse impact on public
image of organization.

Mobleys model for turnover

process

Job performance
Job performance assesses whether a
person performs a job well.

Expectancy theory
Vrooms

(1964)

proposed

theory

named

as

Expectancy theory to define the job performance.

This theory states that:
employees would put forth more effort if they
believed that effort would translate into high levels of
performance and higher performance would lead to
valued outcomes

Expectancy
theory

Relationship between job

satisfaction and job performance
According to Podsakoff and Williams (1986) :
satisfaction-performance relation was moderated by the
degree to which rewards were linked to performance