The Relationship between Job Satisfaction and Performance - Assignment Example

Question #2 Introduction Industrial-organisational psychologists and human resource professionals have spent considerable time and effort to increase job satisfaction. The question is why. Of course, one reason is that we want everyone to be happy in life, and anything we can do to make a persons job more satisfying contributes to that goal. However, when time and money are spent improving something, most organisations want to see a return on that investment. That is, will satisfied or happy employees be more profitable to an organisation than dissatisfied ones? The Relationship between Job Satisfaction and Performance Research has shown that job satisfaction is highly related to an employees commitment to an organisation (Tett & Meyer, 1993) but only marginally related to an employees attendance (Hackett, 1989), tenure (Tett & Meyer, 1993), and job performance (Iaffaldano & Muchinsky, 1985). Though the relationships between job satisfaction and attendance, performance, and turnover are relatively small, it is still important to note that there many other factors affecting work behaviour. For example, a dissatisfied employee may want to quit her job but not be able to because there are no other jobs available. Likewise, a dissatisfied employee may want to miss work but realize that she will lose pay if she does. Thus, we often find that job satisfaction is related more to a desire to quit, miss work, or reduce effort than it is to actual behaviours (Iaffaldano & Muchinsky, 1985). The following discussion presents some factors that may affect the performance of employees, distinct from his satisfaction or happiness on the job. The first factor which affects job performance is self-esteem. In the 1970s, Korman (1976) theorized that employees high in self-esteem will be more motivated and will perform better than employees who have low self-esteem. According to Kormans consistency theory, there is a positive correlation between self-esteem and performance. That is, employees who feel food about themselves are motivated to perform better at work than employees who do not feel they are valuable and worthy people. Consistency theory takes the relationship between self-esteem and motivation one step further by stating that employees with high self-esteem actual desire to perform at high levels and that employees with low self-esteem desire to perform at low levels. In other words, employees try to perform at levels consistent with their self-esteem level. This desire to perform is compounded by the fact that employees with low self-esteem tend to underestimate their actual ability and performance (Lindeman, Sundvik, & Rouhianinen, 1995). Thus, low self-esteem employees will desire to perform at lower levels than their actual abilities would allow. If consistency theory is true, we should find that employees with high self-esteem are more motivated, perform better, and rate their own performance as being higher than employees with low self-esteem. Research supports these predictions. Ilardi, Leone, Kasser, & Ryan (1993) found significant correlations between self-esteem and motivation; Lindeman et al (1995) found significant correlations between self-esteem and self-ratings of performance, and Brenden (1990) found significant relationships between self-esteem and actual performance. Yet another factor that affects the performance of an employee apart from his own satisfaction or happiness on the job is his supervisors behaviour. If an employee feels that a manager has confidence in him, his self-esteem will increase, as well as his performance. Such process is known as the Pygmalion effect and has been demonstrated repeatedly in research. Rosenthal (1994) demonstrated that our expectations of others performance lead us to treat them differently. That is, if we think that someone will do a poor job, we will probably treat him in a way that will bring that result. If a supervisor thinks an employee is intrinsically motivated, he treats the employee in a less controlling way. The result of this treatment is that the employee actually becomes more intrinsically motivated. Thus, when an employee becomes aware of others expectations and matches his own with them, he will perform in a manner that is consistent with those expectations (Rosenthal, 1994). One other determinant of the motivation to perform on the job is explained by McClellands (1961) needs theory. The differences in individuals desire to perform on the job stems from the relationship between a job and each employees level of satisfaction or motivation. McClelland believed that employees differ in their needs for achievement, affiliation, and power. Employees who have a strong needs for achievement desire jobs that are challenging, and over which they have some control, whereas employees who have minimal achievement needs are more satisfied when jobs involve little challenge and have a high probability of success. In contrast, employees who have a strong need for affiliation prefer working with and helping other people. These types of employees are found in people-oriented service jobs than in management or administration. Finally, employees who have a strong need for power have a desire to influence others rather than simply be successful. Research has shown that employees who have a high need for achievement often make the best managers (Stahl, 1983) and that employees who are motivated most by their affiliation needs will probably make the worse managers. These results illustrate that even as an employee who has a high need for affiliation is happy being in a service-oriented job, this does not necessarily mean that he will be the best performer on the job. One other means of helping increase the probability of success in performance on the job is through goal setting. With goal setting, each employee is given a goal which might be a particular quality level, a certain quantity of output, or a combination of the two. For goal setting to be most successful, the goals themselves must possess certain qualities. First, the goal ought to be specific and concrete. Goals which are ambiguous and do not have guidelines are less likely to be achieved. Setting more specific subgoals can also improve performance. Moreover, a properly set goal should be high and yet reasonable. It will not be effective to set too high goals because the employee will soon realize that he cannot meet the goal and might be compelled to quit trying (Locke & Latham, 1990). Still another way of ensuring that a happy employee is able to deliver acceptable performance is through the provision of feedback. Locke & Latham (1990) suggest that to increase the effectiveness of goal setting, feedback should be provided to the employee about his progress in reaching his goal. Feedback can include verbally telling an employee how he is doing or placing a chart on a wall. Feedback increases performance best when it is positive and informational rather than negative and controlling (Locke & Latham, 1990). Workers are motivated only when there are rewarded for their behaviour. As a result, organisations offer incentives for a wide variety of employee behaviours, including working overtime or on weekends, making suggestions, referring applicants, staying with the company, coming to work, not getting into accidents and performing at a high level (Henderson, 1997). Research literature abounds with studies demonstrating the effectiveness of reinforcement and feedback. For example, Austin, Kessler, Riccobonno, and Bailey (1996) provided daily feedback and weekly monetary reinforcement to employees in a roofing crew. The intervention resulted in a 64% labor cost reduction and an 80% improvement in safety. Moreover, in a meta-analysis conducted by Stajkovic & Luthans (1997), it was found that financial, non-financial, and social rewards all resulted in increased levels of performance. One means of enhancing job satisfaction, and increasing the likelihood of good job performance is through the decreasing the discrepancy between what an employee wants and what the job actually provides. Discrepancy theories postulate that satisfaction with a job is determined by the discrepancy between what we want, value and expect and what the job actually provides (Lawler, 1973). For example, if an employee enjoys working with people but the job involves working with data, he is less likely to be satisfied with his job. Likewise, if the employee values helping others and the job involves selling things that one does not really need, the employee is likely to be dissatisfied with his job. Potential discrepancies between what employees want and what the job gives them affect how satisfied employees will be with their jobs. Moreover, a meta-analysis by Wanous, Poland, Premack, & Davis (1992) concluded that when an employees expectations are not met, lower job satisfaction, decreased organisational commitment, and an increased intent to leave the organisation occur. These results support the importance or ensuring that applicants for a job have realistic job expectations (Wanous et al, 1992) Herzberg (1966) believed that job-related factors can be divided into two categories, motivators and hygiene factors. Hygiene factors are those job-related elements that result from but do not involve the job itself. For example, pay and benefits are consequences of work but do not involve the work itself. Similarly, making new friends may result from going to work, but it is also not directly involved with the tasks and duties of the job. Motivators are job elements that do concern actual tasks and duties. For example, the level of responsibility, the amount of job control, and the interest that the work holds for the employee. Herzberg (1966) believed that hygiene factors are necessary but not sufficient for job satisfaction and motivation. That is, if a hygiene factor is not present at an adequate level (e.g. pay is too low), the employee will be dissatisfied. But if all hygiene factors are represented adequately, the employees level of satisfaction will only be neutral. Only the presence of both motivators and hygiene factors can bring job satisfaction and motivation. Thus, an employee who is paid a lot of money but has no control or responsibility over her job will probably be neither satisfied nor dissatisfied. But an employee who is not paid enough will be dissatisfied even though she may have tremendous control and responsibility over her job. Finally, an employee who is paid well and has control and responsibility over the job will probably be satisfied and will correspondingly have a higher likelihood of performing her job well (Herzberg, 1966). One other consideration in increasing the job satisfaction of employees is the degree to which their tasks are enjoyable. Not surprisingly, research is fairly clear that employees who find their work more interesting are more satisfied and motivated than are employees who do not enjoy their jobs (Gately, 1997). Moreover, though employees rank interesting work as being the most important factor in a job, supervisors rank salary and bonus as being the most important for employees. This discrepancy is why Glanz (1997) advised employers to take innovative steps to make work interesting for employees. When employees enjoy working with their supervisors and co-workers, they are likely to be more satisfied with their jobs. Such findings make sense, as there are co-workers and supervisors who can make jobs unbearable, and there are those who make the job fun to have. In a study of 500 employees at an apparel manufacturing plant, Bishop & Scott (1997) found that satisfaction with supervisors and co-workers was related to organisational and team commitment, which in turn resulted in higher productivity, lower intent to leave the organisation, and a greater willingness to help. An interesting factor to consider in the job satisfaction of employees is the happiness of their co-employees. Social learning theory postulates that employees observe the levels of motivation and satisfaction of other employees and then model those levels. Thus, if an organisations older employees work hard and talk positively about their jobs and their employers, new employees will model this behaviour and both productive and satisfied. The reverse is also true: if veteran employees work slowly and complain about their jobs, so will new employees (Bishop & Scott, 1997). Weiss & Shaw (1979) had subjects view training videos in which assembly line workers made either positive or negative comments about their jobs. After viewing a videotape, each subject was given an opportunity to perform the job. The study found that those subjects who had seen the positive videotape enjoyed the task more than those who viewed the negative videotape. In a similar study, Mirolli, Henderson, and Hills (1998) had subjects perform a task with two experimenters pretending to be other subjects. In one condition, the confederates made positive comments about the task (e.g. "Gee, this is fun"). In a second condition, they made negative comments about the task ("This sucks"), and in the control condition, they did not make any comments. Consistent with social learning theory, actual subjects exposed to the confederates positive comments rated the task as more enjoyable than subjects exposed to negative comments. Another factor which is related to job satisfaction is the extent to which employees perceive they are being treated fairly. The most well-known theory on this topic is equity theory. Equity theory was developed by Adams (1965) and is based on the premise that 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 behaviours until the situation appears to be fair. Three components are involved in this perception of fairness: inputs, outputs, and input/output ratio. Inputs are those personal elements that we put into our jobs. These include time, effort, education, and experience. Less obvious elements include money spent on child care and distance driven to work. On the other hand, outputs are those elements that we receive from our jobs. A list of obvious outputs includes pay, benefits, challenge, and responsibility. Less obvious outputs are benefits such as friends and office furnishings (Adams, 1965). According to the theory, employees subconsciously list all their inputs and outputs and then compute an input/output ratio by dividing output value by input value. By itself, this ratio is not especially useful. But then employees compute for the input/output ratio of other employees and to previous work experience and then compare them to their own. If the ratios are lower than those of others, they become dissatisfied and thus are motivated to make the ratios equal in one or more ways (Campion & McClelland, 1993). For many employees, job satisfaction is affected by opportunities for growth and challenge. To help satisfy employee self-actualization needs, organisations can do many things. The easiest and most common are job rotation, job enlargement, and job enrichment. With job rotation and job enlargement, an employee learns how to use several different machines or conduct several different tasks within an organisation. With job rotation, the employee is given the same number of tasks to do at one time, but the tasks change from time to time. With job enlargement, an employee is given more tasks to do at one time (Campion & McClelland, 1993). A job can be enlarged in two ways: knowledge used and tasks performed. With knowledge enlargement, employees are allowed to make more complex decisions. With task enlargement, they are given more tasks of the same difficulty level to perform. As one might imagine, satisfaction increases with knowledge enlargement, and decreases with task enlargement (Campion & McClelland, 1993). Job rotation and job enlargement accomplish two main objectives. First, they challenge employees by requiring them to lean to operate several different machines or perform several different tasks. Thus, once employees have mastered one task or machine, they can work toward mastering another. Second, job rotation helps to alleviate boredom by allowing an employee to change tasks. Thus, if an employee welds parts one day, assembles bumpers on another, and tightens screws on a third, the boredom caused by performing the same task every day should be reduced (Campion & McClelland, 1993). Perhaps an even better way to satisfy self-actualization needs is through job enrichment. The main difference between job rotation and job enrichment is that with job rotation an employee performs different tasks, and with job enrichment, the employee assumes more responsibility over the tasks (Campion & McClelland, 1993). The foregoing literature so far discusses variables that affect the motivation of employees in relation to their performance. However, it is not solely motivation that influences the performance of an employee. It is perfectly possible for an employee to be motivated and yet still not deliver acceptable performance. This is explained by situational leadership theory, which focuses on the relationship between the leader and subordinate, basing the leadership style on follower readiness (Hersey & Blanchard, 1988). They postulated that a leader typically uses one of four behavioural styles: delegating, directing, supporting or coaching. Hersey & Blanchard (1988) termed the most important follower characteristic follower readiness, or the ability and willingness to perform a particular task. The degree of follower readiness can be measured by the managers rating form or the self-rating form developed by Hersey & Blanchard (1990). The scores from these forms place followers into one of four categories or readiness levels: 1) unable and unwilling or insecure; 2) unable but willing or confident; 3) able but unwilling or insecure; and 4) able and willing or confident (Hersey & Blanchard, 1990). For employees who fall within the first quadrant, the most effective leadership behaviour and one which will likely result in acceptable performance is the directing approach. That is, the leader directs the follower by telling him what to do and how to do it. A coaching approach should be used for the second type of followers because they are willing to do the work but are not sure how to do it. The third type of followers are given plenty of emotional support as well as opportunities for two-way communication. This approach is successful because these followers already know what to do but are not sure whether they want to do it. The final type of followers are most productive and happy when a delegating leadership style is used. These followers are both willing and ale to perform the task. Thus, the only real job for the leader is to delegate specific tasks to subordinates and then let them complete those tasks with minimal supervision or guidance (Hersey & Blanchard, 1998). Conclusion The paper discussed in detail variables that influence job performance. Clearly, it is suggested that the job satisfaction or motivation of an employee alone does not guarantee exemplary performance. Alongside the drive or the willingness to perform should be competence. Willingness to perform the job and the capability determine success in job performance. References Adams, J. (1965). Inequity in social change. In L. Berkowitz (ed.) Advances in experimental and social psychology (vol. 2, pp. 267-299). New York: Academic Press. Austin, J., Kessler, M., Riccobonno, J., and Bailey, J. (1996). 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