Job Satisfaction: Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Essay Example

It is inevitable that levels of job satisfaction translate to a variety of outcomes, perhaps the most obvious being that of job performance. Research seems hardly necessary to support that, when people are disinclined to perform well because there is a lack of satisfaction in the work, the work will suffer.  At the same time, research does in fact reveal only a minimal connection between the elements, as the meta-analysis of over 300 studies affirms this.  Research as well indicates the importance of job facets as greatly determining both satisfaction and performance levels (Spector, 2012, pp. 232-233).  This latter aspect indicates a critical point regarding job satisfaction in general, and one favoring facet-based study over global; namely, as jobs are intrinsically multifaceted, it is likely that satisfaction is highly variable within the single employee.  Put another way, it seems far more likely that employees experience shifting degrees of satisfaction in the course of their work, and that only extreme scenarios reveal direct correlations between performance and satisfaction itself.

Other outcomes related to job satisfaction appear to be equally subject to varying facets and dimensions of employment.  For example, research associates job turnover rates as higher when there is greater dissatisfaction, a reasonable assumption supported by the evidence.  At the same time, such research typically employs a predictive model relying on changing perceptions of employees who in time quit.  It is then possible that responses refer to dissatisfaction in general, when specific circumstances are in fact the agents behind the quitting, because the assessment is “after the fact.”  The outcome of employee well-being as consistently linked to job satisfaction is validated and logical; people spend the greater part of their day at work, so discomfort would likely have negative effects on their mental and physical states.  At the same time, it must be wondered why research would pursue job dissatisfaction as linked to absences, even as the research indicates little correlation (Spector, 2012, p. 234).  In plain terms, absences may be caused by too many variables apart from the job for this to be accurately assessed.

References

Spector, P. E. (2012). Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Research and Practice (6th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.