Employee Attitudes and job satisfaction research report

Such theories include Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (Piston 2009), Hertzberg’s Two-Factor Theory (Lundberg et al. 2009), Bandura’s Social Learning Theory (Ormrod &Davis 2005) and Hackman and Oldham’s Job Characteristics theory (Piccolo & Colquitt 2006). The common debate in the existing literature is that the interactions within the workplace environment have a profound impact on the emotional state of an employee. Since people identify themselves based on their professions, Judge and Klinger (2007) conclude that individuals are motivated to work based on their well-being in the place of work. The well-being of an individual at work is measured by the level of positive emotional state of an employee arising from job appraisals. Job characteristics is a critical aspect of the job which creates an ideal environment for satisfaction, high motivation levels and job performance (Hackman & Oldham 1980).

According to the researchers, for the job characteristic aspect of the job to drive employee motivation, it should have task identity, skill variety, autonomy and task significance as well as feedback. These core characteristics of jobs define personal and work outcomes which include growth satisfaction, internal work motivation, work effectiveness and the general employee satisfaction. Collectively, the personal and work outcomes are the essential dimensions of job satisfaction assessment which include the task itself, remuneration, promotional opportunities, employee relations and supervision (Riordan & Vandenberg 2011). Organizational characteristics Organizational characteristics as a job satisfaction variable are based on social information processing theory (Walther 2008) which examines the mechanisms of social information processing. A positive emotional experience originates from a favorable predisposition while a wide array of employees’ negative emotions result from a negative predisposition (Foo et al.

Accordingly, positive effective individuals are alert, active, optimistic and enthusiastic whereas the effective negative employees are angry, nervous, contemptuous, fearful and always disgusted. Work Motivation Theories and Models Various work motivational theories explain the factors that shape employee attitudes and drive satisfaction in the workplace. Many of these theories concur that productivity and business performance has a significant bearing on the motivational levels of the employees. Nonetheless, the theories differ in a wide range of issues. Precisely, the researcher attempts to prove the claim that employees are most likely to be satisfied with their jobs if they find that their co-workers are positive and satisfied and the converse s true. However, organizational assessments have found this claim less supportive, arguing that information learning has little impact on job satisfaction and characteristic perceptions (Wan & Leightley 2006).

But according to Aamondt (2009, p. 374), the idea that their social environment influences employees' attitudes and behaviors have a significant backing of the social information processing theory. Noe et al. According to Bandura’s social learning theory, the ambition of an individual work determines the level of satisfaction he or she attains (Ormrod &Davis 2005). The theory hypothesizes that an individual employee’s aspirations are the standards of his or her self-satisfaction. This view implies that the employees with higher goals have difficult attaining satisfaction than those with low goals (Lent 2008). Thus, high standards lead to high-level ambitions which in turn result in lower satisfaction. Employees with higher levels of ambition are highly unhappy due to inability to receive the promotions within an organization.

In light of this study, causality and source of satisfaction have an impact on the level of employee productivity (Adler & Weiss 2009; Avery, McKay & Wilson 2007). The significant aspect of the research, however, is that job satisfaction is not only important to the individual employee but also to the organization. Grant, Fried, and Juillerat (2010) investigated employees’ attitudes and their job satisfaction/dissatisfaction in a big financial institution. The survey found that the bank tellers were highly dissatisfied with their tasks citing that they were micromanaged and unable to make their decisions on anything. The findings are in agreement with Coutts and Gruman (2005) that the primary source of the job dissatisfaction among the employees was lack of autonomy and decision-making responsibilities. An increasing number of studies have indicated that working harder or less depends on an individual employee’s beliefs and attitudes (Noe et al.

Attitudes and job satisfaction highly influence the general well-being of a person simply because of the direct relation one’s job has on his or her life. Thus, an employee’s satisfaction with work implies satisfaction with other areas of life and vice versa. Impact on Employee’s Performance There is overwhelming evidence supporting the relationship that exists between job satisfaction and job performance. For a long time, researchers have intensified their investigation into the controversial relationship between the two variables. 25 which indicates a statistically insignificant association. It is highly likely that a satisfied employee can skip work because of personal matters or illness while an unsatisfied one fails to be absent from job for fear of losing income (Funder 2010; Thoresen et al.

But little the correlation may seem, it implies that satisfied employees are not likely to find an excuse to stay absent from work unless with valid reasons. Impact on Employee Turnover Numerous studies have attempted to link employee turnover to job satisfaction/dissatisfaction (Medina 2012; Morgeson& Humphrey 2006. Carsten and Spector (2010) conducted a meta-analysis of 42 empirical studies and found out the correlation between employee turnover and job satisfaction to be 0. Furthermore, empowers should identify what motivates each individual work so as to work towards satisfying each employee. Just as many studies agree, a satisfied worker is a productive worker. References Aamodt, M.  Industrial/organizational psychology: An applied approach. Nelson Education.  The Journal of Psychology, 145(5), p. Astrauskaite, M. , Vaitkevicius, R. and Perminas, A. Job satisfaction survey: A confirmatory factor analysis based on secondary school teachers’ sample.

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