Questions: Job Satisfaction

Question 1

Research on the satisfaction-performance relationship has most consistently found that...

• A. Satisfaction causes performance — happy workers are productive workers
• B. Performance causes satisfaction — productive workers become satisfied when rewarded
• C. The relationship is moderate (r ≈ .30) and likely reciprocal, with performance and satisfaction influencing each other
• D. There is no meaningful relationship between satisfaction and performance

Answer: (C)

The satisfaction-performance debate has evolved substantially. Judge et al.'s (2001) meta-analysis found a corrected correlation of .30 — meaningful but not the strong causal link the 'happy worker' hypothesis implies. The relationship appears reciprocal: satisfaction can facilitate performance (through greater willingness to engage), and performance can produce satisfaction (when performance leads to valued rewards). Neither simple causal direction fully captures the relationship.

Question 2

Dispositional approaches to job satisfaction suggest that satisfaction is partly determined by stable personality traits, not just job characteristics.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: True

Twin studies show that job satisfaction has a heritable component — identical twins raised apart show more similar satisfaction levels than fraternal twins. Personality traits, particularly neuroticism (negative) and extraversion (positive), predict satisfaction across jobs and over time. Staw and Ross (1985) found that individuals' satisfaction levels showed consistency even after changing jobs and employers. This does not mean job characteristics are irrelevant — they clearly matter — but it means that person factors contribute substantially to satisfaction.

Question 3

An employee reports high overall job satisfaction but low satisfaction with pay. How is this possible, and what does it suggest about the structure of job satisfaction?

Model answer: Job satisfaction is multi-faceted. Overall satisfaction is a global evaluation that reflects a weighted composite of facet satisfactions — satisfaction with pay, supervision, coworkers, the work itself, and promotion opportunities. An employee can be highly satisfied overall because strong satisfaction with the work itself and coworkers compensates for dissatisfaction with pay. This pattern reveals that facets contribute differentially to overall satisfaction and that facet-level measurement provides richer diagnostic information.

The distinction between global and facet satisfaction is practically important. An organization seeing low overall satisfaction needs facet-level data to diagnose the problem — is it pay, supervision, the nature of the work? Different facets have different antecedents and require different interventions. The work itself is typically the strongest predictor of overall satisfaction, followed by supervision quality.