The Key Constructs of Job Satisfaction

In today’s era of globalization, it is of utmost importance to keep the employees at work motivated and engaged in order to maintain the competitiveness of the organization and keep productivity at the optimum (Rane, 2011). Job satisfaction, job design and job attitudes are key determinants of the success or failure of an organization and these three concepts, although different, are related to and inseparable from each other (Djastuti, 2015). Hence, in order to monitor effectiveness and efficiency of company goals, the management should look into these aspects of job design, job satisfaction and work values.

However, with the growing needs of individuals as well as different psychological make-up of individuals, understanding of employees’ inner states directly becomes quite complex for companies (Sarma, 2012). Having existing studies on this research field at hand is a good starting point for companies to deep dive into behavioral constructs and thus create a work environment which encourages employee productivity and quality performance. With the help of these studies, companies can identify the most important factors that motivate their employees and accordingly design their reward systems, working conditions and other work incentives (Sarma, 2012). In line with this need, several studies on job attitudes are becoming very popular since the early half of twentieth century. Organizational behavior specialists recognize the importance of these topics for companies and such studies are becoming more and more relevant as people learn more about employee performance and productivity, training and development incentives and employer-employee relationship (Al-Hajri, 1994).

Although many studies have been conducted on the relationships between these key constructs such as job satisfaction and job characteristics, they have shown inconsistent results. For example, the job characteristics model in Hackman and Oldham (1976) use growth need strength (GNS) as a moderator of the relationship between job characteristics and job satisfaction and suggests that satisfaction varies according to the individual’s need for growth. However, Tiegs, Tetrick, and Fried (1992) suggests that their study do not support any moderating effects of GNS on the relationship between job characteristics and employee outcomes such as job satisfaction.

Moreover, the studies are highly fragmented and differ across countries (Sousa-Poza & Sousa-Poza, 2000). There are multiple studies on measuring job satisfaction that are industry-focused or country-focused studies whereas many others provide a general evaluation of relationships. Similarly, the impact of certain job characteristics are constant across countries while the impact of some other job characteristics vary across countries (Sousa-Poza & Sousa-Poza, 2000). Furthermore, concepts like job characteristics and work values may be understood as comprising of different dimensions to different researchers. For example, Gahan and Abeysekera (2009) divided work values into simple intrinsic and extrinsic values, whereas Cassar (2008) defined work values as material, instrumental, cognitive and affective work values. This means that with an ever-increasing amount of research, researchers and professionals in their application field have to go through the tiring task of filtering out the most relevant publications to which to base their works.

Hence, there is a need to conduct a systematic review which can summarize the existing knowledge about the relationship between job characteristics, work values and satisfaction. By summarizing the constructs that have been addressed and the extent of the research conducted, researchers can attain more clarity and insights on the maturity of this field, thereby reducing the risk of redundant studies or inconclusive findings.

The main aim of this thesis is to summarize existing research on the relationship between three key constructs: job satisfaction, job characteristics and work values and then understand the need for further research by identifying any gaps thereof. Several objectives have been defined in order to achieve this goal such as identifying currently known relationship between the constructs, identifying moderating and mediating variables of this relationship and existing dimensions of the key constructs. This Master of Science thesis uses a systematic literature review by Kitchenham and Charters (2007) to identify the current research and provides a complete study of planning, executing and documenting the outcome of the review. Considering the increasing popularity since the early half of twentieth century (Al-Hajri, 1994) as well as the available resources at hand, this review is focused over the years 2000-2017. In the beginning of the review process, a review protocol is developed. The search strategy identifies 8702 articles, out of which 108 articles are included in this review as primary study papers. These primary papers are studied to find answers to the research questions. Moreover, potential validity to threats are also identified and evaluated.

The results of the review are presented in several steps. Initially, quantitative data presentation shows year-wise distribution of published papers, country and industry of research and the research methods used in these studies. Then, the different dimensions of each key constructs are summarized. Later, the studies are categorized and presented in four main groups: relationship between job satisfaction, job characteristics and work values; between job satisfaction and job characteristics; between job satisfaction and work values; and between job characteristics and work values. The rest of the thesis is structured as follows: section 2 contains the background and motivation of work, section 3 details the systematic review, section 4 presents the results of the review, section 5 details the limitations and threats to validity. Finally, the last section concludes the thesis and provides direction for further research and implications.