Search results

Previous research shows a positive effect of job satisfaction and retention on both workers’ and organizations’ welfare, it is important to understand whether the characteristics of a job and workers’ perceptions of certain job traits can predict job satisfaction and retention in an organization. This paper explores the effect of 18 job characteristics on the likelihood that a worker is satisfied with his or her job, the chance that he or she looks for an alternative employer in the following year and the number of years employed by the same organization.

The author adds to the current state of the literature on the importance of job characteristics in several ways. First, the author utilizes a list of 18 job characteristics or perceptions, which to the best of our knowledge is one of the most extensive sets of characteristics that has been considered. This allows us to examine lots of aspects of the job, and their connection to the outcomes of interest. Second, the author uses not only basic regression methods but also ordered Logit specifications to obtain more precise estimates of the effect of job characteristics on job satisfaction and workers’ propensity to look for a new job. Third, the author considers the possibility that a combination of job characteristics, rather than a single factor, influences the level of satisfaction with the job and retention, measured by the likelihood that a worker plans to look for an alternative job in the following year and the years at the current job. The author explores the latter through principal component analysis. Fourth, the author explores gender differences in the effect of job characteristics on job satisfaction and retention. Finally, the author discusses the implications of this research to policy decision-making and managerial decisions.

The author finds that personal development opportunities and job security are positively related to job satisfaction, and negatively related to the likelihood of looking for a new job. Opportunities for personal development have a stronger effect on job satisfaction of men than women. Male workers’ job satisfaction also depends on whether they are given enough time to complete assigned tasks. The perception of security in the current job, having reliable coworkers and receiving sufficient help in a job make it less likely for women to perform a job search. Fringe benefits encourage workers of both genders to stay in an organization longer. Job security also has a positive relationship with the years in a given job for women, but not for men.

The findings have implications for managers and policy decision-makers. For managers, it is important to be aware of the value male and female workers place on different job characteristics, because a number of studies show the importance of job satisfaction on the success of companies (Porter et al. 1977; Mobley et al., 1979; Tett et al. 1993; Posner et al. 1993), and the author shows that job satisfaction depends on different characteristics for men and women. In addition, managers’ awareness of the findings related to the factors that are likely to retain workers in a company is important because of the costs of recruiting new workers, including hiring, training and opportunity costs. For policy considerations, programs that help in matching employers with potential workers are likely to find good fits for both sides of the labor market if they direct women to jobs that provide more security, opportunities for personal development, and help at work. Jobs that offer more time to complete tasks would retain and increase the chance of keeping male workers satisfied with their job.

The purpose of this paper is to uncover the nature of job characteristics related to different generational cohorts (Baby-boomers, Generation X and Generation Y). Significant differences between four task and four social job characteristics across generational cohorts have been revealed.

The empirical research was conducted through a field study of employees from large-sized Croatian organizations. A cross-sectional and cross-occupational research design was applied. A total of 512 knowledge workers (139 managers and 373 professionals) participated in the research. Descriptive and inferential statistical methods were used to determine and compare work design across generations.

The results indicate that job characteristics are not equally represented within different generational cohorts. While the nature of task job characteristics is mostly irrespective of generations, social job characteristics to some extent differ among generational cohorts. High task variety, reasonably high task identity, and a moderate level of both received interdependence and task significance are recognized as common job characteristics of knowledge workers across generations. However, jobs of Baby-boomers, Xers, and Yers are idiosyncratic for work autonomy, interaction with others, initiated interdependence, and teamwork. Additionally, the inclusion of the work type as a control variable revealed that interaction with others does differ but only among generations of professionals.

The present study is the first research in which generational similarities and differences have been empirically examined through job characteristics. The authors focused on knowledge workers within an under-researched context (studies about knowledge workers, work design and generational differences are rare or non-existent in south-eastern European countries), making this systematic investigation unique and practically significant.

The purpose of this study is to identify the causal relationship among informal learning, leader-member exchange (LMX), empowerment, job characteristics and job self-efficacy and the impact on administrative assistants in corporations. The study aims at providing information for administrative assistants who have worked with their current supervisors for more than one year in a one-to-one administrative assistant role in corporations.

To ensure the reliability and validity of the questions, statistical analysis was performed using SPSS 18.0. AMOS 18.0 was also used to estimate the causal relationship of the proposed research model.

The analyses show the following results. Indirect factor loading of LMX and empowerment to informal learning and direct factor loading of job characteristics and job self-efficacy were observed. In the relationship between LMX and informal learning, empowerment had a negative mediating effect and job self-efficacy had a positive mediating effect. In the relationship between empowerment and informal learning, job self-efficacy and job characteristics both had a mediating effect. However, job self-efficacy did not have a mediating effect in the relationship between job characteristics and informal learning.

When considering informal learning, planners should consider both individual characteristics and organizational characteristics. However, informal learning is not directly correlated to the impact of factors related to the executives and organization itself, but rather linked to individual and job characteristics. Hence, promoting job self-efficacy not only requires the individual efforts of employees but also a systematic strategy at the corporate level.

Based on the job characteristics theory (Oldham and Hackman, 2010), the authors highlighted the mediating role of job meaningfulness as a critical psychological state. Employees' positive perception of job meaningfulness could maximize organizational positive outcomes based on task orientation and trustful relationship-based satisfying behaviors. The purpose of this paper is to examine the structural relations among transformational leadership, job characteristics, job meaningfulness and task-related job performance. The conceptual model of this paper is developed based on the theoretical foundations for assessing mediating and moderating path relations among the exogenous and endogenous variables.

Based on the research questions with literature review, the research framework was developed to show the moderated mediating mechanism of the link between transformational leadership and in-role performance. Data analyses for hypothesis testing were conducted by Hayes' PROCESS macro-based hierarchical regression.

Understanding how organizations can optimally design a job based on job characteristics and helping employees maintain psychological states having meaningfulness and responsibility for outcomes are critical. This paper calls attention to how job characteristics and an individual's meaningfulness of work embedded in a given job play a role in influencing job performance.

This study provides a snapshot for examining the job characteristic model on the link between leadership and job performance. By using process analysis (Hayes, 2013), this study examined the moderating role of job characteristics and mediating role of meaningfulness at work in the link of leadership–performance.

Information technology (IT) professionals and their intentions to leave an organization have been studied by researchers; however, these studies do not compare the turnover intentions of IT professionals with non-IT professionals from the same institution. The purpose of this paper is to examine how IT and non-IT job professionals relate to motivational and social job characteristics and their impact on job satisfaction, job performance and turnover intentions.

Data were collected from IT-shared services employees through a survey and quantitative analyses were performed.

Among the motivational job characteristics, IT professionals experienced greater task significance than the non-IT job holders. With social job characteristics, IT professionals had greater outside interaction than the non-IT professionals. However, the non-IT professionals had greater intentions to leave the IT organization than the IT professionals. Additionally, the study examined the differences of the job characteristics and job outcomes among transactional, transformational, and professional advisory work groups. The professionals and advisory group differed from the other groups in terms of feedback from the job, job satisfaction, and turnover intentions.

The findings are based on a small sample. However, it highlights some unique differences in how IT and non-IT job occupants perceive job characteristics and job outcomes.

This study compares job characteristics and job outcomes of IT and non-IT job occupations in the same IT work environment.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the underlying reciprocity mechanism which governs the relationship between employer and employee at their workplaces in a perspective whereby intrinsic and extrinsic factors of job satisfaction are considered as proxy to organizational offerings, while multi overall job satisfaction and dimensional organizational commitment as employee’ attitudinal reaction to the organizational offerings. Under the aforementioned notion, the present study intends to examine the influence of job characteristics on employees’ attitudes, such as, job satisfaction, organizational commitment and employee’ turnover intentions as psychological response to job characteristics. In a way, the study attempts to insight into how employee’ reciprocate to the perceived obligation toward its organization. The study also aims to supplement the empirical evidence about the competing power of intrinsic and extrinsic factors of job in determining the job satisfaction. Although various studies exhibit positive relationship between job satisfaction and organizational commitment has been consistently reported. However, for the managerial implication, the identification of employee physiological and psychological needs to gauge the understanding of mechanism by which of employee’ reacts to its environment and develop attitude toward their job and organization is imperative. In this context, this study makes a humble attempt to clear the relationships in the perspective of reciprocation between organization and its employees. Thus, this study attempts to illustrate how feeling a need to reciprocate, those who experienced strong satisfaction with job characteristics appear to have had a sense of moral duty to the organization can be helpful in understanding the processes by which organizational inducements exert their influence on other employee attitudes and behaviors. Evidently, while the link between employees’ satisfaction with their job and high organizational commitment, on the one hand, and low intentions to leave on the other is fairly straightforward, yet there in need to study these variables as exogenous and endogenous to inquire about their causation. Also, the available present literature on the understudy concern genuinely lacks adequate empirical material about the competing power of intrinsic and extrinsic factors of job in determining the job satisfaction as such some author hold that intrinsic characteristic of job better predict job satisfaction while as another set of behavioral scientists found extrinsic job characteristics as prime determinant of job satisfaction compare to the intrinsic worth of their jobs. The present study was conducted in the state of depressed economy where unemployment rate is as high as 194 percent it was found interesting to investigate the about the competing power of intrinsic and extrinsic factors of job in determining the job satisfaction. The present study also attempts to supplement the empirical evidence in this direction.

Since the study use the tenets of situational theories of employee’ attitude which assume that employee’ attitude results from the psychological evaluation of one’s job characteristics or other aspects of the environment in the organization; therefore, the study integrates the job characteristics as the organizational offerings to its employee and employees attitude like job satisfaction, organizational commitment and employee’ turnover intentions as reciprocity reaction to the organizational offerings. The structural equation model was used to frames the intricacy job characteristics, job satisfaction and organizational commitment and employee turnover intentions. Ten job characteristics were identified with which employees experience at the workplace as organizational offerings. These include salary, recognition, co-workers, supervision, organizational policies, promotion, working condition, task requirement, job security and nature of work. Subsequently, these identified facets were divided into intrinsic and extrinsic factors of job satisfaction, and were considering as proxy to the organizational offerings to its employees. These job characteristics were identified during in-depth interviews and discussions with the respondents, while overall job satisfaction, organizational commitment and employees’ turnover intentions were considered as employee’s psychological reactions to the organizational offerings. The sample consists of 654 hospital employees, working at the different hospital across state. In order to ensure the representation of the entire human capital, employees working under different levels of occupational status and different sectors of economy were included in the for the purpose of data collection. The number of employees from each hospital has been selected through proportionate method. Employees from each hospital were selected on the basis of the chit method. Measurement tools Questionnaire method was used to collect the data for the present study. A five-point likert type scale was used for the sake of maintaining uniformity in measuring the variables. All the variables were measured with multiple-item scales, questionnaire item used to measure different constructs in this study are derived from the previously established studies. As such, multidimensional organizational commitment construct was measured using items drawn from Meyer and Allen (1991) scale. Job characteristics and employee’ turnover intentions scale was adapted from the study conducted by Ali Muhammad et al. (2008). The instrument used for the present study has universal application. Therefore the results thus produce are of universal significance. The reliability and validity of measurement tools for the study was established by the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA).

The findings from the study reveal employees’ subjective evaluation to the intrinsic and extrinsic factors of job contribute to the formation of their reciprocal perspective of psychological attitude toward its job and organization characterized as their job satisfaction and organizational commitment. As such, better evaluation of job content and job context by the employees leads to the sense of obligation and commitment toward the organization, hence reduces their intentions to discord organizational membership. The findings also reveal that employees tend to incline their job satisfaction more toward the extrinsic worth of job than the intrinsic worth. While as both, job satisfaction and organizational commitment, explains relatively equal variation in the employees’ turnover intentions. The relatively strong correlation of extrinsic characteristics of job could be attributed to the fact that professionals generally have limited control over extrinsic factors and have high degree of control over intrinsic elements. Therefore, their perceptions of the job are particularly dependent on the degree of satisfaction with the extrinsic factors (Pearson and Seiler, 1983).

Although there are various studies manifested the relationship between job satisfaction, organizational commitment and employee turnover intentions, for all that, the present work is an attempt to deem these relationships in a different panorama to bring more insight in the subject of organizational behavior. In this study, the relationship among the job characteristics, job satisfaction, organizational commitment and employee’ turnover intentions were considered in a perspective of reciprocity norms. The study opens new horizons to the researchers across the globe, whereby organizational and job characteristics are considered as catalyst for the employee’ attitude and can be study and analyze in a functional relationship model. A new regime of paradigm may investigate the functional relationship between employer offerings as an input and employee attitudes as an output, with more emphasis on the organizational equilibrium. Hence, study encompass the managerial implication by gauging the understanding of mechanism by which of employee’ reacts to the workplace environment and develop attitude toward their job and organization. In this way, the propositions expatiated in the present work improves the understanding for the implications of various motivational theories, different organizational theories and human resource management models. Moreover, this work substantiates and provides insight about the competing power of intrinsic and extrinsic job factors on job satisfaction and opens debate for the generalization of Herzberg’s motivation theory.

Previous studies on job characteristics have been performed mainly in Western contexts. More empirical evidence is needed to understand the important job characteristics of positive job outcomes in a non‐Western context. Therefore, this research has two objectives: to assess the impact of five job characteristics on work attitudes and behaviors in the UAE, and to test the mediating impact of distributive justice on the job characteristics‐work outcomes relationship.

The study reports responses of 350 employees from five large organizations operating in Dubai. Data were collected on a structured questionnaire containing standards scales of job characteristics, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, turnover intentions, distributive justice, and some demographic variables. After testing scales reliability and validity, the proposed linear relationships were tested using a series of separate hierarchical regression analyses. Proposed mediation hypotheses were tested using Baron and Kenny's recommendations.

Consistent with studies conducted in a Western context, the study showed that skill variety and feedback have functional impacts on job satisfaction, organizational commitment and turnover intentions. Contrary to Western studies, the study reported that task identity and task significance have functional effects on work attitudes and behaviors. Autonomy also showed unexpected positive relationship with turnover intentions. Additionally, distributive justice mediates some of the relationships between job characteristics and work outcomes.

The limitations of common method bias and cross‐sectional data are discussed in the light of implications for future research. Nevertheless, the results provide new insights on the influence of job characteristics on work outcomes in a non‐Western context of the UAE. Also, the study reported evidence for the mediating impact of distributive justice on the job characteristics‐work outcomes relationship.

The study has implications for enhancing work behaviors and attitudes. In general, enhancing certain job characteristics can result in higher‐level employee outcomes. Also, managers should improve some of the contextual factor (i.e. distributive justice) in order to enhance the impact of job characteristics on work outcomes.

The study is considered to be one of the first to examine the job characteristics‐work outcomes relationship in a non‐western context of the UAE. Also, it is among the first studies to test the role of distributive justice as a mediator for the job characteristics‐work outcome relationship.

Integrating the job demands-resources theory and the conservation of resources theory, the purpose of this paper is to develop and test a moderated-mediation model examining the relationships between motivating job characteristics, work engagement, conscientiousness and managers’ turnover intentions.

Data were collected using a survey questionnaire from 1,302 managers working in eight Indian private sector organizations. Structural equation modeling and hierarchical regression analysis were used to test the hypothesized relationships between the study variables.

The study found evidence of the mediating role of work engagement for the relationship between motivating job characteristics and managers’ turnover intentions. Conscientiousness moderated the relationship between work engagement and turnover intention. The total and indirect effects of motivating job characteristics on turnover intention were moderated by conscientiousness.

The study was cross-sectional, so inferences about causality are limited.

The findings of this study reaffirm the crucial role of job characteristics in influencing work engagement and turnover intention. By examining work engagement as a mediator for the job characteristics-turnover intention relationship, this study explores the process through which job characteristics are associated with turnover intention. The findings of the moderating influence of contentiousness on the relationship of direct and indirect effects of job characteristics suggests that individual personality can influence social exchanges as well as managerial attitudes and behaviors in multiple ways.

The study provides an insight into the underlying process through which job characteristics are related to managers’ turnover intentions. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, such a study is the first of its kind.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate a specific pattern of relationships among various task, knowledge and social characteristics of work design and work outcomes. It clearly shows how particular work characteristics influence task and contextual performance.

The empirical research was conducted through a field survey of the largest Croatian organizations with more than 500 employees. A cross-sectional and cross-occupational sample of 512 knowledge workers from 48 organizations is analyzed by applying the partial least squares structural equation modeling technique.

The results confirmed the existence and importance of the interaction between work characteristics and work outcomes. However, the findings suggest that only knowledge characteristics of work design exhibit a significant effect on both dimensions of work behavior, while task and social characteristics showed different effects on task and contextual performance, respectively.

The research findings clearly show that work design efforts are not straightforward but rather context-specific, and with diverging performance effects. Organizations can significantly enhance their bottom-line performance by designing challenging and cognitively demanding configurations of work tasks for their knowledge workers.

The paper extends previous research by capturing a broader set of work characteristics of knowledge workers. The results suggest that different categories of work characteristics have different effects on task and contextual performance. By revealing the nature of work design in the central and eastern European context, this study indicates the existence of possible differences in work design practices in various backgrounds.

The purpose of this study is to empirically test a hypothesized model establishing job characteristics as an antecedent of work engagement leading to job satisfaction and organizational engagement of employees working with public sector banks (PSBs) in India.

Based on responses to a survey questionnaire by a sample of 622 Scale I employees of Indian PSBs, the hypothesized mediation model was tested with SPSS macro (Preacher and Hayes, 2004).

The testing of hypotheses established that job characteristics positively influence work engagement, organizational engagement and job satisfaction. The full mediation by work engagement between the relationships of job characteristics with job satisfaction and organizational engagement is established after the testing of mediation hypotheses.

Jobs of banks (especially in the public sector) are recommended to be enriched with more emphasis on offering employees with identifiable and significant tasks that have autonomy in decision-making and feedback. PSBs should also focus on developing a positive perception of employees toward job design, to increase their levels of job satisfaction and organizational engagement through engaging them with work.

The contribution of this study should be understood in many ways. First, the study has introduced work engagement as a mediator in the study model (between job characteristics and job satisfaction) replacing the three psychological conditions (i.e. experienced meaningfulness, experienced responsibility and knowledge of results) of job characteristics model. Further, the main contribution of this study is the exploration of the linkage between work engagement and organizational engagement. The relationship between these two forms of engagement (i.e. work and organization) has been very rarely investigated in the literature. Finally, this study has attempted to hypothesize a model proposing work engagement as a mediator between the job characteristics and organization engagement which does not seem to be studied so far.