Job satisfaction: factors, measurement, and workplace outcomes

Organizational Socialization and Job Satisfaction

Contemporary business managers understand that organizational culture and cultural socialization processes can play a significant role in promoting employee satisfaction in the workplace. That is an important issue from the perspective of business organizations because it contributes to retention and employee turnover rates; and in the so-called "information age," it can also affect the ability of the organization to recruit prospective hires. In general, happy employees perform better than unhappy employees; they stay with their employers longer; and business organizations that maintain positive internal cultures and cultural socialization processes are more competitive than business organizations whose internal cultures ignore employee satisfaction.

Contemporary Approaches to Maximizing Employee Satisfaction in the Workplace

As a general rule, happy employees perform better in their vocational roles and stay with their employing organizations longer than unhappy employees (Robbins & Judge, 2009). Many factors contribute to employee happiness and vocational satisfaction, including their perceived fairness in their compensation packages and treatment, and the degree to which they feel appreciated and valued by their employers (Maxwell, 2007). In that respect, the internal culture and cultural socialization of the organization is one of the most significant determinants of employee contentment: a positive cultural environment promotes much higher levels of employee satisfaction than neutral or negative cultural environments (Thomson, 2008).

There are multiple components of relative employee satisfaction that are substantially functions of the internal organizational culture and cultural socialization. For example, contemporary industrial psychologists understand that according to Maslow's Hierarchy of Human Needs, people have a natural desire to feel that they are held in high esteem and respected by others (Gove, 2008). In the vocational environment, organizational culture and cultural socialization can either fulfill those needs with positive results or thwart them with negative results in terms of employee motivation, output, performance, and retention. For example, positive organizational cultures and cultural socialization processes that encourage employees to share their ideas and opinions with their superiors fulfill Maslow's Hierarchical needs as pertain to positive self-regard and esteem in the eyes of others, whereas organizational cultures and cultural socialization processes that discourage employees from sharing their ideas and opinions do not fulfill those needs. Ideally, with respect to Maslow's Hierarchical needs, organizations should promote a culture and cultural socialization processes in which superiors allow their subordinates to share their views in constructive ways (Gove, 2008).

Similarly, according to Vroom's Equity (or Expectancy) Theory of Motivation, employees perform better when they believe that the rewards and degree of recognition they receive from their employers matches the effort and sacrifices that they make for their jobs (George & Jones, 2008). Conversely, when employees believe that their employers compensate them insufficiently or provide insufficient recognition for their efforts, they perform worse, mainly because they purposely adjust their level of sacrifice and performance down, to match their compensation and recognition (George & Jones, 2008). For example, positive organizational cultures and cultural socialization processes that make an effort to reward good performance, such as through compensation increases and formal acknowledgment of good performance promote a more positive organizational culture than employing organizations whose internal culture and cultural socialization processes ignore the good performance and sacrifice of their employees. As a result, employees of the former tend to maximize their efforts because they perceive themselves as being valued appropriately by their employers whereas employees of the latter tend to do the exact opposite by putting out the minimal necessary effort to maintain their positions (Thomson, 2008). This dynamic has often been described in connection with public service employees by virtue of the fact that government employers often pay less than comparable private sector employers and maintain bureaucracies that depersonalize the individual employee in many respects (Thomson, 2008).