The Relationship Between Job Characteristics and Job Satisfaction

Outline the relationship between job characteristics and job satisfaction. Provide evidence for the view that job satisfaction leads to positive outcomes. From the theory of job characteristics by J. Richard Hackman and Greg Oldham, both organizational psychologists, “job design has an effect on motivation, work performance, and job satisfaction.”

In job design, it play a role that to manage and identify what kinds of job characteristics that can provide different outcomes of a job. In job characteristics, it is a framework the holds five core job dimensions, which affect three psychological states. Then, the three psychological states lead to the outcomes. The five job dimensions are: 1. Skill variety 2. Skill identity 3. Skill significance 4. Autonomy 5. Feedback from job In these five dimensions, which affect three psychological states, which are: 1. The meaningfulness of the work 2. Responsibility of the outcomes of the work 3. Knowledge of the actual results of the work activities. In addition, these psychological states will affect the outcome of a work.

The outcome includes work motivation, job satisfaction, work effectiveness. According to the research, the definition of skill variety is determine the degree a job that needs different abilities to finish the work such as using different knowledge and skills. For example, if a work is repeatable and dull, it would lead to low meaningfulness of the work, the more complex of the work it is, it requires more talent, skills, which would turns out high level of meaningfulness of the work. Skill identity is like a mirror, it determine the level of how clear that people can see the outcome from the work, bit by bit.

During the working process, if an employee can work on the entire project and see a visible outcome or results, which will be define high level meaningfulness. Skill significance determine the work whether it affect other’s live or not, from the big countries to the organization itself. In other words, skill significance determine whether a work can affect other people’s lives. For general, if a job can improve other people’s lives or well-being, which could be considered has high level of meaningfulness. Autonomy determine if the worker has enough freedom, independence in scheduling their work and how is the work going to be done. Most high antinomy jobs are managing types, like managers, project leaders, supervising officers, which are has greater personal responsibilities in their jobs.

However, many of basic level employees has autonomy in their job position, which requires them follow the lead of managers of others, has low level of decision making. In this situation, these basic level employees would feel fewer personal responsibilities. The last job characteristics is Feedback. In most situation, employees would like to know the levels of their performance. According to the research, feedback is not only to inform the progress of employees’ work, but also to improve their self-esteem. If employees are told by managers that their performance is going good, they would likely to feel motivated to do the job in the way of how they are doing it.

However, if employees are told that they are not fit the expectation of their job, they would try to figure out the reason and improve the performance. If the five job dimensions are met in high level, the psychological states are likely to have high level experience, which could lead to positive outcomes naturally. According to the research, the connection between job characteristics and job satisfaction is obvious, the five core job characteristics determine the three psychological states, and these three psychological states define the outcomes which include job satisfaction. According to the research, the definition of job satisfaction is how the employee satisfies with the job; however, job satisfaction is a psychological response that from different elements of a job, and these responses could either be cognitive, affective or behavioral. In addition, job satisfaction could lead to many outcomes. From the research, job performance is the cause to job satisfaction. The explanation is, good job performance will lead to rewards and compliment, which lead to job satisfaction; in addition, the job satisfaction will continue affect employees to performance good quality of job, which creates virtuous loop.

Another positive outcome of high job satisfaction is low employee turnover. From the study, employees with high level job satisfaction as a whole are more likely have higher productivity. Also from the research, when organization think about employees’ interest, it would make employees think the company values them and they would work harder to help organization to achieve its objectives, which means high job satisfaction makes employees more loyalty to company. The last important outcome that high job satisfaction could provide is the lower turnover. According to the research, “Turnover can be one of the highest costs attributed to the HR department. Retaining workers helps create a better environment, and makes it easier to recruit quality talent and save money.

The bottom line: satisfied employees are typically much less likely to leave.” Here is my research about the connection of job characteristics and job satisfaction and the outcomes of high job satisfaction.