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• Published: 24 April 2023

The factors associated with teachers’ job satisfaction and their impacts on students’ achievement: a review (2010–2021)

• Kazi Enamul Hoque 1 ,
• Xingsu Wang 1 ,
• Yang Qi 1 &
• Normarini Norzan 2  

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume  10 , Article number:  177 ( 2023 ) Cite this article

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The success of any educational organization depends heavily on the effectiveness of its teachers, who are tasked with transferring knowledge, supervising students, and enhancing the standard of instruction. Teachers’ job satisfaction has a significant impact on the lessons they teach since they are directly involved in transferring knowledge to students. In order to determine the effect of teachers’ job satisfaction (TJS) on students’ accomplishments, the researchers sought to analyze the empirical studies conducted over the previous 12 years (SA). To determine the characteristics that link to instructors’ job satisfaction and their effect on students’ achievement, thirty-two empirical studies were examined. The analysis of world-wide empirical research findings shows four types of results: (i) In some countries, teachers’ job satisfaction is low, but students’ achievement is high (Shanghai, China, South Korea, Japan, Singapore) (ii) In some countries, teacher job satisfaction is high, but student achievement is low (Mexico, Malaysia, Chile, Italy). (iii) In some countries, teachers’ job satisfaction is high, and so is student achievement (Finland, Alberta, Canada, Australia). (iv) In some countries, teacher job satisfaction is low, which has a negative impact on student achievement (Bulgaria, Brazil, Russia). In sum, irrespective of countries, highly satisfied teachers give their best to their students’ success, not only by imparting knowledge but also by giving extra attention to ensure the better achievement of each student. The review of this study makes it even more worthwhile to reflect on the need to avoid stereotypical considerations and assessments of any objective presentation of the phenomenon and to reflect more deeply on the need to assess the validity of the relationship study.

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Introduction.

Teachers are the main part of the school education system. The factors affecting students’ achievement (SA) should be multifaceted. Among them, teachers are one of the important factors that affect students’ academic performance (Ma, 2012 ). Teacher job satisfaction (TJS) refers to teachers’ satisfaction with their current work, which can be divided into internal satisfaction and external satisfaction (Wang, 2019 ). TJS inquiry and analysis can help managers not only comprehend teachers’ professional attitudes and avoid burnout but also provide some guidance for management decision-making. Improving TJS will assist instructors in maintaining a high level of passion and enthusiasm for their profession for a long time, allowing them to play even better in the lesson and ensuring consistent teaching quality (Zong, 2016 ). Teachers must have proper work satisfaction in order to be fully ready to transmit knowledge and skills important for learners to develop in SA. Teachers have been revered as “nation builders”. More specifically, teachers who teach in colleges and train students into elites and have talents in different disciplines are the key to a nation. Low TJS may lead to lower levels of education (Borah, 2016 ).

Many studies show that TJS has a significant positive correlation with job performance. As an example, Hayati & Caniago ( 2012 ) found that higher job satisfaction is conductive to higher job performance, while Ejimofor’s ( 2015 ) finding shows triadic relationships in which it indicates that TJS improves teaching quality, and teaching quality has the direct effect of improving students’ quality. One of the most important topics in every academic organization is TJS and SA. TJS not only increases productivity but also helps promote a productive teaching and learning environment. Based on this, both school administrators and the government should give more attention to meeting the needs of teachers to improve their motivational level to achieve educational goals so as to improve student academic performance (Ihueze et al., 2018 ). Surprisingly, though some researchers did not find a substantial link between TJS and SA (Ejimofor, 2015 ; Borah, 2016 ), the intuition and popular expectation is that TJS affects SA significantly and directly (Fisher, 2003 ). Moreover, Lopes & Oliveira ( 2020 ), utilizing information from the 2013 Teaching and Learning International Survey, demonstrated that teacher job satisfaction is a vital element of teachers’ and schools’ performance as well as students’ academic and educational attainment (TALIS). They also discovered that aspects of interpersonal relationships are the most effective predictors of job happiness. They advised schools to improve by addressing interpersonal problems, especially in the classroom, where the majority of perceived job satisfaction tends to reside. The findings demonstrated that, (1) among the personal traits of teachers, teacher efficacy had significant effects on job satisfaction (You et al., 2017 ). As the factors affecting teachers’ job satisfaction vary depending on the context of different countries, this review included studies from different regions to give a comprehensive scenario of findings based on different regional factors. The review results have revealed the associated factors of teachers’ job satisfaction and their impacts on student achievement. The findings can be the subject of further exploration. The review study set out to accomplish the following objectives:

Objectives:

to find whether teachers’ job satisfaction (TJS) has an impact on student achievement (SA)

to find the factors that have a positive impact on TJS and SA

to find the factors that influence the effect of TJS on SA and that manifest differently in different countries

Theoretical background

Between 2010 and 2021, the number of studies examining the impact of TJS on SA increased significantly.

Conceptualization of teachers’ job satisfaction

Job satisfaction is one of the important topics in the fields of occupational psychology, organizational behavior, and human resource management to explore employee productivity and organizational effectiveness (Fisher, 2003 ). With the development of humanistic thinking and the concept of lifelong education, this concept has been generally accepted by people, and the academic community has increasingly paid attention to the work-related emotional experiences of different professional or occupational groups such as teachers, nurses, etc.

Generally speaking, TJS refers to a teacher’s overall emotional experience and cognitive expression of their occupation, working conditions, and state. The international community generally believes that, as a variable of emotional attitude, TJS itself not only covers different dimensions but, more importantly, TJS has an important and direct impact on teachers’ enthusiasm and commitment to teaching. Daily work efficiency and effectiveness are also powerful predictors of SA. In addition, from the perspective of organizational commitment, improving TJS is an important way to enhance teachers’ sense of identity and belonging to the school, as well as to improve teachers’ professional attractiveness.

From the perspective of logical inference, according to the important phenomenon of the mentoring effect in the rise of talent chains and talent groups in the history of scientific development, as well as the practical experience that “the greatest happiness of teachers comes from the extraordinary achievements of students,” and even the word “teacher” often used when praising teachers, judging from the phrases such as “famous teachers produce master apprentices” and “peaches and plums fill the world,” in practical work, SA should also be one of the important sources of TJS (Wang & Zhang, 2020 ).

Factors affecting the teachers’ job satisfaction

Different studies have used different elements that have direct, indirect, or even no impacts on the job satisfaction of teachers. In their research on college teachers’ job satisfaction, Shi et al. ( 2011 ) revealed that work treatment, job pressure, leadership behavior, gender, age, etc. have more or less influence on the job satisfaction of college teachers. Existing research usually divides the factors that affect TJS into four levels: individual, school, work, and others. The influencing factors at the individual level can be grouped into objective factors and subjective factors. Among them, objective factors include teachers’ educational background, teaching years (experience), gender, professional title, monthly income and workload, teaching subjects, etc.; subjective factors include occupational preference and work engagement.

The two main influencing variables at the school level are students and management. While the management aspect comprises the institutional culture of the school and student management, the student aspect includes the student’s learning environment. The professional growth environment, work pressure, learning exchange possibilities, etc. are examples of workplace factors. The location of the school (eastern, central, or western) and whether it is located in an urban or rural area are examples of other levels (Beijing Normal University Teachers’ Labor Market Research Group et al., 2021 ).

These elements can be categorized into three groups when considered collectively: the elements of the college professors themselves, the elements of the institutions, and the level of compatibility between individuals and roles. The author’s research focuses on the connection between these three variables and college professors’ job satisfaction (Shi et al., 2011 ).

Professional title, educational background, and job satisfaction are among the factors that teachers can control for themselves, but these variables have very weak correlations and cannot be used as explanatory variables in the regression equation. Age, on the other hand, has a weak correlation with job satisfaction but can be used as a variable to explain job satisfaction. Salary level is the school component that has the greatest impact on TJS. The primary output that teachers receive from the organization is compensation, which is also a key component that teachers demand from the organization. The degree of alignment between instructors’ expectations and their compensation is the most significant element determining TJS in terms of the matching of people to roles.

Student achievement

Defining a student’s grades is not an easy task. The most common metric of achievement is undoubtedly student performance on achievement exams in academic disciplines like reading, language arts, math, science, and history. The quality of schools and teachers, students’ backgrounds and situations, and a host of other variables all have an impact on academic attainment (Cunningham, 2012 ). The researchers looked at academic levels, achievement gaps, graduation and dropout rates, student and school development over time, and student success after high school.

Academic achievement is the ability to complete educational tasks. Such achievements can be general or topic-specific. Academic achievement refers to students’ scores in courses, curriculums, courses, and books that they have studied, expressed in the form of marks, percentages, or any other scale of marks (Borah, 2016 ). It is important to highlight that academic performance encompasses not only students’ achievement in tests and exams, but also their participation in social events, cultural events, entertainment, athletics, and other activities in academic institutions and organizations.

Conceptual framework of the study

How to improve the academic performance of students is a popular topic in the field of education. After all, the purpose of education is to train students to become talents in society. Between 2010 and 2021, scholars from many different countries studied the relationship between TJS and SA. Many scholars’ studies have shown that there is a significant positive correlation between TJS and SA (McWherter, 2012 ; Crawford, 2017 ; Andrew, 2017 ; Iqbal et al., 2016 ). In these studies, the effects of TJS on SA were investigated, suggesting that it is fairly common in the literature to study the relationship between the two as a theme (Ejimofor, 2015 ; Borah, 2016 ).

Specifically, some districts have high SA but lower TJS than average schools. While some districts had high TJS, this did not improve SA. Therefore, it makes sense to understand the findings of these studies as a whole. What’s more, it is necessary to sort out the reasons for this divergence among numerous studies and make comparisons. The following questions serve as a guide for this study’s analysis of the findings in the literature on the effect of TJS on SA.

Does research show that TJS has an impact on SA?

What factors will have positive impact on tjs and sa.

What factors influence the effect of TJS on SA that manifests differently in different countries?

By examining previous research, this work seeks to characterize teacher motivation and assess the evaluation criteria and processes that account for student performance. The research method is systematically summarizing and analyzing based on a literature review, which helps us research and analyze the topic from a dialectical perspective. This study refers to the model of PSALSAR. The process of selecting documents starts with analyzing the topic, searching and classifying relevant documents, screening relevant documents from different sources according to the selection criteria, and finally extracting the most relevant documents for sorting out. Analysis (Bearman et al., 2012 ). The scope of this review also followed four criteria as outlined in the review work of Wayne & Youngs ( 2003 ).

Data sources

The data for this literature review was extracted from three major data sources: Web of Science, Scopus, Google Scholar, and HowNet. The review intended to take into account all recognized and relevant sources reporting on studies that are in English and falls within the duration of the study, which is a 12-year period from 2010 to 2021. The aim of the search is to locate all appropriate literature without expanding the search too much and retrieving a huge number of unrelated results. After applying an analytical inclusion/exclusion criterion to the 721 papers that were found, 32 papers were found to be applicable to the study’s objectives.

Data screening

The databases were searched using the following terms: “career management of teachers,” “teacher job satisfaction,” “student achievement,” and “teacher job satisfaction and student achievement.”

There is much literature on the relationship between TJS and SA, many of which use TJS as a mediator, or TJS is just one of the variables to promote SA. Since the focus of this review was on the impact of TJS on SA, the literature search consisted of two phases to ensure that all relevant literature on the relationship between the two was included. In the first phase, which focused on TJS, the following search terms were used: “teacher job satisfaction”, “teacher work satisfaction” and “teacher satisfaction”, combined with the search term “SA”. In the second stage, the focus is on the effect of TJS on the SA selected from the first stage choices. After screening for keywords and selecting the year interval as 2010–2021, 26 documents were finally extracted for research. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) is an evidence-based framework that clearly defines the bare minimum of items to be included in systematic reviews and meta-analyses (Moher et al., 2009 ).

Inclusion and exclusion criteria

In order to check on the quality and validity of the data obtained, the most recent journals available on the topic were chosen. Also, a high priority was given to reading the findings and extracts of every journal before it was selected for review. Literature analysis adopts the selected research selected by narrative methods so that the author can understand the literature and find the mode by carefully reading and interpreting the research results (De Rijdt et al., 2013 ).

Next, each article is completely reread to determine the important part. Based on the content analysis method, the paragraphs of important information containing the answer to the hypothesis research question are encoded. In this literature review, as mentioned in an earlier section, the PRISMA is applied to the inclusion and exclusion criteria for the review. The table below depicts the details (Table 1 ).

The review results of 32 empirical studies have revealed the following answers to formulated research questions. The answers are organized according to research questions.

From 2010 to 2021, most studies from different countries have shown that TJS has a positive impact on students SA (McWherter, 2012 ; Crawford, 2017 ; Farooqi & Shabbir et al., 2016 ) The morale of teachers is closely related to the academic achievements of students (Sabin, 2015 ). This is because when the teacher is dissatisfied with their work, they will transfer it to students in many ways, including the absence of classes. When this happens, students will suffer, and their academic performance will inevitably be negatively affected.

The research results also show that the more teachers believe that teaching is a valuable occupation, the more satisfied they are (Armstrong, 2009 ), and the better the students’ outcomes. A study in two sub-Saharan African nations examined the degree of teacher satisfaction in Uganda and Nigeria, its causes, and how it affects the quality of instruction and learning (Nkengne et al., 2021 ). According to research, teachers who are satisfied with their jobs are more likely to teach effectively, which should help their pupils learn more in the classroom. In order to make employees play a greater role, the work itself must have satisfactory characteristics. If it is interesting, it has good income and work safety. A teacher with high work satisfaction usually puts more effort into teaching and learning (Ihueze et al., 2018 ). However, whether it is based on the conclusions of existing mainstream theoretical research or on practical experience, low job satisfaction will not only affect teachers’ teaching enthusiasm but also cause teachers to have a teaching attitude problem of “not happy to teach”, as a result, it may even lead to the problem of “poor teaching” ability and ultimately have a negative impact on students’ academic performance; at the same time, it will also have a negative effect on the organizational commitment of in-service teachers and the professional attractiveness of teachers (Wang and Zhang, 2020 ).

The results of several earlier investigations likewise show the opposite. The intuition and general expectations of the work satisfaction of teachers will affect the students’ grades (Fisher, 2003 ). TJS lacks a significant relationship with student grades, which is in line with the findings of Banerjee et al. ( 2017 ). According to their longitudinal study of young children between kindergarten and fifth grade, student reading growth has no association with teacher job satisfaction, but there is a slight but favorable relationship between the two. Although this seems to be a violation, it is consistent with the previous 41 research (Iaffaldano & Muchinsky, 1985 ; Fisher, 2003 ). Studies lack significant relationships between TJS and children’s academic achievements (Ejimofor, 2015 ). The relationship between TJS and SA can be ignored, which is to say that teachers’ job satisfaction has no significant impact on SA (Borah, 2016 ). Despite such findings, most of the scholars agree with the notion that job satisfaction concerning school teachers reflects their strong motivation towards their dedication to students’ performance (Manandhar et al., 2021 ).

TJS has a positive impact on the quality of education; therefore, affecting teacher job satisfaction can affect the quality of education. However, because multiple factors have a significant effect on TJS and SA, not all things that improve TJS also improve academic performance. In many circumstances, the aims of increasing job happiness and enhancing student accomplishment are antagonistic rather than complimentary (Michaelowa, 2002 ).

System control factors and incentive structures, in particular, due to a complete lack of job protection, have been found to have a significant positive impact on teacher performance, although they tend to be strongly opposed by the instructors involved. According to a study (Tsai & Antoniou, 2021 ) conducted in Taiwan with 113 teachers and 2,334 students to examine the relationships between teacher attitudes toward teaching mathematics, teacher self-efficacy, student achievement, and teacher job satisfaction, teacher attitudes toward teaching mathematics, efficacy in the classroom, and student achievement in mathematics could, to some extent, explain variations in teacher job satisfaction. The majority of the variation in teacher job satisfaction, which may translate into improved teacher efficacy and student achievement, was explained by teacher attitudes about teaching mathematics. It suggests that improving the quality of education for children is a complex process for which variables like instructors’ attitudes, their level of self-efficacy, and their pleasure and satisfaction at work may be responsible (Khalid, 2014 ). According to a study by Rutkowski et al. ( 2013 ) on 81 elementary school teachers from a sizable metropolitan school district in the United States, the PD program improved teachers’ pedagogical topic knowledge and subject-matter expertise. The teachers that participated in the professional development program showed a greater level of topic and instructional strategy understanding.

In fact, only a few variables had a clear positive effect on both goals. One was related to classroom equipment, which had a clear positive effect on teachers’ well-being. By accessing the material support of a supportive and satisfying working environment, teachers are more likely to be more actively involved in their teaching activities, which in turn is an important factor in how this leads to the creation of relevance for students’ teaching practice (Benevene et al., 2020 ). Among the device variables, many variables do not have any significant effect on SA and therefore do not even appear in the regressions. However, the situation is different for students’ teaching materials, which are highly correlated with SA and positively correlated with teacher job satisfaction. Therefore, improving the supply of textbooks is certainly a relevant policy option (Hee et al., 2019 ). In terms of class size, however, it does have a significant impact on teacher work satisfaction (Hee et al., 2019 ). TJS can be improved by reducing class size. Increasing class size is clearly the best answer to high student numbers for both teachers and kids. The disadvantages of double-shifting are so severe that they are applicable to classes of up to 100 pupils. Teacher efficacy has been shown to correlate with the presence of classroom processes and procedures, and the presentation of good classroom processes may contribute to better outcomes for students (Perera et al., 2022 ). At the same time, good teacher efficacy will also enable teachers to provide more effective pedagogical support, resulting in better outcomes for students in teaching and learning.

The commonly held belief that low salaries and large class sizes are the key reasons for low teacher job satisfaction and low SA has no support in this study. This had no discernible impact on SA. As a result of this research, an extraordinarily costly endeavor to enhance teacher compensation does not appear to be a suitable policy option in general.

What factors influence the effect of TJS on SA that manifest differently in different countries?

In their study, Dicke et al. ( 2020 ) found that the working context item was associated with student accomplishment for both teachers and principals; however, only the general and working environment factors of teacher job satisfaction were related to the disciplinary climate observed by students. International Student Evaluation Projects (PISA) and the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) found that in countries and regions with outstanding academic performance of students, their teachers showed lower work satisfaction (OECD, 2016 ; TALIS, 2013). For example, for two consecutive years in the PISA test, it is hailed by the World Bank as Shanghai, China, which has the highest education system in the world, shows that the teacher’s work satisfaction is significantly lower in the Talis 2013 survey results (Liang et al., 2016 ). In fact, Shanghai is not a special case. PISA (2015) data shows that, as a whole, despite the outstanding performance of students, the work satisfaction and occupational satisfaction of East Asian countries and regions are lower than the international average (Chen, 2017 ). At the same time, in those countries or regions that are less ideal in the PISA test, their teachers’ work satisfaction and occupational satisfaction are often significantly higher than the international average (Wang and Zhang, 2020 ). Data from 1,539 teachers at 306 secondary schools in the two Indian metropolises of New Delhi and Kolkata supported the notion that instructional leadership has indirect effects on teaching and learning and that the social and affective climate of the classroom has direct effects on teacher job satisfaction, which in turn affects student achievement (Dutta & Sahney, 2016 ). De Vries et al. ( 2013 ) conducted a study on teacher professional development (PD) in the context of inquiry-based science education (IBSE). The study aimed to investigate the effects of a long-term PD program on teachers’ knowledge, attitudes, and behavior. A total of 62 primary school teachers from the Netherlands participated in the trial and were randomized to either the PD program or a control group. Surveys, interviews, and classroom observations were used to gauge the teachers’ awareness of, attitudes about, and behavior with regard to IBSE. The outcomes demonstrated that the PD program had a favorable impact on teachers’ attitudes and knowledge to IBSE. IBSE knowledge was higher among the teachers in the PD program group, and they were more enthusiastic about advantages for their pupils.

Australia, Chile, Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, Korea, Portugal, Spain, USA, Brazil, China, Colombia, Dominia, Peru, Arab, Netherlands Combining the survey and test data of TALIS 2013 and PISA 2012, it is found that there are four main correspondences between teachers’ job satisfaction index and students’ test scores in different countries (regions) (OECD, 2016 ; TALIS, 2013). Countries (regions) with better test performance, such as Finland, Canada (Alberta), Australia, the Netherlands, etc. The second is countries (regions) where teachers’ job satisfaction is high but students’ performance is significantly worse, such as Mexico, Malaysia, Chile, Italy, etc.; the third is countries (regions) where teachers’ job satisfaction is significantly lower than the international average level, but students’ test scores are significantly higher than the international average or even among the best, such as Shanghai (China), South Korea, Japan, Singapore, and other East Asian countries and regions; the fourth is countries with low teacher job satisfaction and low student test scores, such as Bulgaria, Brazil, Russia, etc.

There is a clear correlation between cultural differences in different countries (regions) and teachers’ job satisfaction. Firstly, teachers’ job satisfaction in countries (regions) with a high power distance index is generally lower; secondly, individualism is different in different countries (regions), and there is a potential positive correlation between the index and teacher job satisfaction; furthermore, countries with a high long-term orientation index tend to have lower teacher job satisfaction and vice versa; and lastly, countries with a high indulgence index score. In other regions, teachers’ job satisfaction is generally higher (Wang and Zhang, 2020 ).

Combined with the analysis results, it can be determined to a large extent that national (or regional) culture has a potential impact on teachers’ job satisfaction that cannot be ignored, and compared with the usual experience of “good SA, TJS should also be high”. From the perspective of stereotyped thinking, the degree of influence of cultural differences on teachers’ job satisfaction, or at least the degree of correlation between the two, is more obvious and stronger. Therefore, it seems that a more reasonable explanation can be made for the puzzling differences in teacher job satisfaction in different countries (regions) shown by the TALIS 2013 survey data (Sims, 2017 ; Wang and Zhang, 2020 ). In order to highlight areas for development and to wrap up the section, Kravarušić ( 2021 ) can be quoted. He looked at the fundamental components of the structure of factors in the Republic of Serbia. He discovered that the status of society, the immediate social context, the quality of the study program, the professional environment, continuous professional development, pedagogical practice, the personal characteristics of educators, job satisfaction, and private life all influence the level of competence of teachers. As a result, the setting is a key factor in determining how satisfied teachers are with their work, which in turn influences student progress.

Limitations & recommendations

This review summarizes and analyzes the existing literature on teacher job satisfaction and student achievement, which will help improve student performance from the perspective of teachers’ job satisfaction in the future. However, there are still some limitations in the research process, which can be considered in the follow-up research.

First of all, it is about theoretical research. Although the research on teachers’ job satisfaction theory has been refined and divided into three stages for discussion and definition, the influencing factors obtained from the experimental analysis based on this definition have also been proved to be effective. However, this method of definition has not been widely accepted, which does not mean that researchers have not paid enough attention, precisely because job satisfaction theory involves too much content and there is not enough practice to demonstrate that the theory is true and effective. In addition, due to the repetition and contradiction of different types of theories caused by too many related studies, it has seriously affected the research on the classification and influencing factors of teachers’ job satisfaction at different stages. As the working lives of teachers cannot be simply divided into pre-service teachers and in-service teachers, such as teachers before retirement, teachers in private schools, etc., these can be the basis for classification, and the factors that affect teachers’ satisfaction are also different. At this stage, the theoretical knowledge of teachers’ job satisfaction is simply divided into stages, but teaching is a process, and its complexity and variability cannot be explained clearly by existing theories. The research at this stage cannot realize the analysis of teachers in terms of process. Therefore, future research can focus on defining teachers job satisfaction from different aspects through practice and strive to obtain the most accurate factors that affect teacher satisfaction so as to achieve the adjustment of students’ achievement.

Secondly, the articles chosen for this study include a reasonably high proportion of quantitative research, which is the primary method for studying the theory of teacher satisfaction and examining its affecting elements. However, this means that the research method is single, and the research results mainly come from the results of questionnaires and data analysis. The research results on the influencing factors to improve teachers’ job satisfaction promote the development of teachers’ personal professional abilities, and thus students’ achievement have been confirmed. However, some researchers said that relying too much on questionnaires and data made them ignore the complexity of the research content, and the validity of the research results also weakened their in-depth research ideas to a certain extent. In order to gain a deeper understanding of teachers’ job satisfaction, a qualitative investigation should be used to truly understand the source of teachers’ satisfaction and provide more possibilities for research on influencing factors (Fig. 1 ).

An overview of the overall screening procedures as well as the workflow associated with selecting relevant material. At the beginning of the process, a total of 2188 records were discovered from the databases. After eliminating gray literatures, duplicated papers, book and book chapters and conference papers, the number of articles maintained for further title reading and abstract review was decreased to 632. Following this, only 159 papers met the eligibility requirements for additional abstract reading and main body skimming. Out of that, 67 remained to be read in their entirety. During the main body reading, articles 32 without content pertaining either to teachers’ professional development or student achievement were excluded manually. At last, 32 papers met eligibility requirements for SLR study remained.

Concluding remarks

In the past 12 years, most studies from different countries have paid much attention to the effect of teachers’ job satisfaction on student achievement. Most research shows that TJS will have a positive impact on students achievement (McWherter, 2012 ; Crawford, 2017 ; Andrew, 2017 ; Iqbal et al., 2016 ). Although there is still a small subset of studies showing no significant relationship between TJS and SA, the number of these studies is far lower than the number of studies that believe that TJS has a positive effect on SA (Ejimofor, 2015 ; Borah, 2016 ). There are many factors that affect TJS, but only work treatment, work pressure, co-worker relationships, etc. However, research shows that only classroom equipment and classroom size have a positive effect on both. Research shows that it is largely certain that national (or regional) culture has a non-negligible potential impact on teacher job satisfaction. Moreover, compared with the usual experience and stereotyped thinking that “students have good grades, so teachers’ job satisfaction should also be high”, the degree of influence of cultural differences on teachers’ job satisfaction, or at least the degree of correlation between the two, is more obvious and relevant. The review of this study makes it even more worthwhile to reflect on the need to avoid stereotypical considerations and assessments of any objective presentation of the phenomenon and to reflect more deeply on the need to assess the validity of the relationship study. As in the case of measuring teacher job satisfaction, the extent to which cultural differences affect teacher job satisfaction cannot be ignored. This is why it is important for scholars to develop a framework for measuring teachers’ job satisfaction according to cultural contexts and specific social needs and to give more dimensions to reflection and further measurement. Only on this basis can the overall level of teacher satisfaction be improved, thus increasing the overall level of teacher effectiveness and well-being, and better motivating students to engage in teaching and learning activities that lead to better quality learning outcomes.

Data availability

Data sharing is not applicable to this research as no data were generated or analyzed

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Hoque, K.E., Wang, X., Qi, Y. et al. The factors associated with teachers’ job satisfaction and their impacts on students’ achievement: a review (2010–2021). Humanit Soc Sci Commun 10 , 177 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-023-01645-7

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Determinants of job satisfaction among faculty members of a veterinary university in india: an empirical study.

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The Relationship Between “Job Satisfaction” and “Job Performance”: A Meta-analysis

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The purpose of this meta-analytic research is to obtain a clear and unified result for the relationship between job satisfaction and job performance, as previous research has shown contradictions in this regard. A total of 913 articles in both English and Persian languages were obtained from four databases, and finally, 113 articles with 123 independent data were selected and analyzed. The random-effects model was adopted based on results, and the analysis resulted a medium, positive, and significant relationship between job performance and job satisfaction ( r  = 0.339; 95% CI = 0.303 to 0.374; P  = 0.000). Finally, the country of India was identified as a moderator variable. The publication, language, selection, and citation biases have been examined in this study. Increasing and improving the job performance of employees have always been an important issue for organizations. The results of this study can be useful for managers in different industries, especially for Indian professionals in both public and private sectors, to better plan and manage the satisfaction and the performance of their employees. Also, Indian scholars can use these results to localize the global research in this regard.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to express our special thanks and gratitude to prof. Gholamreza Asadollahfardi for sharing his pearls of wisdom and experience with us to improve this research. We are immensely grateful to him for his comments on an earlier version of the manuscript. His insightful comments and suggestions have truly shined a light on our path and helped us to achieve better and brighter intuition.

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Katebi, A., HajiZadeh, M.H., Bordbar, A. et al. The Relationship Between “Job Satisfaction” and “Job Performance”: A Meta-analysis. Glob J Flex Syst Manag 23 , 21–42 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40171-021-00280-y

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Received : 22 September 2020

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s40171-021-00280-y

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On this page:

• Introduction
• 1.1 How robust are these findings?
• 2.1 1. Engaging work
• 2.2 2. Work that helps others
• 2.3 3. Work you’re good at
• 2.4 4. Work with people you like
• 2.5 5. Meets your basic needs
• 3.2 Low demands
• 3.3 Interests match
• 3.4 Signature strengths match
• 3.5 Occupational status
• 4 Directions for future research

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Table of Contents

Research process

To survey the literature, we familiarised ourselves with the latest work on positive psychology by reading all of ‘ Flourish ‘ and ‘ Learned Optimism ‘ by Seligman, ‘ Stumbling on Happiness ‘ by Gilbert, ‘ Drive ‘ by Pink, and several review papers. We also did a Google Scholar search for relevant terms, read two textbooks on organisational psychology (‘ Work Psychology ‘ by Arnold and Randall, and ‘The Handbook Principles of Organisational Behaviour’ by Locke (find a copy in this folder )), and two summaries of the job satisfaction literature in the OSH wiki.

We weighed the messages of the literature against our impression of common sense, placing more weight on meta-analyses and consensus positions among psychologists. For more on our general research process, see our research principles .

How robust are these findings?

There appears to be broad consensus that the job characteristics model is a good predictor of job satisfaction. The other factors in our list don’t have as wide consensus, but this page reflects our current synthesis of the evidence that we’ve read. With further research we can imagine adding or subtracting a factor or changing a factor’s relative importance. For example, we previously put less weight on personal fit as important for job satisfaction.

Predictors of job satisfaction

To find out what the predictors of job satisfaction are, we started by looking at general theories of life satisfaction and human needs. We then investigated how these general predictors translate into the world of work and combined this with research that directly focuses on job satisfaction, to come up with six key factors for fulfilling work.

The PERMA theory, created by the founder of positive psychology Prof. Seligman, summarises the key ingredients of living a fulfilling life as follows:

• Positive emotion – feeling happy day-to-day.
• Engagement – challenging, absorbing tasks.
• Meaning – having a purpose higher than yourself.
• Relationships – connecting with others.
• Achievement – being good at something.

It isn’t consensus that these factors constitute well-being, but it is widely agreed that they are important determinants of well-being.

You can read more about PERMA in the book Flourish .

Self-determination theory claims there are three fundemental parts to human well-being:

• Competence – experiencing control and mastery
• Relatedness – connecting with others
• Autonomy – having choice and control

We now outline each factor and the main evidence for each.

1. Engaging work

The job characteristics model claims that job satisfaction is largely determined by how engaging the job itself is. The model breaks engagingness into five main variables: variety, sense of completion, autonomy, feedback from the content of the work, and sense of contribution. Note that the last factor is essentially ‘do you think you’re making a difference?’, and we cover it separately in the next section.

The job characteristics model has been studied extensively, including by several meta-analyses. 1 The most recent meta-analysis of 259 studies showed that each of the five characteristics correlates with job satisfaction (mean p=0.41).7 It’s widely thought to be the best single predictor of job satisfaction. For instance, in the Handbook of Principles of Organisational Behaviour, Judge and Klinger claim: 2

There are many possible influences on how favorable one appraises one’s job, and numerous theories of job satisfaction have attempted to delineate these influences. Empirical evidence, however, has suggested only one clear attribute of the work itself that consistently influences job satisfaction – the cognitive challenge of the work. The empirical data suggest that intrinsic job characteristics are the mostly consistently significant situational predictor of job satisfaction.

The effect of job characteristics on job satisfaction has been found to be moderated by an individual’s need for growth. A meta-analysis found that Growth Need Strength (GNS) moderated the relationship between the five job characteristics and job satisfaction. For those with high GNS the relationship was on average r=. 57, whereas for those with low GNS the relationship was on average r = .32. Note that even this is still a moderate relationship. 3

There’s also some indirect support for engaging work being important for job satisfaction. Employee surveys of job satisfaction have shown that “interesting work” turns out to be what’s most important to people, as opposed to pay or status. 4 Also, sense of completion and feedback are similar to the conditions needed to enter a state of flow – the pleasurable state of being so immersed in an activity that you’re completely free of distractions and lose track of time. Csikszentmihalyi has argued that being able to enter states of flow is key to having genuinely satisfying experiences, so we’d expect this link. 5

You could challenge the evidence for the job characteristics model by coming up with alternative hypotheses to explain the correlation between job characteristics and job satisfaction. For example, mood could be a third variable that explains the correlation. If you are in a good mood that might cause you to rate your job satisfaction as high, but also to rate your job highly on the five characteristics of the model (as is suggested by Judge & Klinger 2009). 6 Or you might think that the causal relationship actually works in reverse (as was suggested in Caldwell (1982) — high job satisfaction causes you to rate your job highly on the five characteristics in the model. 7

However studies that use objective measures of job characteristics still find a correlation between the five job characteristics and job satisfaction (Glick, Jenkins, and Gupta, 1986; Judge, Bono, and Locke, 2000), so these alternative explanations don’t seem to hold. 8

The more general worry that the evidence is correlational does reduce our confidence in the job characteristic model. Nevertheless, the model is grounded in well-supported theories of motivation and well-being; it provides causal explanations of how the factors lead to job satisfaction; and it has been subject to a high degree of scrutiny for several decades — so if there were obvious confounders or problems with it, it is likely that these would have been uncovered by now.

2. Work that helps others

We’d expect that helping others in your job would increase your sense of meaning and purpose, and there’s a fair amount of empirical evidence that helping others in your job increases job satisfaction.

Theoretical evidence If you help others through your job, you’re likely to experience a greater sense of meaning and purpose. Meaning and purpose is one of the components of Seligman’s theory of well-being PERMA as we saw above. 9

Correlational evidence As mentioned in the previous section, the job characteristics model is widely agreed to be the best predictor of job satisfaction. One of the factors in the model is task significance – the degree to which your job affects other people’s lives. It is measured using this question:

The empirical evidence shows that high task significance is one of the best predictors of job satisfaction. The meta-analysis we mentioned previously found that task significance is strongly correlated with job satisfaction (p=0.41 10 ).

Another finding which you’d expect if helping others through your work increases your job satisfaction is that jobs which involve helping others would do well in job satisfaction rankings. Jobs that involve helping others do in fact score very well on job satisfaction rankings, as was found in the General Social Surveys conducted in the US from 1972-2006 (with 50,313 respondents): 11

If we move to the broader relationship between helping others (whether through your job or not) and well-being, Post (2005) overviews a wide range of studies which find a correlation between altruism and well-being. 12 He also gives plausible causal mechanisms through which altruism could lead to increased happiness:

Altruism results in deeper and more positive social integration, distraction from personal problems and the anxiety of self-preoccupation, enhanced meaning and purpose as related to well-being, a more active lifestyle that counters cultural pressures toward isolated passivity, and the presence of positive emotions such as kindness that displace harmful negative emotional states. It is entirely plausible, then, to assert that altruism enhances mental and physical health.

Experimental evidence There is evidence from randomized controlled trials that performing acts of kindness increases your happiness. 13 If there’s a causal relationship between performing acts of kindness and being happier, you might also expect that there is a causal relationship between helping others through your job and increased happiness and job satisfaction.

3. Work you’re good at

We expect that being good at your job leads to higher job satisfaction. There is a fair amount of theoretical support for the claim that being good at your job will lead to higher job satisfaction. Most theories of human well-being and needs have achievement as a key component (including Self-Determination Theory and PERMA ). The job characteristics model also has knowledge and skills as a moderator of the effect of job characteristics on job satisfaction. 14

Also, believing that you are able to do well in a job is associated with higher motivation, whilst not having the knowledge and skills to do your job well is likely to lead to stress. 15

This is confirmed by an analysis of 2,460 individuals which found a strong negative relationship between skill mismatch and job satisfaction. 16

Finally, that being good at your job is important for job satisfaction is also the common sense view, and it is highly intuitive.

4. Work with people you like

Like having a sense of meaning and achievement, satisfying personal relationships are also a key component for a fully satisfying life in almost every theory of human needs and well-being (such as Self-Determination Theory and PERMA ). Therefore we would expect social support and liking your colleagues to lead to job satisfaction. This is also confirmed by empirical research.

A meta-analysis of 259 studies found that social support was strongly positively correlated with job satisfaction (p=.56). 17 Social support is the extent to which a job provides opportunities for getting help and advice from others and the opportunities to make friends on the job.

(Update: Another meta-analysis found several measures of ‘organizational sponsorship’, such as being given supervisor support and training opportunities, were among the best predictors of career satisfaction of those studied, though interestingly, were weaker predictors of income and chance of promotion.)

One note is that people vary in who they like, so this factor of job satisfaction will mean different jobs are better for different people. One well-studied effect is that your degree of similarity with someone – the more similar you are (on almost any dimension — physical appearance, attitudes, personality, interpersonal style, cultural background) the more likely you are to like them. 18

5. Meets your basic needs

1. Reasonable hours Very long working hours crowd out your ability to take care of your non-work life, which could make you less happy, and make you more likely to perceive your job as conflicting with your other goals and needs. Not being able to meet your non-work obligations is also likely to lead to stress. This claim receives some support from two large surveys. The British Household Panel Survey, of roughly 10,000 individuals, found that long hours were associated with lower job satisfaction. 19 Another survey of 28,240 individuals found the same. 20

2. Job security Lacking job security is likely to lead to greater stress as it is likely to decrease people’s confidence in being able to meet the demands of their lives. There is also theoretical support for this: job security is posited to be a moderator of the effect of job characteristics on job satisfaction by the job characteristics model. 21 Also, a meta-analysis of 50 independent samples representing 28,885 individuals, found a strong negative correlation between job insecurity and job satisfaction (r=-.41). 22

3. Short commute We would expect a long commute to be detrimental to life satisfaction for the same reasons as long hours are, and in addition, long commutes tend to be unpleasant in themselves and hard to use productively. This claim is supported by a study by the UK Office for National Statistics (sample size = 60,200 individuals) which found that long commutes were associated with lower life satisfaction. The worst effects were associated with journey times lasting between 61 and 90 minutes. Also taking a bus or coach was found to be the worst mode of transport for commuting. 23

4. Fair pay Earning less than others doing the same or similar job seems to cause job dissatisfaction and lower happiness. This makes sense given that it’s likely to make you feel unfairly treated and possibly resent your employer.

This has been confirmed in correlational studies (Clark and Oswald, 1996; Hamermesh, 2001 for job dissatisfaction, Frey and Stutzer, 2002; Luttmer, 2005 for happiness). 24

You might worry about other potential explanations for the correlation. But a clever experimental design was used to control for confounding variables. It randomly assigned people to either be able to find out what their peers earn, or not (the control group). Those who were able to find out what their peers earned and found out that they earned less than their peers reported less job satisfaction and had higher intentions to leave their jobs than those in the control group. 25

Other factors we considered but that are poor predictors of job satisfaction

In general, the salary of a job has only a weak effect on job satisfaction and happiness – see our review of the evidence .

Low demands

Moderate levels of stress are associated with higher job satisfaction. See our review of the evidence on the effects work demands and stress .

Interests match

• There is lack of empirical evidence for interest-match, with a major attempt to find one (Holland-match). See our review of the evidence on the importance of Holland type match with occupation and job satisfaction .

Our interests change, and more than we expect .

• Most people are likely to be interested in highly competitive areas with very few jobs, like sports, music or entertainment. See our page on why “follow your passion” isn’t helpful advice for having a satisfying career .

Signature strengths match

Another predictor we considered but didn’t end up recommending is finding a job which is matched to your unique signature strengths (a test created by Seligman and his colleague Peterson). From the evidence so far, it doesn’t seem that using signature strengths for choosing between jobs is useful. But it does seem that once you’re in a job, finding ways to use your signature strengths more does increase your happiness. See our review of the literature for more .

Occupational status

It is common sense that occupational status is something that matters. There’s some empirical evidence that it is correlated with job satisfaction (for example in the General Social Surveys conducted in the US. 26

However we didn’t include it in our list of factors because:

• The correlation is easily confounded by other variables such as the five factors of the job characteristics model, social support, etc, all of which have better empirical support.
• We don’t expect people to neglect this factor due to the strong social incentives to select jobs with higher status.

Directions for future research

In the future we would like to find out more about the base rates of job satisfaction in different jobs, whether the Big Five personality factors are helpful for finding a career that’s satisfying and investigate how large a difference individual factors, such as how good you are a job, make to job satisfaction.

Notes and references

A meta-analysis of the relation of job characteristics to job satisfaction. Loher, Brian T.; Noe, Raymond A.; Moeller, Nancy L.; Fitzgerald, Michael P. Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol 70(2), May 1985, 280-289. Meta-analytic comparison of the Job Diagnostic Survey and Job Characteristics Inventory as correlates of work satisfaction and performance. Fried, Yitzhak Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol 76(5), Oct 1991, 690-697. Integrating motivational, social, and contextual work design features: A meta-analytic summary and theoretical extension of the work design literature. Humphrey, Stephen E.; Nahrgang, Jennifer D.; Morgeson, Frederick P. Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol 92(5), Sep 2007, 1332-1356. ↩

• Judge, T. A., Klinger, R. (2009). Promote Job Satisfaction through Mental Challenge. Handbook of Principles of Organizational Behaviour, Second Ed, pp107-119 ↩
• Fried, Yitzhak, and Gerald R. Ferris. “The validity of the job characteristics model: A review and meta‐analysis.” Personnel Psychology 40.2 (1987): 287-322. Judge, Timothy A., and Ryan Klinger. “Promote job satisfaction through mental challenge.” Handbook of principles of organizational behavior (2000): 75-89. p115 ↩
• For instance, Judge, T. A., Church, A. H. (2000) “Job satisfaction: research and practice”. In C. L. Cooper and E. A. Locke (eds), Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Linking Theory with Practice (pp. 167-174). Oxford, UK: Blackwell ↩
• Csikszentmihalyi, M.; Abuhamdeh, S. & Nakamura, J. (2005), “Flow”, in Elliot, A., Handbook of Competence and Motivation, New York: The Guilford Press, pp. 598–698 Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1988), “The flow experience and its significance for human psychology”, in Csikszentmihalyi, M., Optimal experience: psychological studies of flow in consciousness, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 15–35. ↩
• Caldwell, David F., and Charles A. O’Reilly. “Task perceptions and job satisfaction: A question of causality.” Journal of Applied Psychology 67.3 (1982): 361. ↩
• Glick, W. H., Jenkins, G. D., Jr., and Gupta, N. (1986). Method versus substance: How strong are underlying relationships between job characteristics and attitudinal out- comes? Academy of Management Journal, 29, 441–464. Judge, T. A., Bono, J. E., and Locke, E. A. (2000). Personality and job satisfaction: The mediating role of job characteristics. Journal of Applied Psychology, 85, 237–249. ↩
• Seligman, Martin EP. Flourish: A visionary new understanding of happiness and well-being. Simon and Schuster, 2012. ↩
• “p” refers to the corrected population correlation estimate ↩
• Job satisfaction in the United States (2007). ↩
• Post, Stephen G. “Altruism, happiness, and health: It’s good to be good.”International journal of behavioral medicine 12.2 (2005): 66-77. ↩
• Lyubomirsky, S., Tkach, C., & Sheldon, K.M. (2004). Pursuing sustained happiness through random acts of kindness and counting one’s blessings: Tests of two six-week interventions]. Unpublished raw data. Results presented in: Lyubomirsky, S., Sheldon, K. M., & Schkade, D. (2005). Pursuing happiness: The architecture of sustainable change. Review of General Psychology, 9, 111–131. Layous K, Nelson SK, Oberle E, Schonert-Reichl KA, Lyubomirsky S (2012) Kindness Counts: Prompting Prosocial Behavior in Preadolescents Boosts Peer Acceptance and Well-Being. PLoS ONE 7(12): e51380. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0051380 Buchanan KE, Bardi A: Acts of kindness and acts of novelty affect life satisfaction. J Soc Psychol 2010, 150:235–237. ↩
• Hackman, J. R., & Oldham, G. R. (1980). Work redesign. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. ↩
• Steel, Piers, and Cornelius J. König. “Integrating theories of motivation.”Academy of Management Review 31.4 (2006): 889-913. ↩
• Allen, Jim, and Rolf Van der Velden. “Educational mismatches versus skill mismatches: effects on wages, job satisfaction, and on‐the‐job search.” Oxford economic papers 53.3 (2001): 434-452. ↩
• Stephen E. Humphrey, Jennifer D. Nahrgang and Frederick P. Morgeson (2007) Integrating Motivational, Social and Contextual Work Design Features: A Meta-Analytic Summary and Theoretical Extension of the Work Design Literature, Journal of Applied Psychology ↩
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpersonal_attraction#Similarity_attraction_effect ↩
• Clark, Andrew, Andrew Oswald, and Peter Warr. “Is job satisfaction U‐shaped in age?.” Journal of occupational and organizational psychology 69.1 (1996): 57-81. Page 66. The correlation was of log hours and job satisfaction was -0.19. For comparison, log income had a -0.07 correlation with job satisfaction. ↩
• Gazioglu, Saziye, and Aysit Tansel. “Job satisfaction in Britain: individual and job related factors.” Applied Economics 38.10 (2006): 1163-1171. ↩
• Kulik, Carol T., Greg R. Oldham, and J. Richard Hackman. “Work design as an approach to person-environment fit.” Journal of vocational behavior 31.3 (1987): 278-296. p284 ↩
• Sverke, Magnus, Johnny Hellgren, and Katharina Näswall. “No security: a meta-analysis and review of job insecurity and its consequences.” Journal of occupational health psychology 7.3 (2002): 242. p249 ↩
• http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/wellbeing/measuring-national-well-being/commuting-and-personal-well-being–2014/art-commuting-and-personal-well-being.html#tab-2–Key-Points ↩
• Clark, Andrew E., and Andrew J. Oswald. “Satisfaction and comparison income.” Journal of public economics 61.3 (1996): 359-381. Hamermesh, Daniel S. The changing distribution of job satisfaction. No. w7332. National Bureau of Economic Research, 1999. Frey, Bruno S., and Alois Stutzer. “What can economists learn from happiness research?.” Journal of Economic literature 40.2 (2002): 402-435. Luttmer, Erzo FP. Neighbors as negatives: Relative earnings and well-being. No. w10667. National Bureau of Economic Research, 2004. ↩
• Card, David, et al. “Inequality at work: The effect of peer salaries on job satisfaction.” The American Economic Review 102.6 (2012): 2981-3003. ↩

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Job satisfaction, organizational commitment and job involvement: the mediating role of job involvement.

• Department of Industrial Engineering and Management, Faculty of Technical Sciences, University of Novi Sad, Novi Sad, Serbia

We conducted an empirical study aimed at identifying and quantifying the relationship between work characteristics, organizational commitment, job satisfaction, job involvement and organizational policies and procedures in the transition economy of Serbia, South Eastern Europe. The study, which included 566 persons, employed by 8 companies, revealed that existing models of work motivation need to be adapted to fit the empirical data, resulting in a revised research model elaborated in the paper. In the proposed model, job involvement partially mediates the effect of job satisfaction on organizational commitment. Job satisfaction in Serbia is affected by work characteristics but, contrary to many studies conducted in developed economies, organizational policies and procedures do not seem significantly affect employee satisfaction.

1. Introduction

In the current climate of turbulent changes, companies have begun to realize that the employees represent their most valuable asset ( Glen, 2006 ; Govaerts et al., 2011 ; Fulmer and Ployhart, 2014 ; Vomberg et al., 2015 ; Millar et al., 2017 ). Satisfied and motivated employees are imperative for contemporary business and a key factor that separates successful companies from the alternative. When considering job satisfaction and work motivation in general, of particular interest are the distinctive traits of these concepts in transition economies.

Serbia is a country that finds itself at the center of the South East region of Europe (SEE), which is still in the state of transition. Here transition refers to the generally accepted concept, which implies economic and political changes introduced by former socialist countries in Europe and beyond (e.g., China) after the years of economic stagnation and recession in the 1980's, in the attempt to move their economy from centralized to market-oriented principles ( Ratkovic-Njegovan and Grubic-Nesic, 2015 ). Serbia exemplifies many of the problems faced by the SEE region as a whole, but also faces a number of problems uniquely related to the legacy of its past. Due to international economic sanctions, the country was isolated for most of the 1990s, and NATO air strikes, related to the Kosovo conflict and carried out in 1999, caused significant damage to the industry and economy. Transitioning to democracy in October 2000, Serbia embarked on a period of economic recovery, helped by the introduction of long overdue reforms, major inflows of foreign investment and substantial assistance from international funding institutions and others in the international community. However, the growth model on which Serbia and other SEE countries relied between 2001 and 2008, being based mainly on rapid capital inflows, a credit-fueled domestic demand boom and high current account deficit (above 20% of GDP in 2008), was not accompanied by the necessary progress in structural and institutional reforms to make this model sustainable ( Uvalic, 2013 ). The central issue of the transition process in Serbia and other such countries is privatization of public enterprises, which in Serbia ran slowly and with a number of interruptions, failures and restarts ( Radun et al., 2015 ). The process led the Serbian industry into a state of industrial collapse, i.e., deindustrialization. Today there are less than 400,000 employees working in the industry in Serbia and the overall unemployment rate exceeds 26% ( Milisavljevic et al., 2013 ). The average growth of Serbia's GDP in the last 5 years was very low, at 0.6% per year, but has reached 2.7% in 2016 ( GDP, 2017 ). The structure of the GDP by sector in 2015 was: services 60.5%, industry 31.4%, and agriculture 8.2% ( Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia, 2017 ).

Taking into account the specific adversities faced by businesses in Serbia, we formulated two main research questions as a starting point for the analysis of the problem of work motivation in Serbia:

1. To what extent are the previously developed models of work motivation (such as the model of Locke and Latham, 2004 ) applicable to the transition economy and business practices in Serbia?

2. What is the nature of the relationships between different segments of work motivation (job satisfaction, organizational commitment, job involvement and work characteristics)?

The Hawthorn experiment, conducted in early 1930s ( Mayo, 1933 ), spurred the interest of organizational behavior researchers into the problem of work motivation. Although Hawthorn focused mainly on the problems of increasing the productivity and the effects of supervision, incentives and the changing work conditions, his study had significant repercussions on the research of work motivation. All modern theories of work motivation stem from his study.

Building on his work, Maslow (1943) published his Hierarchy of Needs theory, which remains to this day the most cited and well known of all work motivation theories according to Denhardt et al. (2012) . Maslow's theory is a content-based theory , belonging to a group of approaches which also includes the ERG Theory by Alderfer (1969) , the Achievement Motivation Theory, Motivation-Hygiene Theory and the Role Motivation Theory.

These theories focus on attempting to uncover what the needs and motives that cause people to act in a certain way, within the organization, are. They do not concern themselves with the process humans use to fulfill their needs, but attempt to identify variables which influence this fulfillment. Thus, these theories are often referred to as individual theories , as they ignore the organizational aspects of work motivation, such as job characteristics or working environment, but concentrate on the individual and the influence of an individual's needs on work motivation.

The approach is contrasted by the process theories of work motivation, which take the view that the concept of needs is not enough to explain the studied phenomenon and include expectations, values, perception, as important aspects needed to explain why people behave in certain ways and why they are willing to invest effort to achieve their goals. The process theories include: Theory of Work and Motivation ( Vroom, 1964 ), Goal Setting Theory ( Locke, 1968 ), Equity Theory ( Adams, 1963 ), as well as the The Porter-Lawler Model ( Porter and Lawler, 1968 ).

Each of these theories has its limitations and, while they do not contradict each other, they focus on different aspects of the motivation process. This is the reason why lately they have been several attempts to create an integrated theory of work motivation, which would encompass all the relevant elements of different basic theories and explain most processes taking place within the domain of work motivation, the process of motivation, as well as employee expectations ( Donovan, 2001 ; Mitchell and Daniels, 2002 ; Locke and Latham, 2004 ). One of the most influential integrated theories is the theory proposed by Locke and Latham (2004) , which represents the basis for the study presented in this paper.

The model of Locke and Latham is show in Figure 1 . As the figure shows, it includes individual needs, values and motive, as well as personality. Incorporating the theory of expectations, the goal-setting theory and the social-cognitive theory, it focuses on goal setting, goals themselves and self-efficiency. Performance, by way of achievements and rewards, affects job satisfaction. The model defines relations between different constructs and, in particular, that job satisfaction is affected by the job characteristics and organizational policy and procedures and that it, in turn, affects organizational commitment and job involvement. Locke and Latham suggested that the theory they proposed needs more stringent empirical validation. In the study presented here, we take a closer look at the part of their theory which addresses the relationship between job satisfaction, involvement and organizational commitment. The results of the empirical study conducted in industrial systems suggest that this part of the model needs to be improved to reflect the mediating role of job involvement in the process through which job satisfaction influences organizational commitment.

Figure 1 . Diagram of the Latham and Locke model. The frame on the right indicates the part of the model the current study focuses on.

Job satisfaction is one of the most researched phenomena in the domain of human resource management and organizational behavior. It is commonly defined as a “pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from the appraisal of oneś job or job experiences” ( Schneider and Snyder, 1975 ; Locke, 1976 ). Job satisfaction is a key element of work motivation, which is a fundamental determinant of one's behavior in an organization.

Organizational commitment, on the other hand, represents the degree to which the employees identify with the organization in which they work, how engaged they are in the organization and whether they are ready leave it ( Greenberg and Baron, 2008 ). Several studies have demonstrated that there is a strong connection between organizational commitment, job satisfaction and fluctuation ( Porter et al., 1974 ), as well as that people who are more committed to an organization are less likely to leave their job. Organizational commitment can be thought of as an extension of job satisfaction, as it deals with the positive attitude that an employee has, not toward her own job, but toward the organization. The emotions, however, are much stronger in the case of organizational commitment and it is characterized by the attachment of the employee to the organization and readiness to make sacrifices for the organization.

The link between job satisfaction and organizational commitment has been researched relatively frequently ( Mathieu and Zajac, 1990 ; Martin and Bennett, 1996 ; Meyer et al., 2002 ; Falkenburg and Schyns, 2007 ; Moynihan and Pandey, 2007 ; Morrow, 2011 ). The research consensus is that the link exists, but there is controversy about the direction of the relationship. Some research supports the hypothesis that job satisfaction predicts organizational commitment ( Stevens et al., 1978 ; Angle and Perry, 1983 ; Williams and Hazer, 1986 ; Tsai and Huang, 2008 ; Yang and Chang, 2008 ; Yücel, 2012 ; Valaei et al., 2016 ), as is the case in the study presented in this paper. Other studies suggest that the organizational commitment is an antecedent to job satisfaction ( Price and Mueller, 1981 ; Bateman and Strasser, 1984 ; Curry et al., 1986 ; Vandenberg and Lance, 1992 ).

In our study, job involvement represents a type of attitude toward work and is usually defined as the degree to which one identifies psychologically with one's work, i.e., how much importance one places on their work. A distinction should be made between work involvement and job involvement. Work involvement is conditioned by the process of early socialization and relates to the values one has wrt. work and its benefits, while job involvement relates to the current job and is conditioned with the one's current employment situation and to what extent it meets one's needs ( Brown, 1996 ).

2.1. Research Method

Based on the relevant literature, the results of recent studies and the model proposed by Locke and Latham (2004) , we designed a conceptual model shown in Figure 2 . The model was then used to formulate the following hypotheses:

H0 - Work motivation factors, such as organizational commitment, job involvement, job satisfaction and work characteristics, represent interlinked significant indicators of work motivation in the organizations examined.

H1 - Work characteristics will have a positive relationship with job satisfaction.

H2 - Organizational policies and procedures will have a positive relationship with job satisfaction.

H3 - Job satisfaction will have a positive relationship with job involvement.

H4 - Job satisfaction will have a positive relationship with organizational commitment.

H5 - Job involvement will have a mediating role between job satisfaction and organizational commitment.

Figure 2 . The research model.

2.2. Participants

For the purpose of this study, 125 organizations from the Serbian Chamber of Commerce database ( www.stat.gov.rs ) were randomly selected to take part in this study. Each organization was contacted and an invitation letter was sent. Eight companies expressed a desire to take part and provided contact details for 700 of their employees. The questionnaire distribution process was conducted according to Dillman's approach ( Dillman, 2011 ). Thus, the initial questionnaire dissemination process was followed by a series of follow-up email reminders, if required. After a 2-month period, out of 625 received, 566 responses were valid. Therefore, the study included 566 persons, 235 males (42%) and 331 women (58%) employed by 8 companies located in Serbia, Eastern Europe.

The sample encompassed staff from both public (53%) and private (47%) companies in manufacturing (31%) and service (69%) industries. The companies were of varied size and had between 150 and 6,500 employees, 3 of them (37.5%) medium-sized (<250 employees) and 5 (62.5%) large enterprises.

For the sake of representativeness, the sample consisted of respondents across different categories of: age, years of work service and education. The age of the individuals was between 20 and 62 years of age and we divided them into 5 categories as shown in Table 1 . The table provides the number of persons per category and the relative size of the category wrt. to the whole sample. In the same table, a similar breakdown is shown in terms of years a person spent with the company, their education and the type of the position they occupy within the company (managerial or not).

Table 1 . Data sample characteristics.

2.3. Ethics Statement

The study was carried out in accordance with the Law on Personal Data Protection of the Republic of Serbia and the Codex of Professional Ethics of the University of Novi Sad. The relevant ethics committee is the Ethics Committee of the Faculty of Technical Sciences of the University of Novi Sad.

All participants took part voluntarily and were free to fill in the questionnaire or not.

The questionnaire included a cover sheet explaining the aim of the research, ways in which the data will be used and the anonymous nature of the survey.

2.4. Measures

This study is based on a self reported questionnaire as a research instrument.

The questionnaire was developed in line with previous empirical findings, theoretical foundations and relevant literature recommendations ( Brayfield and Rothe, 1951 ; Weiss et al., 1967 ; Mowday et al., 1979 ; Kanungo, 1982 ; Fields, 2002 ). We then conducted a face validity check. Based on the results, some minor corrections were made, in accordance with the recommendations provided by university professors. After that, the pilot test was conducted with 2 companies. Managers from each of these companies were asked to assess the questionnaire. Generally, there were not any major complaints. Most of the questions were meaningful, clearly written and understandable. The final research instrument contained 86 items. For acquiring respondents' subjective estimates, a five-point Likert scale was used.

The questionnaire took about 30 min to fill in. It consisted of: 10 general demographic questions, 20 questions from the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (MSQ), 15 questions from the Organizational Commitment Questionnaire (OCQ), 10 questions from the Job Involvement Questionnaire (JIQ), 18 questions of the Brayfield-Rothe Job Satisfaction Scale (JSS), 6 questions of the Job Diagnostic Survey (JDS) and 7 additional original questions related to the rules and procedures within the organization.

The Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (MSQ), 20 items short form ( Weiss et al., 1967 ), was used to gather data about job satisfaction of participants. The MSQ – short version items, are rated on 5-points Likert scale (1 very dissatisfied with this aspect of my job, and 5 – very satisfied with this aspect of my job) with two subscales measuring intrinsic and extrinsic job satisfaction.

Organizational commitment was measured using The Organizational Commitment Questionnaire (OCQ). It is a 15-item scale developed by Mowday, Steers and Porter ( Mowday et al., 1979 ) and uses a 5-point Likert type response format, with 3 factors that can describe this commitment: willingness to exert effort, desire to maintain membership in the organization, and acceptance of organizational values.

The most commonly used measure of job involvement has been the Job Involvement Questionnaire (JIQ, Kanungo, 1982 ), 10-items scale designed to assess how participants feel toward their present job. The response scale on a 5-point scale varied between “strongly disagree/not applicable to me” to “strongly agree/fully applicable”.

The Brayfield and Rothe's 18-item Job Satisfaction Index (JSI, Brayfield and Rothe, 1951 ) was used to measure overall job satisfaction, operationalized on five-point Likert scale.

Psychometric analysis conducted showed that all the questionnaires were adequately reliable (Cronbach alpha > 0.7). The suitability of the data for factor analysis has been confirmed using the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) Test (see Table 2 ).

Table 2 . Basic psychometric characteristics of the instruments.

For further analysis we used summary scores for the different scales. Job satisfaction was represented with the overall score of MSQ, as the data analysis revealed a strong connection between the extrinsic and intrinsic motivators. The overall score on the OCQ was used as a measure of organizational commitment, while the score on JDS was used to reflect job characteristics. The JSS and JIQ scales have been modified, by eliminating a few questions, in order to improve reliability and suitability for factor analysis.

Statistical analysis was carried out using the SPSS software. The SPSS Amos structural equation modeling software was used to create the Structural Equation Models (SEMs).

The data was first checked for outliers using box-plot analysis. The only outliers identified were related to the years of employment, but these seem to be consistent to what is expected in practice in Serbia, so no observations needed to be removed from the dataset.

3.1. Exploratory Factor Analysis

Although research dimensions were empirically validated and confirmed in several prior studies, to the best of our knowledge, the empirical confirmation of the research instrument (i.e., questionnaire) and its constituents in the case of Serbia and South-Eastern Europe is quite scarce. Furthermore, the conditions in which previous studies were conducted could vary between research populations. Also, such differences could affect the structure of the research concepts. Thus, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was conducted in order to empirically validate the structure of research dimensions and to test the research instrument, within the context of the research population of South-Eastern Europe and Serbia.

Using the maximum likelihood method we identified four factors, which account for 67% of the variance present in the data. The scree plot of the results of the analysis is shown in Figure 3 . As the figure shows, we retained the factors above the inflection point.

Figure 3 . Scree plot of the EFA results.

The communalities for the variables loading into the factors are shown in Table 3 and the questions corresponding to our variables are listed in Table 4 . Initial communalities are estimates of the proportion of variance in each variable accounted for by all components (factors) identified, while the extraction communalities refer to the part of the variance explained by the four factors extracted. The model explains more of the variance then the initial factors, for all but the last variable.

Table 3 . Communalities.

Table 4 . Questions that build our constructs.

More detailed results of the EFA for the four factors, are shown in Table 5 . The unique loadings of specific items measured with the different questions in the questionnaire on the factors identified are shown in the pattern matrix (Table 6 ). As the table shows, each factor is loaded into by items that were designed to measure a specific construct and there are no cross-loadings. The first factor corresponds to job characteristics, second to job satisfaction, third to job involvement and the final to organizational commitment. The correlation between the factors is relatively low and shown in Table 7 .

Table 5 . Total variance explained by the dominant factors.

Table 6 . Pattern matrix for the factors identified.

Table 7 . Factor correlation matrix.

3.2. Confirmatory Factor Analysis

In the next part of our analysis we used Structural Equation Modeling to validate and improve a part of the model proposed by Locke and Latham (2004) that focuses on work characteristics, job satisfaction, organizational commitment and job involvement.

Although the EFA suggest the existence of four, not five, dominant factors in the model, diverging from the model proposed by Locke and Latham (2004) , in our initial experiments we used their original model, shown in Figure 4A , taking into account also organizational policies and procedures.

Figure 4 . The evolution of our model (the path coefficients are standardized): (A) the initial model based on Locke and Latham (2004) , (B) no partial mediation, and (C) partial mediation introduced.

In this (default) model, the only independent variable are the job characteristics. The standardized regression coefficients shown in Figure 4A (we show standardized coefficients throughout Figure 4 ) indicate that the relationship between the satisfaction and organizational commitment seems to be stronger (standard coefficient value of 0.54) than the one between satisfaction and involvement (standard coefficient value of 0.37). The effect of job characteristics and policies and procedures on the employee satisfaction seems to be balanced (standard coefficient values of 0.31 and 0.30, respectively).

The default model does not fit our data well. The Comparative Fit Index (CFI) for this model is 0.759, the Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI) is 0.598, while the Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) is 0.192.

A more detailed analysis of the model revealed that it could indeed (as the EFA suggests) be improved by eliminating the organizational policies and procedures variable, as it has a high residual covariance with job involvement (−3.071) and organizational commitment (−4.934).

We therefore propose to eliminate the “Organizational policies and procedures” variable from the model. Dropping the variable resulted in an improved model shown in Figure 4B . The improved model fits the data better, but the fit is still not good ( RMSEA = 0.125, CFI = 0.915 and TLI = 0.830).

We then hypothesized that job involvement influences organizational commitment, yielding the final model tested in this study (Figure 4C ). This model turned out to be the one that fits our data very well ( RMSEA = 0.000, CFI = 1 and TLI = 1.015).

4. Mediation Analysis

In the final part of the study we conducted the mediation analysis, to understand the relationship between job satisfaction, job involvement and organizational commitment. We used bootstrapping, based on 5000 samples and the confidence interval of 95%.

We started with a model that contains just one relation between satisfaction and commitment (Figure 5A ), then tested for full mediation (Figure 5B ) and finally partial mediation as indicated in out proposed model (Figure 5C ). The unstandardized, direct effect regression weights and the p -values obtained in these experiments are shown in Table 8 . As the p -values show, all the connections in our three models are significant and that they remain so throughout the evolution of the model. Therefore, job involvement mediates the influence of satisfaction on organizational commitment, but this is a partial mediation and a major part of the effect of satisfaction on the organizational commitment is achieved directly.

Figure 5 . Mediation analysis models. (A) , Model 1; (B) , Model 2; (C) , Model 3.

Table 8 . Mediation analysis regression weights.

5. Discussion

We conducted an empirical study aimed at exploring the relationship between employee satisfaction, job involvement, organizational commitment, work characteristics and organizational policies and procedures.

Based on the relevant scientific literature, recent studies in the area and the integrative model of work motivation of Locke and Latham (2004) , we have formulated an initial conceptual model for our research and hypothesized the connections between the relevant variables. The initial model has been improved iteratively, with the goal of increasing its fit to the empirical data collected in the study.

Starting from the model proposed by Locke and Latham (2004) we determined that their model does not fit our experimental data well and that we observe a connection between job involvement that is not present in their model. In addition, our data does not support the hypothesis that organizational procedures and policies affect employee satisfaction in the organizations considered. As a result we propose a 4 factor model shown in Figure 4C for the relationship between the concepts of work characteristics, employee satisfaction, job involvement and organizational commitment.

We analyzed the results of the study based on 1 general and 5 specific hypotheses. The research confirms that there is a link between work characteristics and job satisfaction (H1), but that it is weak, suggesting that a dominant effect of the material factors of motivation exists.

We have also determined that there is a connection between the rules and procedures variable (H2) and the rest of the variables, indicating that it should be considered in future studies, but that the constructs need to be operationalized better.

The third specific hypothesis (H3) that job satisfaction has a positive relationship with job involvement has been confirmed and we have observed that extrinsic work motivation has a stronger effect than intrinsic, which can be explained by low wages and insufficient funds for everyday life. Other research has confirmed this link ( Govender and Parumasur, 2010 ) and showed that most of the employee motivation dimensions have significant links with the dimensions of job involvement (9 out of 10 pairs).

The fourth specific hypothesis (H4 - Job satisfaction will have a positive relationship with organizational commitment) has also been confirmed and we can conclude that a positive relationship exists, which is in line with recent research in this area. The subscale focused on identification with the organization is strongly connected with both intrinsic and extrinsic factors of job satisfaction, but this cannot be said for the subscale focused on organizational attachment. Our research supports the existence of a weak connection between job satisfaction and organizational attachment, both when intrinsic and extrinsic satisfaction is considered as a motivator. A study of work motivation and organizational commitment conducted in Bulgaria (Serbia's neighbor) showed that extrinsic factors are key sources of organizational commitment ( Roe et al., 2000 ), as well as that job involvement and the chances for the fulfillment o higher-order needs pay a very important part in the motivation of the employees.

One of the reasons for such a result can be the economic situation in Serbia, which has a severely detrimental effect on work motivation. The transition and economic crisis is accompanied by the shrinking purchasing power of the population, higher unemployment rates and a rising disparity in the salary levels, all of which causes the adjustment of the behavior of the employees to these conditions. Under the economic conditions that exist in Serbia it is to be expected that the individuals will put more value on the salary and advancement prospects than on the opportunities for growth and development, which do not present a direct financial benefit.

The research did not reveal any differences with respect to the sex of the participants, regardless of the variable considered. Other research has not reached a consensus on the matter, as a part of the studies suggests that there are differences in job involvement between men and women ( Lodahl and Kejnar, 1965 ; Hall and Mansfield, 1975 ; Rabinowitz and Hall, 1977 ; Saal, 1978 ).

Regarding the ownership of the organizations examined, the research revealed statistically significant differences between the employees working in public and private companies, i.e., that the participants working in the private sector scores significantly higher on every variable except work characteristics, meaning that they are more committed to work, more involved and more satisfied.

In addition, we have determined that there are statistically significant differences when it comes to the position of the employees in the organization's hierarchy, i.e., whether they occupy a managerial or a non-managerial position. The study shows that managers have higher scores for organizational attachment, organizational commitment, intrinsic motivators, extrinsic motivators, job satisfaction and job involvement. We can, therefore, conclude that the managers are more satisfied with their work in general and that they are more committed to the organization than other employees. This can be explained by the fact that, due to the nature of the work they do, they are able to make decisions, they have a more varied job and have better material and non-material rewards. A more detailed analysis of the commitment of the managers, focused on identifying if we are dealing with normative, continuous or affective commitment would provide more insight into the structure and nature of the relationship between the organization and the individual.

Considering the type of the company (manufacturing or service) our study showed that the participants working in manufacturing companies are the ones who identify more with the company, are more committed to the company, more satisfied with their work and more involved.

Our study also identified a significant difference with respect to the vocation of the participants, showing that those with training in humanistic sciences awarded most positive scores to the characteristics of their work, while the opposite was true for those of technical vocations.

The part of our analysis focused on the age of the participants revealed that there is a statistically significant connection between the age and job satisfaction, where the older the employee, the less satisfied he/she is with their job and cares less about the characteristics of work. A reason for such a result could again be found in the economic situation of Serbia and the high unemployment rate (over 20%), causing the younger people to be satisfied with the simple fact that they managed to get a job, rather than being satisfied with the job itself. Another reason could be the difference in the perception of desires and possibilities that exists between the younger and older employees.

The years with the company are negatively linked with employee satisfaction, as well as job characteristics, which is in line with the effect discussed in the previous paragraph, as those with more time spent in the company are less satisfied with their job and care less about the characteristics of their work.

Considering the level of education of the participants, our study showed that the more educated the employees are, the less involved they are in their work and that they seem to care more about the characteristics of their work.

Our research showed that links exist between all the variables studied and that the weakest of these links is between work characteristics and other constructs. Of those, the weakest link in turn is the link between the work characteristics and the subscale of organizational commitment related to the identification with the organization. Thus, we can conclude that work characteristics do not exhibit a significant influence on whether and to what extent the employee will identify with the organization in which he/she works, i.e., whether he/she will be committed to the organization.

A moderate to strong connection exists between organizational commitment and job satisfaction, which is in line with the results of numerous previous studies ( Currivan, 1999 ; Meyer et al., 2002 ; Malhotra and Mukherjee, 2004 ; Saari and Judge, 2004 ; Chen, 2007 ; Falkenburg and Schyns, 2007 ; Moynihan and Pandey, 2007 ; Getahun et al., 2008 ; Colakoglu et al., 2010 ; Yücel, 2012 ; Fu and Deshpande, 2014 ).

Our study confirms the existence of a strong connection between job satisfaction and job involvement ( Moynihan and Pandey, 2007 ; Wegge et al., 2007 ; Griffin et al., 2010 ; Raymond and Mjoli, 2013 ; Zopiatis et al., 2014 ). Many studies have been carried out in an attempt to examine and define the relationship between job involvement and organizational commitment. Our results are in line with previous studies, which diverge only on the strength of the connection, ranging from moderate to strong ( Blau and Boal, 1989 ; Brewer and Lok, 1995 ; Sjöberg and Sverke, 2000 ; Brooks and Swailes, 2002 ; Toga, 2011 ). Our study provides more evidence for the existence of such a relationship, which is moderately strong. Such a relationship does not exist in the integrative model of Locke and Latham (2004) , which served as a starting point for this study.

In addition, we have determined that job involvement has a mediating role between job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Job involvement mediates the influence of satisfaction on organizational commitment, but this is a partial mediation and a major part of the effect of satisfaction on the organizational commitment is achieved directly.

The construct related to organizational policies and procedures seems not to have significant bearing on employee satisfaction, based on the data collected. Two plausible explanations exist for this. The first is the fact that this was the only construct in our study for which a suitable standard questionnaire could not be found, so one had to be constructed specifically, meaning that the construct should be operationalized better in future studies and that this represents the limitation of our study. The other is the fact that in Serbia, as in most transition economies, the lack of suitable institutional and legislative framework at the national level is often accompanied with lax, not clearly defined and even less adhered-to business policies and procedures. In such a state of affairs, the employees seldom have a relatively clear idea of what the policies and procedures of their organization are and are unable to evaluate them with respect to those of other organizations, making this construct very hard to measure. At the same time it can be argued that, in such a situation, the policies and procedures are not perceived by the employees as a significant factor of their organizational behavior and indeed do not affect their work motivation. Whatever the reason, the relationship of policies and procedures to the other variables of work motivation within the transition economies merits further investigation.

Author Contributions

JĆ and SM designed the study. JĆ collected the data and conducted the bulk of the research. MD and DĆ conducted the statistical analysis and modeling. All authors took part in the manuscript writing, led by JĆ and DĆ.

The research leading to these results has received funding from the People Programme (Marie Curie Actions) of the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme FP7/2012-2016/ under REA grant agreement n° 295220.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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Keywords: work, job, satisfaction, involvement, employee, commitment, organizational, behavior

Citation: Ćulibrk J, Delić M, Mitrović S and Ćulibrk D (2018) Job Satisfaction, Organizational Commitment and Job Involvement: The Mediating Role of Job Involvement. Front. Psychol . 9:132. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00132

Received: 07 November 2017; Accepted: 29 January 2018; Published: 16 February 2018.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2018 Ćulibrk, Delić, Mitrović and Ćulibrk. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Milan Delić, [email protected]

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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Relationship between Job Satisfaction and Workload of Nurses in Adult Inpatient Units

María fuensanta hellín gil.

1 Faculty of Nursing, University of Murcia, 30100 Murcia, Spain

2 Biomedical Research Institute of Murcia (IMIB), El Palmar, 30120 Murcia, Spain

José Antonio Ruiz Hernández

3 Applied Psychology Service (SEPA), Faculty of Psychology, University of Murcia, 30100 Murcia, Spain

Francisco Javier Ibáñez-López

4 Education Faculty, University of Murcia, 30100 Murcia, Spain

Ana Myriam Seva Llor

Maria dolores roldán valcárcel, marzena mikla, maría josé lópez montesinos, associated data.

The authors, responsible for the content and results presented in this article, declare: The availability of the data presented in the aforementioned article, being available and without access restrictions due to the demand that may occur, always respecting the regulations governing this access to research, through scientific publications. Likewise, they declare the originality of these data, fruit of a research funded by the Carlos III Health Institute, and can be accessed through this article, through bibliographic references, or through the first author of this article, who, in their opinion, at the same time, is the principal researcher of the Research Project that generated the results presented and the corresponding author.

Among Nursing and Psychology professionals, the job satisfaction of those in Adult Inpatient Units is analyzed, with a new scale to measure nursing workloads validated. Objective : The objective of this study was to relate nursing workloads to professional job satisfaction. Methods: This is an observational, analytical, descriptive, concurrent and quantitative study, which used the Overall Job Satisfaction scale and subscales therein, to identify global satisfaction—intrinsic or related to motivational factors and extrinsic or associated with hygienic factors—in nursing professionals (n = 104) from eight Inpatient Units of Internal Medicine and Surgery, in four hospital centers, to describe job satisfaction in the professionals studied and to find statistically significant associations between job satisfaction and workload (measured with the scale MIDENF ® ) in the inpatient units where they work. Results: There were higher levels of satisfaction in the variables “relationship with immediate boss” and “relationship with fellow workers”, and lower levels in “relationship with senior management” and “organizational system of the unit”. In the inferential analysis, the scores were 75.63 for overall satisfaction, 35.28 for intrinsic satisfaction, and 40.36 for extrinsic satisfaction. Conclusions: There is a close relationship between workload and job satisfaction, showing more dissatisfaction regarding organizational aspects and professional recognition.

1. Introduction

Satisfaction has different meanings [ 1 ], such as the “Action and effect of satisfying or being satisfied”, “Presumption, vainglory. Having a lot of self-satisfaction”, “Confidence or security of mind” or “Fulfillment of desire or taste”, highlighting in these statements the implications that differentiate the coverage of human needs with the satisfaction we experience when we have those needs covered, depending on actions, responses, feelings, emotions, perceptions, etc. When speaking of “job satisfaction”, we can interpret the above-mentioned definitions, such as Locke’s [ 2 ], as “A positive and pleasant emotional state resulting from the subjective perception of the subject’s labor experiences”, understanding that “satisfaction” contains a high degree of subjectivity. Thus, we can deduce that, faced with the same situation, in our case related to nursing care, each professional may feel different levels of satisfaction.

International organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO), the International Council of Nurses (ICN) and the International Labor Organization (ILO) have identified inadequate working conditions that can affect nurses’ health and job satisfaction, including increased workload, lack of human resources, fixed-term contracts that decrease job security, lack of supplies to provide services and low salaries. These factors generate work overload, fatigue, physical and mental exhaustion, and a high level of stress in this profession [ 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 ]. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the data it offers are considered standard for the countries involved, establishing an average European nurse–patient ratio of 8.8 nurses per 1000 inhabitants. In Spain, on the other hand, this ratio is 5.6 [ 7 ]. The poor ratio of nurses in health care centers generates work overload, fatigue, physical and mental exhaustion, and a high level of stress in this profession [ 5 ]. In addition, the peculiarities of the type and temporality of employment contracts [ 8 , 9 ] directly influence the satisfaction of health care professionals [ 10 ]. There is evidence that a high workload and the failure to match the number of nurses to the actual needs of care lead to understaffing (higher patient–nurse ratios) [ 11 ], and leads to an increase in job dissatisfaction, resulting in a higher probability of mistakes, decreased patient safety and reduced quality of care [ 12 , 13 ].

The pandemic revealed that, regardless of the country, health service, health discipline or professional status, not only does excessive workload in the health field generate dissatisfaction problems among professionals, but so does organizational management factors and skills along with workload and low social recognition of health care professionals [ 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 ]. In the nursing profession, there are several studies that highlight the high level of labor stress to which nurses are subjected, both psychologically and emotionally [ 5 , 14 , 18 , 19 , 20 ]. This is due to the direct contact with the suffering, pain or death of the patients in their care, as well as the workloads and lack of available resources [ 18 ]. According to Maslach’s conceptualization [ 21 ], burnout is a response to excessive stress at work, characterized by feelings of emotional exhaustion and lack of emotional resources (emotional exhaustion), a negative and detached response to other people and loss of idealism (depersonalization), and a decrease in feelings of competence and performance at work (reduced personal achievement) [ 21 ]. This reality reveals that there is a multi-causality in terms of the factors that generate job dissatisfaction. At the same time, there are several negative effects of this dissatisfaction on the professionals.

Burnout, classified by the WHO as an occupational disease, is a consequence of chronic stress [ 3 , 18 ]. It should be noted that this syndrome has three dimensions: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and sense of low personal accomplishment [ 22 ]. This can cause emotional, behavioral, psychosomatic and social alterations, as well as loss of work efficiency and disturbances in family life [ 18 , 23 ]. Within burnout, Maslach’s theory stands out [ 21 ], considering it as a state that occurs as a result of a prolonged mismatch between a person and at least one of the six dimensions of work (workload, control, reward, community, equity and values). Maslach theorized these six characteristics of work as factors that cause burnout and placed the deterioration of employees’ health and work performance as outcomes resulting from burnout [ 21 ]. As stated in his theory, he considers workload as one of these dimensions [ 22 , 23 ]. Therefore, workload and staff inadequacy appear as the origin of job dissatisfaction, and burnout, physical and emotional exhaustion, and depersonalization appear as a consequence [ 11 , 19 , 24 , 25 , 26 ]. The relevance of the topic has generated interest, as it has been the subject of research studies on job satisfaction and burnout syndrome in nurses [ 3 , 6 , 10 , 11 , 14 , 17 , 27 ], with the aim of making visible the working conditions and needs to which they are subjected.

The phenomenon of job satisfaction was explained by Frederick Herzberg in his Two-Factor Theory [ 28 ], which indicates that there are two types of factors that influence job satisfaction. On the one hand, there are hygiene factors (extrinsic or maintenance factors), such as job security, salary, fringe benefits, and working conditions. On the other hand, there are motivators, such as the high qualification required by the job, recognition for better performance, responsibility, autonomy, meaning, involvement in decision making, and organizational commitment. Therefore, job satisfaction among nurses can be influenced by a variety of extrinsic and intrinsic factors.

The job satisfaction of employees has a direct influence on the quality of service, patient satisfaction and organizational development [ 29 ], understood as a favorable perspective, with a balance between people’s work expectations, the rewards it offers, interpersonal relationships and the type of management [ 30 , 31 ]. Burnout or job dissatisfaction can have negative effects on the quality of care, patient safety, adverse events, error reporting, infections, patient falls, patient dissatisfaction and family complaints, etc., directly influencing quality of care and patient safety [ 11 , 29 , 32 , 33 ]. Job satisfaction also contributes directly to improving performance and results at work, improving productivity at work, and reducing absenteeism and staff turnover among professionals in different services [ 6 , 8 , 9 , 31 , 32 , 34 , 35 ]. Thus, job dissatisfaction can have serious consequences for both the professional and the patient.

Several studies [ 11 , 36 ] addressed job satisfaction as a predictor of burnout and concluded that higher levels of job satisfaction are associated with lower levels of burnout and all the dimensions included in Maslach’s theory [ 21 , 22 , 23 ]. The bibliographic studies consulted present much scientific evidence on the association between workload and job satisfaction, which shows that the “work pressure” in care or management [ 11 , 33 ] has a significant impact, regardless of the sociodemographic variables and working conditions of the professionals. Additionally, the importance of the amount of work and the time to perform it is discussed, including the care and management functions in terms of care activities, defining this association as “quantitative demands” in nursing that result in psychosocial problems among professionals and, hence, affect job satisfaction [ 11 , 34 ]. The characteristics of the jobs that contribute to workload, as well as staffing levels, were the factors most frequently examined in relation to burnout in the studies reviewed, with the authors of [ 11 ] finding an association between high workload and burnout. This situation of nurses is a worldwide problem in all specialties but is exacerbated in medical-surgical areas. In this field, high patient–nurse ratios, use of point-of-care technologies, and stressful working conditions require enough highly skilled nurses, with little research available on perceived workload, burnout and intention to quit among medical-surgical nurses [ 35 ].

Following this line of research that associates workload with job satisfaction, without going into the obvious negative consequences discussed above, the study we present is one of the phases included in a research project funded by the Carlos III Health Institute [ 37 ], related to the State Plan for Scientific and Technical Research and Innovation 2017/2020, aimed at projects and initiatives in health services research, as a research priority in the challenge “Health, demographic change and welfare” [ 4 ], and within the “Spanish ERDF Pluri-regional Operational Program (POPE) 2014–2020” (PI18/00950) [ 38 ]. The general objective is to contribute to improving the management of nursing human resources, the quality and administration of care, in order to guarantee patient satisfaction and safety. This has been performed through the design, validation and multi-center application of a nursing workload measurement scale for Adult Inpatient Units, based on nursing interventions (Nursing Interventions Classification, NIC) [ 39 , 40 ] validated [ 41 ] and registered as MIDENF ® . In this phase of the project, the main objective was to relate the workloads measured with this instrument to the job satisfaction of the professionals working in the same study units selected for this entire project. We wanted to end our research project with this study on job satisfaction among nurses to visualize the working conditions and needs of the nursing job [ 3 ], since knowing both the workload to which they are subjected and their satisfaction with it are the first steps to providing solutions to improve their working conditions and, therefore, the quality of care offered to the population.

2. Materials and Methods

This study on satisfaction is part of a project focused on the application of a newly created scale for measuring workloads in nursing professionals, previously validated [ 41 ] through a qualitative and quantitative methodology registered as “MIDENF ® ”. In its validation, a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.727 was obtained, considered as acceptable, with a reliability of 0.685. Furthermore, an AVE of 0.099 was obtained, as well as an Omega coefficient of 0.704, a construct validity obtained through a KMO of 0.5 and a significant result in Bartlett’s test. The aforementioned scale contemplates the four nursing functions (care, teaching, management and research). Prior to this study, it was applied in a multi-center manner in the units of Internal Medicine (IM) and Surgery of 4 hospitals, where nursing workloads were measured 2 days a month for 9 months throughout 2020, registering the data in a specific software designed for this scale, and analyzing it with the statistical program R version 4.0.3 (R Foundation: Vienna, Austria) [ 42 ].

Starting from this premise and its background, such as Maslach’s theory [ 21 ], where one of the six dimensions of work is workload, which is closely related to job satisfaction [ 11 ], we hypothesize that a greater workload has a negative influence on job satisfaction and check whether or not this is true in our research project. Among Nursing and Psychology professionals, the job satisfaction of professionals in Adult Inpatient Units is analyzed, in terms of workload and certain sociodemographic variables. As such, this study has the following objectives:

• To determine the levels of job satisfaction of nursing professionals in the Internal Medicine and Surgical units of four hospitals.
• To identify overall job satisfaction, intrinsic satisfaction, which is related to job recognition, responsibility, promotion, task content, etc., and extrinsic satisfaction, which is related to aspects of work organization.
• To determine the association between the different nursing workloads and the levels of overall, extrinsic and intrinsic job satisfaction, by units and hospitals.

2.1. Type of Study

An observational, analytical, descriptive, concurrent and quantitative study was conducted to describe job satisfaction in the professionals studied and to find statistically significant associations between job satisfaction and workload in the inpatient units where they work.

2.2. Timing of the Investigation

The data collection phase related to workloads was carried out throughout the year 2020, for 9 months, from January to February and from June to December, since this study had to be stopped during the months of March, April and May due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The data collection phase related to the job satisfaction of the professionals and its analysis was carried out from October 2021 to January 2022.

2.3. Sample Analyzed and Scope of Study

This study was conducted in 8 Adult Inpatient Units, 2 units per hospital, one for Internal Medicine (IM) and one for Surgery for each of the 4 General University Hospitals studied ( Table 1 ). Hospital A is a regional referral hospital, Hospital C is a county referral hospital, and the 4 hospitals are referral hospitals for their respective health areas. The number of rooms per unit ranges from 14 to 20, most of them double occupancy, although there are also some single-occupancy rooms, which represent between 28 and 30 hospital beds per unit.

Characteristics of the inpatient units under study.

Of the 8 participating units, 3 units have 13 nurses, 4 units have 14 nurses and 1 unit has 12 nurses. All nurses work 12 h shifts, divided into two shifts: a day shift (from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.) with 3–4 nurses, and a night shift (from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m.) with 2 nurses ( Table 1 ). In these units, the MIDENF ® scale [ 41 ] was previously applied, as described above, to determine nursing workload, a scale completed by the same professionals whose job satisfaction has been measured in this study.

This study consisted of applying the Overall Job Satisfaction scale developed by Warr, Cook and Wall [ 43 ] in a population of 107 professionals (N = 107) assigned to the aforementioned units of the 4 hospitals under study, collecting a sample of 52 Internal Medicine (IM) nurses and 52 Surgery nurses (n = 104), establishing a compliance rate of 97%.

2.4. Evaluation Instruments and Variables Considered

As independent variables, sociodemographic and work-related items were evaluated for the professionals of the sample (sex, age, length of job service in the services/units analyzed and length of working life). These variables were added to the two main variables of this study: job satisfaction and workload of nursing staff in Adult Inpatient Units in the specialties of Internal Medicine and Surgery. The dependent variables were those related to job satisfaction, “overall satisfaction”, “extrinsic satisfaction” and “intrinsic satisfaction” of the professionals, and those related to workload, “overall workload”, “care workload” and “management workload”, obtained in the same Inpatient Units.

To measure job satisfaction, the Overall Job Satisfaction scale developed by Warr, Cook and Wall [ 43 ] was used. This scale assesses job satisfaction, reflecting the experience of workers in a paid job and identifying the affective response to the content of the job itself. It is designed with 15 items and based on Herzberg’s “Two-Factor Theory” [ 44 , 45 ], where both the intrinsic and extrinsic aspects of working conditions are addressed through dependent variables as two subscales:

• Subscale of intrinsic factors (called “motivational factors”): This subscale includes 7 items (2, 4, 6, 8, 12 and 14) on aspects such as recognition obtained for the work, responsibility, promotion, and aspects related to the content of the task.
• Extrinsic factors subscale (defined as “hygiene factors”): This subscale includes 8 items (1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13 and 15) that contemplate job satisfaction, with aspects related to work organization such as working hours, pay, and physical working conditions.

The scale has seven points ranging from “very dissatisfied” to “very satisfied”, resulting in three scores corresponding to “overall satisfaction”, “extrinsic satisfaction” and “intrinsic satisfaction”, obtaining the total score by adding the results given in each of the 15 items by the respondent, assigning a value of 1 to “very dissatisfied” and a value of 7 to “very satisfied”. The total scale score ranges from 15 to 105, where a higher score reflects a higher overall satisfaction. The intrinsic and extrinsic satisfaction subscales were evaluated independently, with values between 7 and 49 for intrinsic satisfaction and between 8 and 56 for extrinsic satisfaction due to their shorter length.

Although this scale does not allow us to establish objective analyses of good or less good working conditions, it does allow us to determine the experiences and opinions expressed by the professionals about these working conditions. Knowing the concepts of intrinsic satisfaction and extrinsic satisfaction enables identifying mechanisms of action aimed at improving job satisfaction related to the content of the job, to give more meaning to it, to provide the worker with greater autonomy, responsibility and control over their own work, to assign more specialized tasks, and to provide the worker with direct information on the results of their work.

To measure the workload, a MIDENF ® scale [ 41 ] was used. It is structured according to the four functional dimensions of the nursing discipline (teaching, research, management and care). Its items are framed within these nursing functions and were elaborated from a selection of nursing interventions (NIC) [ 39 ], adapting them to the tasks or activities derived from the most common interventions in the Adult Inpatient Units of Internal Medicine and Surgery. In addition, each item was assigned a specific execution time after a mapping between the real time measured under current care conditions and the time standardized by NANDA (North American Nursing Diagnosis Association), so that it would be as close as possible to the current reality.

The MIDENF ® scale [ 41 ] consists of 21 items, each item containing one or more NIC nursing interventions associated with the same time of application. The scale is applied to each patient in each work shift, noting the number of times each intervention/item is performed. The total time spent on that patient is calculated by adding the resulting times for each intervention performed. A nurse’s care workload is calculated by adding the time spent on each of the patients they take care of during that work shift. To this time, the time devoted to unit management, teaching and research, during the same work shift is added in order to determine the total workload of the nurse in the work shift measured.

The MIDENF ® scale [ 41 ] consists of 15 items for the care function, with their corresponding execution times: self-care (17 min), prevention (2 min), medication (9 min), specimens (5 min), health education (3 min), nutrition (7 min), common invasive procedures (11 min), wounds (9 min), fluid therapy (22 min), device care (13 min), monitoring (2 min), airway (6 min), positioning (4 min), comfort (3 min), and patient and family support (8 min); 4 items for the management function: 3 items for patient-related management of 9 min each (which includes care performed on admission and discharge from the unit) and 1 item for unit management, 21 min); one item for teaching (16 min); and one item for research (20 min).

In addition, it includes a separate set of items considered complementary, which are activities that are usually performed on occasion in these units, although less frequently than the previous ones, and also have their assigned time: cardiac arrest (35 min), complex administrations (chemotherapy 18 min, blood products 10 min), transfers (60 min), occasional invasive procedures (9 min), isolation (11 min), behavior (50 min), interventions shared with the physician (27 min), and end-of-life care (38 min).

2.5. Data Collection Procedure

The data corresponding to workloads were collected during the year 2020, applying the MIDENF ® scale [ 41 ] to patients admitted to the Internal Medicine and Surgery Inpatient Units of the 4 participating hospitals. Data were collected for 2 days per month on each shift for 9 months (January to February and June to December 2020), interrupted in March, April and May due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Each nurse, who then measured their level of job satisfaction, completed a MIDENF ® scale [ 41 ] for each patient they took care of during their work shift. These data were introduced in a software designed for this study, where data were registered for the same nurse or reference person responsible for this study in each hospital. This procedure was repeated each day of measurement, registering and analyzing the workload of all the patients admitted in the units of study per shift and day, measuring in minutes the attention given by the nurse to each patient and the rest of the activities carried out according to the 4 nursing functions.

The procedure for collecting data related to job satisfaction from the same professionals who participated in the measurement of workloads was then carried out using the Overall Job Satisfaction sale developed by Warr, Cook and Wall [ 43 ]. The scale was sent via e-mail or delivered in paper format in person to the Supervisors of the participating units or the Area Supervisors of Healthcare Quality, who distributed it among the personnel of the selected units. After a few days, the completed scales were collected in paper format in person by the principal investigator of the research project.

2.6. Statistical Analysis

In the statistical analysis performed with the R program [ 42 ], a descriptive analysis of the 18 variables was performed, by units and hospitals, crossing the questions of the different dimensions according to the sociodemographic variables of the questionnaire. A descriptive analysis, a graphic and the inference were presented. At the same time, an inferential study by satisfaction and workloads was developed, crossing the independent variables, or sociodemographic and occupational variables (sex, age, time working in the services/units), with the results of the dependent variables “overall satisfaction”, “extrinsic satisfaction” and “intrinsic satisfaction” of the professionals, as well as with the variables that provided us with the results of “overall workload”, “care workload” and “management workload”, obtained in the same units in the previous study using the MIDENF ® scale [ 41 ]. Non-parametric tests were used, since they are the most robust test for ordinal data; the Mann–Whitney U test was used for crosses with two-level factors, and the Kruskal–Wallis K test for crosses with factors of three or more levels. When significant differences were detected, the effect size is shown by using Cohen’s d for two-group crossovers, and eta squared for crossovers of three or more levels.

Although the Overall Job Satisfaction scale developed by Warr, Cook and Wall [ 43 ] is already validated, a validation of it was also performed in this study with the data obtained, an analysis of the reliability [ 46 ] of this scale, understood as the degree of precision offered by a measurement, with 4 indices: Cronbach’s overall alpha, the Composite Reliability (CR) index, the Average Variance Extracted (AVE) index and McDonald’s Omega index [ 46 ]. To verify construct validity, an Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was performed, obtaining the Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin coefficient (KMO), after verifying the correlation matrix of the data, in order to identify variables that were poorly or highly correlated, and Bartlett’s test was performed to rule out the similarity of the matrix with the identity matrix. Finally, a descriptive analysis of the levels of overall job satisfaction, extrinsic satisfaction and intrinsic satisfaction was carried out, by unit and shift, in each of the four hospitals analyzed.

The results obtained from the 104 questionnaires—52 corresponding to IM nurses and 52 to surgical nurses—from the four participating hospitals analyzed 18 variables. The variables corresponding to the mean age by sex of the respondents and the mean time in years of work in the units evaluated yielded very similar results among the units participating in this study ( Table 2 ). A total of 87 women (83.65%) and 17 men (16.35%) were studied, with a mean age of 39.75 years (ranging from 35 to 46 years), an average working life (years worked since finishing nursing degree) of 15.125 years (ranging from 12 to 19 years), and an average of 11.5 years working in the unit studied (from 8 to 18 years). Since there were similar results in all the participating units, the professional profile of nurses working in this type of unit is very similar: a 39-year-old woman, working for 15 years, of which there are 11 in the units studied ( Table 2 ).

Variables analyzed from the participants.

In the inference made between the variables of mean time in years worked and each unit studied, using the Kruskal–Wallis statistical analysis, a quasi-significant p -value of 0.05755 was obtained. The rest of the analyses between these sociodemographic variables and workload and job satisfaction did not show statistical significance.

The evaluation of global satisfaction corresponding to each item of the Overall Job Satisfaction scale developed by Warr, Cook and Wall [ 43 ] was presented ( Table 3 ), showing the percentages corresponding to the maximum and minimum responses obtained for each item, as well as for each response option (from 1 “very dissatisfied” to 7 “very satisfied”). The mean and median obtained for each item were also calculated ( Table 3 ).

Descriptive statistic of the satisfaction scale items.

Being ordinal data, among the medians obtained in each item, we highlight those corresponding to item 9 “Relationship between management and workers in your firm” and item 11 “The way your firm is managed”, since they have obtained the lowest medians, with a value of 4, and therefore, the highest percentages of dissatisfaction, 35.6% and 45.2%, respectively ( Table 3 ). The highest satisfaction was obtained in item 3 “Satisfaction with your fellow workers” and item 5 “Satisfaction with your immediate boss”, with overall satisfaction percentages of 96.2% and 94.2%, respectively. Both items with more satisfactory results and the items with less satisfactory results correspond to those included in the extrinsic factors group, i.e., those related to aspects related to work organization.

In the interference analysis, statistically significant differences regarding the hospital were obtained for item 1 (“physical work conditions”), 7 (“rate of pay”) and 14 (“variety of tasks performed in their job”) with a p value of p = 0.00, item 3 (“satisfaction with coworkers”) with a p value = 0.01, item 6 (“the amount of responsibility you are given”) with a p value = 0.02, and item 10 (“chance of promotion”) with a p value = 0.03. Regarding the unit, statistical significance was only obtained for item 13 (“hours of work”), with a p value = 0.03. The overall satisfaction obtained throughout this study was 75.63 (on a 10–105-point scale), with a standard deviation of 14.14 ( Table 4 ).

Comparison of the results obtained for the different types of satisfaction.

When observing the different types of satisfaction obtained, intrinsic satisfaction, which deals with aspects related to the recognition obtained for the work, responsibility, promotion, task content, etc., obtained a mean of 35.28 (the scoring scale ranges from 7 and 49), and a standard deviation of 7.25 ( Table 4 ). Extrinsic satisfaction, related to aspects of work organization, and following a rating scale ranging from 8 to 56 points, resulted in an average of 40.36, with a standard deviation of 7.44 ( Table 4 ).

No significant differences were obtained between the sociodemographic variables with workload and satisfaction, and a statistical quasi-significance was obtained between workload and job satisfaction in relation with the hospital studied, especially when it is in general or care type. If we look at the results by unit and hospital, we see that overall satisfaction is very similar in Internal Medicine, with a mean score of approximately 80 points, scoring 66.15 in Hospital D, with a standard deviation of 16.01. This was also the case in the specialty of Surgery, where all hospitals had a mean satisfaction score of approximately 74–79 points, with Hospital D scoring 68.92, with a standard deviation of 18.54 points ( Table 5 ). This is also true when we differentiate between the two types of satisfaction, as the mean obtained in intrinsic satisfaction scores of approximately 35–37 points for the two types of units studied, with the exception of those corresponding to Hospital D, which range between 30 and 32 points. As for extrinsic satisfaction, the average score is between 39 and 44 points, with the exception of the same hospital, which continues to be the one with the lowest score of approximately 35–36 ( Table 5 ).

Comparison of workload and job satisfaction by unit and hospital.

Regarding the reliability analysis of the scale, it was studied with four indices. First, an overall Cronbach’s alpha of 0.89 was obtained, which is considered excellent. On the other hand, a Composite Reliability (CR) of 0.89, considered good, and an Average Variance Extracted (AVE) index of 0.37, considered fair, were obtained. Finally, a McDonald’s Omega index of 0.94 was obtained, which is considered excellent [ 46 ]. To verify construct validity, an Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was performed, after verifying the correlation matrix of the data, in order to identify variables that were poorly or highly correlated, and Bartlett’s test was performed to rule out the similarity of the matrix with the identity matrix (a significant result was obtained that ruled out such similarity). With the EFA, a Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin (KMO) coefficient of 0.82 was obtained, which was considered very good.

As mentioned above, this study is part of a larger research project in which workload has been measured using the MIDENF ® scales [ 41 ] in the same units and hospitals where this job satisfaction study has been conducted. Therefore, Table 5 also shows the results obtained regarding the measurement of nursing workloads, in general and differentiating between care and management workloads, in order to verify whether there is a relationship between the workload of nursing professionals and their degree of job satisfaction. When the corresponding inference was made in the statistical analysis, no significant association was obtained between these variables. We note that Hospital D is not only the hospital with the highest level of dissatisfaction, but also the hospital with highest workload, both in general terms and in terms of care, the latter being particularly noteworthy, with results clearly higher than the rest of the hospitals in the two units studied ( Table 5 ).

Regarding the inference analysis, no statistically significant differences for these two variables with respect to the sociodemographic variables. Only two quasi-significant differences were observed between general and care workload of the hospital, with a p value = 0.08, which corroborates the differences between these data descriptively ( Table 5 ).

4. Discussion

Job satisfaction is an indicator of workers’ well-being and quality of working life, so studying this indicator within health care organizations deserves special treatment, given its direct impact on the quality of the service provided [ 11 , 32 , 33 , 47 , 48 ] and patient safety [ 11 , 48 , 49 , 50 , 51 , 52 ]. Several studies show the evident relationship between job dissatisfaction with the negative consequences that derive from it, such as burnout and depersonalization [ 49 ], and a deficient quality of care [ 11 , 48 ], and patient safety [ 11 , 48 , 49 , 50 , 51 , 52 ], establishing a significant relationship in which higher levels of burnout are associated with lower patient safety [ 51 , 52 ], which is manifested in fewer notifications of incidents and side effects. The seriousness of the consequences that result from job dissatisfaction for both the patient and the professional highlight the interest and the need for research on this topic.

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed studies on the areas of opportunity in the health system and the necessity of a greater number of nursing professionals, showing a statistically significant association between the work context of nursing professionals, the type of institution where they work, the work shift and the risk of having been infected with COVID-19, something that affected the satisfaction levels of the professionals. These studies also describe the lack of appreciation for nursing professionals and their lack of participation in decision making [ 53 ]. The new worldwide challenge brought to us by the COVID-19 pandemic has been the “alarm bell” that has shown worldwide that it is essential to establish measures that analyze those organizational factors that put the professional’s psychosocial health at risk due to potential stress, burnout, and other elements of physical or emotional exhaustion that generate job dissatisfaction and a decrease in performance and quality of care [ 54 ].

Given this situation, job satisfaction is subject to different factors related to our work relationships [ 10 ], whether with bosses or co-workers, professional recognition in all aspects, organizational and management climate, work–family balance, training and access to promotion, activities and tasks, etc., factors that are not always equally satisfactory for everyone, even if we are in the same working conditions, due to the subjectivity with which we perceive the coverage of needs [ 35 ]. Our research has focused on the association between job satisfaction and workload, without going into all the connotation presented by other research on psychosocial health problems, feelings of burnout of nursing professionals, sleep disturbances, stress, etc. [ 11 , 19 , 25 ], as factors that generate bio-psychosocial consequences that can affect their levels of satisfaction and, in certain circumstances, associated with other sociodemographic and occupational factors [ 11 , 55 , 56 ].

Job satisfaction among nurses can be influenced by a variety of extrinsic and intrinsic factors [ 28 , 45 , 57 ]. The results of our study show a relationship between job satisfaction and workload, with high workloads and low levels of satisfaction, as is predictable and appears in other studies [ 11 , 19 , 25 , 26 ]. However, at the same time, there is not always statistical significance according to the type of workload (care or management), and according to the parameters analyzed in the evaluation instrument used, since the degree of “intrinsic satisfaction”, “extrinsic satisfaction” and “overall satisfaction”, related to workloads and type of workloads, is not the same—extrinsic satisfaction, related to aspects of work organization, was higher than intrinsic satisfaction. Other studies agree with our study in showing that, analyzing according to Herzberg’s factors [ 28 , 45 ] (intrinsic and extrinsic), when we relate job satisfaction with workload, the items referring to “relationship with fellow workers” and “relationship with immediate boss” generate more satisfaction, showing that the nurses’ work environment influences job satisfaction [ 56 , 57 , 58 ]. In addition, those items referring to “relationship with managers” and “management of the firm” [ 56 ] also have an influence, because the social cohesion of the superior with the rest of the professionals in their discipline and work commitment were positively and significantly related to job satisfaction [ 59 ].

Work environment is a well-known predictor of job satisfaction among nurses as an extrinsic factor, while personal initiative may play a role as an intrapersonal (intrinsic) characteristic [ 57 ]. In our study and others consulted [ 25 , 26 , 56 , 57 , 58 ], it is evident that the work environment can contribute to improve personal initiative and job satisfaction, since negative work environments affect burnout through job dissatisfaction [ 11 , 36 ], as shown in the results obtained. A higher workload, associated with a more negative environment, is related to lower job satisfaction, as we can see in the results of Hospital D in the two units studied. It is also reflected in that the items that have shown more satisfaction have been those related to “satisfaction with fellow workers” (96.2%) and “satisfaction with immediate boss” (94.2%), with whom you share the daily workday and directly influence the work environment. This is consistent with the evidence [ 11 ] that having supportive factors and positive relationships at work, including relationships with other professionals, hospital management, support from the leader or boss, a positive leadership style, organizational support, and teamwork, could play a protective role against burnout, and influence greater job satisfaction, by having a direct effect on emotional exhaustion and personal fulfillment [ 11 , 60 ]. This situation also appears in Hospital B, which has the greatest management workload and a high care load; but since it is a new hospital, with young staff (with more personal initiative) and a better work environment, job satisfaction is the highest both in general and when evaluating extrinsic and intrinsic factors, which confirms that it is the hospital where the staff have spent the most years working on average in the units studied.

Likewise, within the extrinsic satisfaction factors, research focused on nursing professionals in care tasks has shown that the relationship with managers generates stress and dissatisfaction in the workplace [ 61 ]. This has also been reflected in our results, obtaining the lowest satisfaction in the items “relation between management and workers” (35.6%), and the “way your firm is managed” (45.2%). All these are considered as factors of “extrinsic satisfaction” related to the organization, and similarly, other publications conclude that decentralization in management would improve the levels of satisfaction in administrative tasks [ 62 ]. This shows the need for hospital management to apply new strategies to improve the working conditions of nurses, related to both extrinsic and intrinsic factors, based on the results obtained in studies as diverse as ours and others consulted [ 35 , 59 , 61 , 62 ].

As for intrinsic factors, where we obtained lower satisfaction, with statistically significant differences regarding the hospital only in the items related to the “assigned responsibility” and the “variety of tasks you perform in your job”, we can assume that these two aspects would be the most influential when it comes to continuing in the job, since varying tasks and having more responsibility are challenges for the professional that increase their personal initiative and influence their satisfaction. This is also indicated by other studies [ 3 , 35 , 57 ], where job demands and intrinsic aspects of the job, including role conflict, autonomy and variety of tasks, are associated with some dimensions of burnout and, therefore, with job dissatisfaction [ 11 ]. In this way, the influence of intrinsic factors on the professional is demonstrated in a personal way, generating burnout when dissatisfaction related to them increases, and in a professional way, affecting their work situation.

Regarding the degree of professional satisfaction—extrinsic, intrinsic or overall—associated with IM or Surgery units, our results do not show statistical significance between IM and Surgery units (only in the inference analysis, with respect to the unit, statistical significance was obtained in item 13, related to “working hours”). This indicates that the level of satisfaction may be the same in any of the adult units, regardless of the type of patient, since the difference lies in the type and amount of workload, as well as in the work environment [ 56 , 57 , 58 ] and the perception of workload and burnout among medical-surgical nurses, which significantly influences the intention to leave the current job [ 35 ]. Regarding work conditions related to job dissatisfaction, the shift and work schedule stand out in our study. We see that all the units follow a 12 h shift (one day they work 12 h during the day and the next 12 h at night, resting the following 3 days), which has a positive influence on job satisfaction, since it was the only item that obtained statistical significance, which is related to studies that state that having more than 8 days off per month is associated with less burnout and more job satisfaction [ 11 , 62 ]. On the other hand, shifts longer than 12 h have been associated with more emotional exhaustion [ 11 , 63 ]. We can highlight that one of the aspects that most influences job satisfaction is not related to the type of patient or unit in which one works, but rather depends on the working conditions and the relationship between workload and working hours, the latter being an important determinant of professional satisfaction.

Other studies on the levels of satisfaction associated with leadership or management profiles in IM and surgical units claim that, as in our study, they do not differ from each other, finding these differences between these hospitalization and special emergency units [ 61 , 64 ]. In turn, we found bibliographic documentation that shows that aspects related to the development of competencies, the management of units and the relationship with colleagues are well valued in all units, regardless of the type of patient in them, as obtained in our results. Adding some of these studies, it is necessary for nursing managers to include a new work perspective to address the job satisfaction of nurses, taking into account all the attributes that influence the field of nursing [ 35 , 59 , 61 , 62 , 64 , 65 ]. It is precisely the implications for nursing management that make it necessary to intervene and create new strategies to improve work and favor contractual conditions. There are several proposals to achieve this, where we highlight those focused on professionals, such as promoting teamwork, developing management and leadership skills in nurses, achieving internal promotion, promoting greater participation in decision making and achieving a better balance of power between administrators of health care institutions and health professionals [ 3 , 35 , 57 ].

Another aspect to highlight is the relationship between the type of workload and satisfaction, since, in our study, the degree of dissatisfaction is higher with respect to the care workload and lower with respect to the management workload, regardless of the type of unit. This is a result that does not coincide with other studies [ 11 , 19 , 25 , 26 , 33 , 34 , 66 ], which present more dissatisfaction related to management workload, arguing that an organizational cultural change is needed based on participation, motivation, commitment and involvement, and to increase support for management workload in nursing [ 66 ]. Therefore, it is necessary to develop workload measurement scales, as the one created in our research project [ 41 ], that identify the type of workload within all nursing functions (care, education, management and research), as well as the difference between special units, such as critical care units, where there is a long track record in this area [ 67 ], and inpatient units, less studied so far [ 68 ]. In these units, activities differ greatly, since, in this profession, the workload is not only focused on the care function, but is affected by all the activities, of different types, that the nurse carries out to offer quality care to their patients.

5. Conclusions

• The levels of job satisfaction of nursing professionals in general and regarding intrinsic and extrinsic factors as well as the relationship between workload were determined in IM and Surgery units of the four hospitals that participated, obtaining the objectives set. Both the items with the most satisfactory and the least satisfactory results correspond to those included in the group of extrinsic factors, related to aspects of job organization.
• Among the extrinsic factors that influence job satisfaction, the work environment stands out, where a high workload, associated with a negative environment, is related to greater job dissatisfaction among nurses. Another factor that negatively affects nurses, regardless of the department where they work, is the relationship with management and its hospital management model. Satisfaction with co-workers and with the immediate boss are the aspects most highly valued by professionals and which generate the greatest job satisfaction.
• Job satisfaction, whether overall, extrinsic or intrinsic, is similar in any of the units, whether Internal Medicine or Surgery, with no major differences between the hospitals studied.
• Intrinsic satisfaction (dealing with aspects related to the recognition obtained for the work, responsibility, promotion, task content, etc.) obtained a lower score (mean of 35.28), and therefore more dissatisfaction among the professionals than extrinsic satisfaction, related to aspects of work organization (with a mean of 40.36). This may indicate that the aspects valued by intrinsic satisfaction are not satisfactorily developed in the Inpatient Units, since the personnel tend to value them negatively because they do not develop satisfactorily in the Hospitalization Units [ 36 ]. This may show that the aspects valued by intrinsic satisfaction are not developed in a satisfactory way in the Inpatient Units, since the personnel tend to value them negatively because they cannot perform them in their workplaces.
• No significant differences were obtained between the sociodemographic variables with workload and job satisfaction, which may be due to the fact that the profile of the nurses working in the study units, regardless of the hospital studied, is very similar, as well as the structural characteristics of the units.
• As for the objective of determining the association between the different workloads in nursing and overall, extrinsic and intrinsic job satisfaction levels, a statistical quasi-significance was obtained between workload and job satisfaction in relation to the hospital studied, generally and based on type of care.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank all the people and institutions that have collaborated with this project: the Carlos III Health Institute and Biomedical Research Institute of Murcia (IMIB) for their financial support and management of the project, the Statistical Support Section (SAE), the Area of Science and Research (ACTI), University of Murcia ( www.um.es/web/acti (accessed on 15 September 2022) for their statistical analysis, and the IMIB bioinformatics platform for the data collection software. To the 4 participating hospitals for allowing this research project to be carried out in their centers (H.C.U.V. Arrixaca, H.G.U. Reina Sofía, H.G.U. Santa Lucía and H.G.U. Los Arcos del Mar Menor), to all the nursing staff and experts who participated, as well as to the Supervisors of the units under study, and to the Quality Area Supervisors of the Santa Lucía and Los Arcos del Mar Menor Hospitals.

Funding Statement

This research has been funded by the Carlos III Health Institute (FEDER funds), grant number PI18/00950.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, M.F.H.G. and M.J.L.M.; methodology, M.F.H.G., J.A.R.H., A.M.S.L. and M.J.L.M.; software, M.F.H.G.; validation, M.F.H.G. and F.J.I.-L.; formal analysis, F.J.I.-L.; investigation, M.F.H.G., J.A.R.H., F.J.I.-L., A.M.S.L., M.D.R.V., M.M. and M.J.L.M.; resources, M.F.H.G.; data curation, M.F.H.G., M.D.R.V., M.M. and F.J.I.-L.; writing—original draft preparation, M.F.H.G. and M.J.L.M.; writing—review and editing, M.F.H.G., J.A.R.H., F.J.I.-L. and M.J.L.M.; visualization, M.F.H.G. and M.J.L.M.; supervision, M.F.H.G., J.A.R.H., A.M.S.L. and M.J.L.M.; projects administration, M.F.H.G. and M.J.L.M.; funding acquisition, M.F.H.G. and M.J.L.M. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Institutional Review Board Statement

This study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and was approved by the Institutional Review Board (or Ethics Committee) of the CEIC H.C.U.V. Arrixaca-Biomedical Research Institute of Murcia (IMIB) (protocol code 04/2018, dated 23 April 2018).

Informed Consent Statement

Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in this study. Written informed consent has been obtained from the patient(s) to publish this document.

Data Availability Statement

Conflicts of interest.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Lack of growth opportunities is a big reason why employees leave jobs. Here’s how to change that

By investing in employee growth, companies can reduce costly turnover and increase job satisfaction among employees of all ranks

• Healthy Workplaces
• Managing Human Capital

APA’s 2024 Work in America survey found that nearly a quarter (23%) of American workers are not satisfied with their opportunities for growth and development at their place of work. What’s worse is that this lack of opportunity for advancement is one of the top reasons why Americans quit their jobs , according to a 2022 survey by the Pew Research Center.

By investing in employee growth, companies can reduce costly turnover and increase job satisfaction among employees at all levels. Here are some key workplace strategies that successfully foster growth:

Quality training and mentoring

“Organizations should talk about the three Es: experience, expertise, and exposure,” said Jeff McHenry, PhD, principal of Seattle-based Rainier Leadership Solutions. An industrial-organizational (I/O) psychologist, McHenry works with companies to create a culture centered on employee growth. “To grow someone’s skills effectively, you need to provide them with assignments that stretch them,” he said. Design projects that involve multiple departments so employees can cross-pollinate their skills and understand the company’s bigger picture.

This management mindset is difficult for leaders who “hoard” their talent, added Rich Cober, PhD, an I/O psychologist and managing vice president at Gartner, a research and advisory firm that helps companies develop and implement human resource strategies. “To create an ecosystem of development—which is often on the experiential side—you have to give great workers the space to work in other areas.”

Pathways for career advancement

To keep top performers, more companies today are developing talent marketplaces—online portals where employees can see current openings, read job descriptions, and understand the organizational hierarchy. These tools allow employees to map out their personal career trajectory, said Tim McGonigle, vice president at the Human Resources Research Organization. What’s more, the tools provide organizational transparency, thus fostering inclusion and diversity.

“In the past, employees may have relied [solely] on a mentor/manager to help navigate their careers,” he said. With a career-path system, employees have accurate, up-to-date information to do it themselves.

Career-pathing tools also benefit employees who don’t aspire to be the CEO someday. “It’s good to think in terms of a career ladder but also think of a career lattice—with lateral moves,” Cober said. Companies “can win by showing employees a path to becoming stronger and well-rounded,” he said. “It’s important in a world where change is constant.”

Relevant, reciprocal feedback

“The holy grail of performance management is for leaders to have really good conversations with their people about how they’re doing,” Cober said. That involves managers giving frequent, honest assessments, but also listening when employees talk about their needs. “The pandemic has created a moment where there’s much more appreciation for the total person as an employee. If you take care of them and their families, they will perform better and be more engaged.”

A holistic approach also considers employees’ psychological well-being, he added. “Mental health used to be taboo, but companies now want an open dialogue about the support people need,” Cober said.

Learning and accomplishment

With an emphasis on learning, companies can create a fluid, flexible workforce. One approach is “upskilling,” internal programs that teach new skills or upgrade existing skills. Notably, upskilled workers are more likely to report career advancement into a good job, experts say.

Separately, offering college-tuition benefits helps employees earn a degree debt-free and accomplish long-term career goals . This benefit is particularly attractive to entry-level workers in fields like fast food, retail, and health care.

Further reading

The Importance of Work in an Age of Uncertainty: The Eroding Work Experience in America Blustein, D. L., Oxford University Press , 2019

Organizational career growth and high-performance work systems: The roles of job crafting and organizational innovation climate Miao, R., et al., Journal of Vocational Behavior , 2023

Why Learning is Essential to Employee Engagement Kitto, K., Glint , 2020

Why Companies Should Pay for Employees to Further Their Education McDonough, T., & Oldham, C.,  Harvard Business Review , 2020  

Lack of Career Development Drives Employee Attrition Morris, S., Gartner , 2018

Recommended Reading

Work in america 2024.

• U.S. workers adjust to the changing nature of employment
• Psychological safety in the changing workplace

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Chart of the month: Veterinary teams and job satisfaction

Are you ready for some good news about veterinarians’ job satisfaction and wellbeing? Today’s chart shows that the majority of veterinarians are extremely or very satisfied with their jobs. In fact, veterinarians have a higher satisfaction rate than the general U.S. population.

What the data show

The most recent Merck Animal Health Veterinary Wellbeing Study found that 56% of veterinarians were extremely or very satisfied with their jobs. By comparison, 51% of the general U.S. population indicated that same job satisfaction level in a recent Pew Research Center survey.

Among other veterinary team members , the 2023 Merck study found that hospital administrators also were more likely than the general population to be extremely/very satisfied with their jobs. However, veterinary technicians, veterinary assistants, and receptionists/customer service representatives were less likely to feel that way.

The study also showed the majority of practice team members experienced low to medium burnout, and found high levels of pride and engagement in work across veterinary teams. It also pointed to an increase in the availability of mental health resources for veterinary professionals.

The Merck study is conducted every two years, in collaboration with the AVMA. 

What does this mean?

The veterinary profession has made much progress on mental health, wellbeing, and burnout. The results of this survey highlight the continued need for attention on team members, and strategies to boost their job satisfaction.

While the factors impacting satisfaction will be as varied as the individuals who make up our veterinary teams, the study did find common themes. Among practice team members, the most important issue was “poor compensation of veterinary practice employees,” with 68% of respondents rating this as critically important. Exhaustion and work-life balance were other factors of concern. 

AVMA resources support team wellbeing

The AVMA is dedicated to championing and promoting satisfaction and wellbeing within the profession, and has developed a wide range of tools to support these goals for every member of the veterinary team. Find these resources at avma.org/Wellbeing . 

What’s more, the AVMA is sponsoring research to identify effective, evidence-based resources and interventions for individuals and team leaders to leverage to help reduce burnout and support team engagement. Read more about the studies .   Delve deeper into the data around team member compensation in this blog: Chart of the month: Compensation growth—A key to team retention .

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