شالوده شکنی رضایت شغلی : ارزیابی های جداگانه، اعتقادات و تجربه های عاطفی

In this paper I argue that standard treatments of job satisfaction have inappropriately defined satisfaction as affect and in so doing have obscured the differences among three separate, if related, constructs. These key constructs are overall evaluative judgments about jobs, affective experiences at work, and beliefs about jobs. I show that clearly separating these constructs is consistent with current, basic research and theory on attitudes as well as with current research and theory on “subjective well-being” (SWB). I also argue that the separation of the constructs can produce better criterion predictions than job satisfaction has by itself, suggests new areas of research that cannot be envisioned when satisfaction and affect are treated as equivalent constructs, and requires the development of new measurement systems.

Let me begin by clearly stating the objectives of this paper, as well as its underlying logic. My basic position is that current definitions of job satisfaction, along with the research guided by these definitions, have obscured the differences among three related but distinct constructs: evaluations of jobs, beliefs about jobs, and affective experiences on jobs. I intend to show why it makes conceptual sense to separate these constructs, what the separation of these constructs can do for us theoretically and practically, and what we have to do methodologically to take advantage of this delineation. I want to make my objectives clear from the outset because I have received enough resistance to this position from reviewers and colleagues to indicate that while these distinctions appear obvious to me, consideration of these ideas causes severe pain in others. Foretold is forewarned.