Job Satisfaction in Britain
| Published date | 01 June 1996 |
| Date | 01 June 1996 |
| Author | Andrew E. Clark |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.1996.tb00648.x |
British
Journal
of
Industrial Relations
342
June
1996 0007-1080
pp.
189-217
Job
Satisfaction in Britain
Andrew
E.
Clark
Abstract
Little recent empirical work in economics
or
industrial relations
has
examined
job
satisfaction, despite its demonstrated correlation with labour market
behaviour such
as
quits, absenteeism and productivity. This paper uses
information from a study
of
5000
British employees to investigate the
relationship between three measures
of
job
satisfaction and a wide range
of
individual and
job
characteristics. Notably, men, workers
in
their thirties, the
well-educate4 those working longer hours and workers
in
larger establish-
ments have lower levels
of
job
satisfaction. The estimated job satisfaction
equations are used to calculate a measure
of
the shadow wage and to provide
some evidence that
is
consistent with the existence
of
non-compensating
differentials in the industry and occupational wage structure.
1.
Introduction
Job satisfaction remains a variable that has been relatively little studied in
economics and industrial relations, despite a wealth of papers in other social
science disciplines such as psychology, sociology and management science.’
The analysis of job satisfaction is of interest for two reasons. First, it is a
measure of individual well-being, and many
social
scientists would consider
the distribution of welfare to
be
one of their pMcipal concerns. Second, the
analysis of job satisfaction may give us a number of insights into certain
aspects of the labour market. Workers’ decisions about their labour force
participation, whether to stay on at a job or to quit, and how much effort to
devote to their job are all likely to depend in part upon the workers’
subjective evaluation of their work, in other words on their job satisfaction.
The other side of the labour market consists of
lirms,
who prefer that their
workers be satisfied.
This
paper uses both bivariate and regression techniques to examine the
distribution of three different measures of
job
satisfaction in a recent British
data set. The empirical results relate workers’ job satisfaction to individual
characteristics, such as gender, age and education, and to job character-
istics, such as establishment size, promotion, hours and pay. Males, workers
Andrew
Clark
is
with
the
OED,
DEELSA,
in
Paris.
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Blackwell
Publishers Ltd/London School
of
Economics
1996.
Published by
Blackwell
Publishers
Ltd,
108
cowley
Road,
Oxford,
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and
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Street,
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USA.
190
British Journal
of
Industrial Relations
in their thirties, those with higher levels of education, workers in larger
establishments, workers without opportunities for promotion and those
working longer hours are found to have relatively low levels
of
job
satisfaction. Income is strongly positively associated with one measure of
satisfaction -pay
-
but much less strongly correlated with the overall level
of job satisfaction. This finding can be explained by the presence
of
unobserved omitted variables, which are correlated with both overall
satisfaction and income, or by the presence of comparison effects in the job
satisfaction function, whereby some characteristics of the worker’s job are
compared with the job characteristics of some reference group, or with the
workers’ own expectations about their jobs. The observed pattern of job
satisfaction responses by gender, age and education is argued to be
consistent with the presence of such relativities.
Section
2
presents a brief discussion of the concept
of
job satisfaction. The
data and the distribution of job satisfaction are presented in Section
3.
The
fourth section analyses statistically the relationship between job satisfaction
and a number of individual and job characteristics. Section
5
uses the results
of the regression analysis to estimate job satisfaction responses for a number
of ‘benchmark’ individuals. Section
6
proposes a new methodology, based
on these regressions, for the calculation
of
the extra income necessary to
compensate a worker for an extra hour of work (the ‘shadow wage’) and
investigates the claim that inter-industry and inter-occupational wage
differentials represent rents to workers, and do not compensate for un-
observed ability or job characteristics. Section 7 concludes.
2.
Job
satisfaction
and
utility
The Concept
of
Job
Satisfaction
A
classic reference for the meaning of job satisfaction is Locke (1976), who
traces interest in workers’ subjective well-being back to the ideas
of
scientific
management and fatigue reduction at the beginning of the century. Locke
defines job satisfaction as ‘a pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting
from the appraisal of one’s job or job experiences’ (p. 1300). Satisfaction,
according to different schools of thought, depends variously on the
individual’s expectations, needs (physical and psychological) and values.’
More specifically, work attributes that involve mental challenge (autonomy,
complexity, the opportunity to use abilities and to learn new ones,
responsibility, etc.) lead to satisfaction, although the relationship is
concave: too much mental challenge can bring about dissatisfaction as well
as too little. Hence both challenge and some measure of achievement are
important. Locke also highlights the link between personal interest and
recognition and job satisfaction. The role of pay is discussed at length, from
the basis of ‘equity’, ‘discrepancy’ or ‘relative deprivation’ theories, which
imply that it is not only the absolute level of pay that matters to workers but
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Publishers
Ltd/London
School
of
Economics
19%.
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