Introduction
The notion that employee job satisfaction should be a top priority for managers has been one of much debate. Although managers have many roles in organizations, their most important purpose is to manage their organizations in a way that can maximize profits. Thus, investing time, effort and money in ensuring that employees are satisfied in only worthwhile if it results in higher productivity and profitability for the firm.
Early theorist analyzed that increased profitability should increase with an increase in job satisfaction while later studies emerged to refute the existence of any significant relationship between the two variables. However, various literatures has more recently emerged drawing attention to the appropriate level of analysis that should be undertaken when examining this relationship.
There are many different variations of definitions for job satisfaction, but for the purposes of this topic, the following definition would be more appropriate: "Job satisfaction can be regarded as an evaluation of equitableness of treatments and conditions" (Organ, D.W. 1988).
Job satisfaction analysis
There are two schools of thought on the existence and causes of satisfaction. The first theory states that satisfaction is a fairly stable characteristic in individuals and the second theory states the cause of satisfaction is more situational and indicates that "the climate of the organization, job characteristics, and participation in decision making"(Organ, D.W. 1988) are some of the factors that influence satisfaction in employees. Thus, managers who subscribe to the job satisfaction - performance model (1st theory) can try to enhance workplace performance either through the recruitment of individuals with a predisposition to being sa ...