It ain’t necessarily so
Posted by
Ricki Sharpe on
December 5, 2007
Filed Under
Personality, Work Behaviour
It seems obvious that the happier someone is in their job, the more productive they should be as a worker. That is, contented workers perform well, unhappy ones don’t. It seems simple enough. Well, it ain’t necessarily so, according to recent research published in the Journal of Vocational Behaviour.
Nathan Bowling of Wright State University, Ohio, suggests the relationship between satisfaction and performance at work is largely spurious, with both factors having more to do with an employee’s personality and self-esteem than they have to do with each other.
Bowling re-examined five previous meta-analyses that controlled for personality while examining the relationship between job satisfaction and performance.
He also conducted a meta-analysis of his own, focusing on studies that controlled for self-esteem and locus of control. In all, these analyses involved data from thousands of staff at numerous different organisations.
Bowling found that the satisfaction–performance relationship was partially eliminated after controlling for either general personality traits (e.g., Five Factor Model traits and core self-evaluations) or for locus of control and was almost completely eliminated after controlling for self-esteem.
“My study shows that a cause and effect relationship does not exist between job satisfaction and performance. Instead, the two are related because both satisfaction and performance are the result of employee personality characteristics, such as self-esteem, emotional stability, extroversion and conscientiousness,†he explained.
“Just because two things are related doesn’t mean that one causes the other. For example, there is a relationship between the amount of ice cream sold on a given day and the crime rate for that day. On days when ice cream sales are high, the number of crimes committed will also tend to be high. But this doesn’t mean that ice cream sales cause crime. Rather, ice cream sales and crime are related because each is the result of the outdoor temperature. Similarly, satisfaction and performance are related because each is the result of employee personality.”
Reference
Bowling, N.A. (2007). Is the job satisfaction-job performance relationship spurious? A meta-analytic examination. Journal of Vocational Behaviour, 71, 167-185.
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Allegedly Nathan Bowling’s study “shows that a cause and effect relationship does not exist between job satisfaction and performance. Instead, the two are related because both satisfaction and performance are the result of employee personality characteristics, such as self-esteem . . .” I doubt it.
The article suggests that high self-esteem is the cause of high job satisfaction. But an ambitious individual with high self-esteem would not be highly satisfied with a job that does not offer rewards and challenges commensurate with his or her contributions and capabilities. Any data suggesting otherwise should be reexamined.
Bowling claims that “satisfaction and performance are related because each is the result of employee personality.”
Bowling ignores the fact that environmental components can affect one’s personality (i.e., way of behavior). Obviously, people don’t come into the world completely preprogrammed with a personality immutable to environmental influences. Common sense suggests that the work environment and job satisfaction do indeed affect human behavior (e.g., job performance).