case study on job satisfaction

• Open access
• Published: 03 May 2023

The management of healthcare employees’ job satisfaction: optimization analyses from a series of large-scale surveys

• Paola Cantarelli 1 ,
• Milena Vainieri 1 &
• Chiara Seghieri 1  

BMC Health Services Research volume  23 , Article number:  428 ( 2023 ) Cite this article

7104 Accesses

3 Citations

Metrics details

Measuring employees’ satisfaction with their jobs and working environment have become increasingly common worldwide. Healthcare organizations are not extraneous to the irreversible trend of measuring employee perceptions to boost performance and improve service provision. Considering the multiplicity of aspects associated with job satisfaction, it is important to provide managers with a method for assessing which elements may carry key relevance. Our study identifies the mix of factors that are associated with an improvement of public healthcare professionals’ job satisfaction related to unit, organization, and regional government. Investigating employees’ satisfaction and perception about organizational climate with different governance level seems essential in light of extant evidence showing the interconnection as well as the uniqueness of each governance layer in enhancing or threatening motivation and satisfaction.

This study investigates the correlates of job satisfaction among 73,441 employees in healthcare regional governments in Italy. Across four cross sectional surveys in different healthcare systems, we use an optimization model to identify the most efficient combination of factors that is associated with an increase in employees’ satisfaction at three levels, namely one’s unit, organization, and regional healthcare system.

Findings show that environmental characteristics, organizational management practices, and team coordination mechanisms correlates with professionals’ satisfaction. Optimization analyses reveal that improving the planning of activities and tasks in the unit, a sense of being part of a team, and supervisor’s managerial competences correlate with a higher satisfaction to work for one’s unit. Improving how managers do their job tend to be associated with more satisfaction to work for the organization.

Conclusions

The study unveils commonalities and differences of personnel administration and management across public healthcare systems and provides insights on the role that several layers of governance have in depicting human resource management strategies.

Peer Review reports

Introduction

Measuring employees’ satisfaction with their jobs and working environment have become increasingly common worldwide among government and public organizations across fields, including healthcare [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ]. Designing personnel policies that fit workers’ perceptions turned out to be uncontroversially relevant. Even more so during challenging times such as those generated by budget cuts and increased demands for public service provision [ 1 ] or caused by health and economic emergencies such as the COVID-19 outbreak [ 5 ]. The Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey administered by the United States Office of Personnel Management to federal civil servants is just the most famous example of how organizations can monitor workers’ attitudes and perceptions to manage human capital effectively [ 6 , 7 ]. Among the OECD governments administering surveys to their employees, the most common focus is on job satisfaction. Indeed, the number of countries that center the items of questionnaires on employees’ satisfaction is larger than those centering on work-life balance, employee motivation, or management effectiveness [ 1 ].

Public healthcare organizations are not extraneous to the irreversible trend of measuring employee perceptions to boost performance and improve service provision [ 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 ]. Indeed, asking employees to express their opinion on the work environment in which they operate daily to provide social and health services to citizens make them involved in the management and planning of activities. At the same time, employees’ feedback become a valuable resource for organizational management and an important tool to initiate targeted, efficient and effective improvement processes based on staff needs and expectations. Considering the multiplicity of aspects associated with job satisfaction, it is important to provide management with a method for assessing which elements it may be useful to focus on.

Our study is dedicated to identifying the mix of factors that are associated with an improvement of health professionals’ job satisfaction related to unit, organization, and regional government in the context of a series of large-scale surveys. Investigating employees’ satisfaction and perception about organizational climate with different governance levels seems essential in light of extant evidence showing the interconnection as well as the uniqueness of each governance layer in enhancing or threatening motivation and satisfaction across public administration fields, including government [ 12 , 13 ] and healthcare [ 14 , 15 , 16 ].

Our work provides several contributions to existing knowledge on the correlates of job satisfaction among civil servants in health organizations. Our findings may prove useful to scholars and practitioners alike. Firstly, to the best of our knowledge, this study is one of the first that employs optimization models for this purpose. In doing so, we espouse recent invitations to develop research projects that are context-sensitive and practical so to be able to develop middle range theories because optimization analyses is primarily meant to speak to managers and healthcare professionals [ 17 , 18 , 19 ]. Indeed, the main objective of the calculation of the optimization function is to provide some indications with a managerial value on the most efficient group of predictors – organizational variables – that can drive a preset level of improvement in job satisfaction so to close the science-practice gap in healthcare management work. In other words, the calculation provides a numerical information that shows how much organizational aspects weigh on the level of satisfaction. It was introduced for the first time in the field of health performance analysis by a group of researchers from the Ontario Ministry of Health in Canada [ 20 , 21 ] and subsequently used in the Italian context to analyze patient satisfaction emergency departments and nursing homes [ 22 , 23 ]. The use of optimization techniques in public administration is largely unexplored at the moment. Secondly, although unable to collect data across healthcare systems in the world, we account for common critiques about the external validity of findings in public administration research by combining large samples and survey replications in our research design [ 24 , 25 ]. Even in the country where the study is set, the number of respondents in our work is rather unique.

Job satisfaction in mission-driven organizations: a literature overview

Job satisfaction is one of the most investigated constructs by practitioners and scholars alike across disciplines such as health services [ 2 , 26 ], public administration [ 27 ] and applied psychology [ 28 , 29 ]. In the words of Hal Rainey [ 30 ], “thousands of studies and dozens of different questionnaire measures have made job satisfaction one of the most intensively studied variables in organizational research, if not the most studied” (p. 298).

Scholars across fields such as public administration, mainstream management, and psychology agree that work satisfaction construct includes facets related to the fulfillment of various and evolving individual needs and to the fit with numerous and changing organizational level variables [ 28 ]. Recent definitions by public administration and management scholars portray job satisfaction as an “affective or emotional response toward various components of one’s job” [ 31 ] (p. 246) or as “how an individual feels about his or her job and various aspects of it usually in the sense of how favorable – how positive or negative – those feelings are” [ 30 ] (p. 298). Previous definitions in mainstream management and applied psychology describe job satisfaction as “the feelings a worker has about his job” [ 32 ] (p. 100) or as “a pleasurable or positive emotional state, resulting from the appraisal of one’s job or job experiences” [ 33 ] (p. 1304).

The breadth and depth of scholarship onto job satisfactions has nurtured efforts to synthesize and systematize available knowledge through meta-analyses and systematic literature reviews in recent years. For instance, Cantarelli and colleagues [ 27 ], collected quantitative information from primary studies published in 42 public administration and management journals since 1969 and performed a meta-analysis of the relationships between job satisfaction and 43 correlates, which span from mission valence, job design features, work motivation, person job-fit, and demographic characteristics. Furthermore, Vigan and Giauque [ 34 ] present results from a systematic review of the association between work environment attributes, personal characteristics, and work features on the job satisfaction of public employees in African countries. Then, meta-analytic findings show a positive correlation between job satisfaction and public service motivation [ 35 ] and pay satisfaction [ 36 ].

At the same time, novel studies on work satisfaction among employees across typologies of organizations do not seem to have come to an end. To the contrary, for example, observational work still investigate the individual and organizational correlates of employees’ satisfaction in public healthcare organizations [ 3 , 16 , 37 , 38 , 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 ] and government institutions more in general [ 7 , 43 , 44 ]. A similar interest pertains to employees’ preferences in experimental scholarship in public hospital [ 45 ] and public organizations [ 46 ].

Based on the evidence summarized above, we investigate the association between public employees’ job satisfaction to work for their unit, organization, and government system and variables that pertains to the following broad domains: workplace safety, human resource management practices at the team level, supervisors’ managerial capabilities, management practices at the organizational level, and training opportunities.

Building on such experiences as the Federal Employees Viewpoint Survey [ 47 ] and the NHS staff survey, several healthcare systems in Italian Regions administer organizational climate questionnaires to all employees on a routine basis thanks to their collaboration with the Management and Healthcare Laboratory (Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, Italy). Italy currently features a national health service with three main hierarchical levels. The first layer is that of the national health departments that define general strategies, laws, and regulations and set general targets. Regional governments, then, are the second hierarchical level. They are in charge of implementing such strategies and meeting such targets. The 21 Italian Regions are autonomous in this implementation phase. As a result, the variation in the governance structures and healthcare services is large among regional health systems. The third layer includes all organizations (i.e., local health authorities, hospitals, and teaching hospitals) that are at the front-line of health services provision to the population.

The decision to administer an organizational climate survey pertains to the regional government. Members of the Management and Healthcare Laboratory (authors included) design organizational climate surveys together with regional healthcare systems, which, at its core, are interested in using results for sustaining managerial change across the healthcare system. The rationale behind the analysis of region-wide data is multifaceted. First of all, the measurement instrument used in our study has been validated [ 48 , 49 ] and used in previous work [ 9 ] for data analysis at the regional and subsequently organizational level. Secondly, our presentation of results tends to score high on ecological validity because of the mechanisms that govern the provision of healthcare services in Italy where decisions taken at the regional level are binding for organizations within the region. Thirdly, the presentation of results by region resonates with well-established practices on the international stage. Just as an example, NHS staff results are presented at the national level also. As a consequence, our survey includes management variables—such as communication, information sharing, training, budget procedures – that tend to cross the borders of professions. The participation of healthcare employees to the questionnaire is voluntary and anonymous. The survey is composed of statements to which respondents indicate their level of agreement on a 1 to 5 Likert-type sale (1 means full disagreement and 5 full agreement). The questionnaire measures employees’ perceptions about their job, organization, management practices, communication and information sharing processes, training opportunities, budget system, and working conditions [ 9 , 50 ].

The outcome variables in this study relate to employees’ job satisfaction for three hierarchical levels, namely satisfaction with one’ unit, organization, and regional health service. These layers are key in the Italian healthcare system. In fact, all three levels hold levers that can be pulled to affect job satisfaction. In particular, we used the following statements:

I am satisfied to work in my unit.

I am proud to tell others that I work in this organization.

I am proud to work for the health service of my Region.

We regress each of these three outcome variables on the following list of correlates, which are survey items that tap into different theoretical domains and represent dimensions that can be modified through organizational change initiatives:

The equipment in my unit is adequate.

My workplace is safe (electrical systems, fire and emergency measures, etc.).

My workload is manageable.

Meetings are organized regularly in my unit.

Work is well planned in my unit and this allows us to achieve goals.

Periodically I am given feedback from my supervisor on the quality of my work and the results achieved.

My suggestions for improvement are considered by my supervisor.

I feel like I'm part of a team that works together to achieve common goals.

My supervisor knows how to handle conflict.

I agree with the criteria adopted by my supervisor to evaluate my work.

My supervisor is fair in managing subordinates.

I believe that my supervisor carries out his job well.

My organization encourages change and innovation.

The organization encourages information sharing.

My supervisor encourages information sharing.

I know annual organizational goals.

I know annual organizational accomplishments.

The training activities offered by my organizations are useful in enhancing my competences.

The training activities offered by my organizations are useful in improving my communication skills with colleagues.

I appreciate how managers manage the organization.

My organization stimulates me to give my best in my work.

I am motivated to achieve organizational goals.

In my organization, merit is a fundamental value.

In my organization, the professional contribution of everyone is adequately recognized.

Following the methodology of Brown and colleagues [ 20 ], the first phase for the calculation of the optimization function consists of an ordinal logistic regression in which satisfaction is predicted by the organizational variables of interest listed above. The second phase, then, combines the regression coefficients with the average values ​​of the items of interest to identify, under certain pre-established mathematical constraints, the set of organizational variables that, with a certain improvement (always less than 15% for constraints required by the type of analysis) allows to reach a fixed level of overall satisfaction. Thus, optimization techniques allow the identification of the most efficient mix of predictors of employees’ satisfaction to help guide improvement efforts. An important information to consider when reading the results of these types of surveys is that improving the score of a variable that is very close to its benchmark is more difficult than that of a variable that is far from it. It is important to underline that the model is built on the average of the answers, so it does not refer to the strategies to be adopted in cases of falling perceptions related to the organizational climate. In other words, the model does not focus on ways to recover the satisfaction of particularly unsatisfied staff. As for the second phase of the statistical analysis, we used a 5 percent improvement of the job satisfaction outcome variables.

The two phases of analysis listed above have been repeated for each of the four Regions that are included in this study. Region A administered the organizational survey in April and May 2018, Region B in December 2018 and January 2019, Region C in March and April 2019, and Region D between mid-October and mid-December 2019. Respondents are 73,441 healthcare employees, of which 24,869 work in Region A; 5,078 in Region B; 21,272 in Region C; and 22,222 in Region D. The response rates are as follows: 28 percent for Region A, 27 percent for Region B, 39 percent for Region C, and 45 percent for Region D.

Table 1 presents the demographic characteristics of respondents for each of the four healthcare systems included in our study. In all four cases separately, the average age of participants is not significantly different from the corresponding regional average of all healthcare professionals. Female professionals are slightly overrepresented in all regions compared to the national average of female healthcare professionals. The distribution of respondents across job families in each of the four samples is comparable to the national distribution of healthcare employees [ 51 ].

Table 2 displays the average job satisfaction, by regional healthcare system and by governance level – namely unit, organization, and Region – along with average standard deviation in parenthesis. Overall, the satisfaction to serve one’s organization is lower than the satisfaction to work for the unit and the regional healthcare system.

Table 3 presents the results of the logistic regression on the satisfaction to work for one’s unit across regional healthcare systems. In all regions, keeping everything else constant, professionals’ satisfaction to serve their unit is strongly and positively associated with the following constructs: adequate equipment, work safety, manageable workload, well-planned work, consideration of one’s improvement proposals, sense of being part of a team, agreement with the criteria for individual performance assessment, appreciation for the competences of one’s supervisor, organizational stimulation to give one’s best, and motivation to achieve organizational goals. All relationships are statistically significant at the 0.01 level. In Region A, coeteris paribus, training activities to enhance one’s competences and appreciation for how managers manage the organization are also positively related to job satisfaction at the unit level ( p  <  0.001 and p  =  0.001 , respectively). As for Region B, keeping everything else the same, supervisor’s fairness in managing subordinates and training opportunities are additional positive correlates ( p  =  0.003 and p  =  0.004 , respectively). In Region C, everything else equal, the following items also correlates positively with the outcome: supervisor’s fairness in managing subordinates ( p  <  0.001 ), supervisors’ encouragement of information sharing ( p  =  0.018 ), training opportunities to improve one’s skills ( p  <  0.001 ), and appreciation for how managers manage the organization ( p  =  0.033 ). Lastly, in Region D, everything else equal, the additional positive correlates of job satisfaction are the following: supervisor’s ability to fairly treat subordinates ( p  <  0.001 ), training opportunity to improve professional competences ( p  <  0.001 ), and appreciations for managers ( p  <  0.001 ).

Table 4 sows the results of the optimization function, set for a 5 percent improvement in average value of the item “I am satisfied to work in my unit.” Predictions tend to be consistent across regional healthcare systems. In all regions, in fact, keeping everything else the same, the job satisfaction improvement at the unit level is associated with an improvement in the mean value of the following constructs: well-planned work in the team, perception of being part of a team that work towards shared goals, and perception that the supervisor can carry out the job well. More precisely, the percentages of improvement for these three correlates are as follows, respectively: 1, 15, and 12 for Region A, 1, 15, and 14 for Region B; 7, 15, and 13 for Region C; and 2, 15, and 13 for Region D.

Table 5 displays the logistic regression results for professionals’ satisfaction to work for their organization. In all regions, everything else equal, the positive correlates at the 0.05 or smaller significance level are the following: adequate equipment, workplace safety, sense of being part of a team, supervisor’ abilities to do a good job, training opportunities to enhance competences, appreciation for how managers manage the organization, organizational stimuli to give one’s best on the job, and motivation to achieve organizational goals. The relationship between the satisfaction to work for one’s organization and the degree to which one’s work is manageable is positive at the 0.05 significance level for all regions except Region A, everything else constant. Having a well-planned work is a significant correlate in Region D only ( p  =  0.020 ), ceteris paribus. Participants’ perceptions that their suggestions for improvement are taken into consideration are significantly related to satisfaction in Regions A and B only, keeping everything else constant ( p  =  0.001 and p  =  0.043 respectively). Region C is the only that displays an association between the outcome of interest and respondents’ agreement with the criteria adopted to evaluate individual performance, ceteris paribus ( p  =  0.025 ). Further, everything else equal, job satisfaction to work for one’s organization is positively associated with the degree to which the organization encourages change and innovation in Region A ( p  <  0.001 ), in Region C ( p  =  0.003 ), and Region D ( p  <  0.001 ). Lastly, respondents in Region A and D show a significant association between the outcome and what supervisors do to encourage information sharing, everything else kept constant ( p  =  0.041 , p  =  0.038 , and p  =  0.038 , respectively).

Table 6 presents the results of the optimization analysis for a 5 percent increase in the average value of the item “I am proud to tell others that I work in this organization.” Maintaining everything else constant, improving the mean of employees’ appreciation for how managers manage the organization is correlated to an enhanced job satisfaction at the organization level in all regions. In particular, the percentage improvement for the former statement are 12 percent for Region A, 9 percent for Region B, and 13 percent for all of the remaining regions. Furthermore, in Region B, ceteris paribus, a 9 percent percent improvement in the level of agreement with the statement that the organization stimulates employees to give their best on the job is related to the betterment of the outcome.

Table 7 displays estimates from a logistic regression model for public employees’ satisfaction to work for the health service of their regional government. Keeping everything else equal, across regions, the positive correlates at the 0.05 significance level are the following: workplace safety, supervisor’ adequate competences to carry out the job, effective training in improving one’s skills, appreciation for how managers run the organization, organizational stimuli to give one’s best on the job, and motivation to achieve organizational mission. Having an adequate equipment is positively associated with the satisfaction to work for the health care system at the standard statistical levels in all regions but C and D. The relationship between the satisfaction to work for one’s organization and the degree to which one’s work is manageable is positive at the 0.05 significance level for all regions except Region B, where the relationship is marginally significant ( p  =  0.054 ). Employees’ perceptions that their suggestions for improvement are taken into consideration by their supervisors are significantly related to satisfaction in regions B, C, and D ( p  =  0.009 , p  =  0.008 , and p  =  0.024 respectively). Region C is the only that displays a positive correlation between the satisfaction to serve the health systems and an agreement with the criteria adopted to evaluate individual performance, ceteris paribus ( p  =  0.001 ). Regions C shows a positive correlation between information sharing at the organizational level and work satisfaction ( p  =  0.003 ), whereas team-level information sharing is relevant in Region D ( p  =  0.006 ). Then, awareness of the organizational goals is a relevant predictor of the satisfaction to work for the health service on one’s regional government in Region D ( p  =  0.006 ).

Similarly, to Tables 3 and 6 , Table 8 displays the findings from an optimization algorithm aimed at improving the mean value of the satisfaction to work for the health service of one’s regional government by 5 percent. Improving positive perceptions about how managers run the organization and the motivation to achieve the organizational mission are correlated to an enhanced job satisfaction. In particular, the percentage improvement for the former statement are 11 percent for Region A, 7 percent for Region B, 13 percent for Region C, and 7 percent for Region D. As to the latter, the percentages are, respectively; 12, 15, 12, and 15. In Regions A and D, improving by 1 percent and 2 percent the mean value associated with the usefulness of training for competence enhancement are linked to a higher satisfaction. In Region B, instead, an improvement of the 6 percent of the organizational stimuli to give the best in one’s work correlated with an increased satisfaction. Lastly, improving personnel’s perceptions about workplace settings by 1 percent is associated with a higher satisfaction in Region B.

Overall, our analyses present three main key findings. First, within dependent variables, the correlates of job satisfaction tend to be the same across the health services of four regional governments. Second, the correlates of job satisfaction seem to differ among outcomes, namely hierarchical level at which employees’ satisfaction is measured. Third, context-specific associations emerge from our models.

Our work aimed at (i) investigating the correlates of health professionals’ job satisfaction at three hierarchical levels, namely satisfaction to work for one’s unit, organization, and health system of the regional government, and (ii) predicting how the improvement of the average value of correlates may relate with the improvement in the outcome variables. We employed large-scales observational surveys across healthcare systems in Italy. A series of logistic regressions reveal that environmental characteristics, management practices at the organizational level, and management practices at the team level correlates with work satisfaction. The pattern of results seems to replicate across outcome variables and healthcare systems. A series of optimization algorithms show that improving how the work is organized at the unit level, the degree to which employees perceive a sense of being part of a team with shared goals, and the supervisor’s abilities in carrying out the job may correlate with a better satisfaction to work for one’s unit. To the contrary, improving how managers perform their job tend to be associated with more satisfaction to work for one’s organization. As to the satisfaction to serve one’s regional health system, then, an improved work satisfaction correlates with an improved appreciation for the top management and the motivation to achieve the organizational mission.

The correlates that may relate to a higher job satisfaction are, therefore, in part different among hierarchical levels [ 2 , 18 , 52 ]. Within outcome variables, the largest variation in the correlates of job satisfaction is to the regional government level. Taken together, these findings align with two well established literature streams. On the one hand, attitudes and needs are so deeply seated in the human nature that they tend to be invariant for work satisfaction at the micro-level [ 8 , 43 ]. On the other hand, then, characteristics contingent to the macro-level may be relevant in prioritizing some attitudes and needs over others [ 6 , 9 , 16 ].

Further on the previous point, our work seems to suggest that all governance levels can play a role in employees’ job satisfaction, which continues to be a topic of interest for research syntheses attempts at the international level [ 53 , 54 , 55 ]. Some of the levers may overlap whereas other are different. As to the former, for instance, the quality and competence of managers at the unit and organizational level both correlated with work satisfaction. Thus, the mix of levers and the extent to which they are used may vary across regional healthcare system, which ultimately represent the highest governance level. Research on this consideration seems to have become even more prominent in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic [ 56 ].

Our study may provide a few contributions to extant scholarship and practice on job satisfaction in public service. Firstly, we investigate the correlates of satisfaction at three hierarchical levels. To the best of our knowledge, while most research analyzed satisfaction using hierarchical models [ 9 ], they tend to focus on one level only. Secondly, our analyses tap into many correlates of job satisfaction. This has the potential to uncover unexpected associations. Routine and large-scale survey on public employees’ perceptions provide a natural opportunity to engage in broad and deep understanding of organizational phenomena in the management of human resources. Thirdly, we introduce optimization models as a way to provide practitioners-friendly predictions on combinations of job satisfaction constructs that may be worth considering together to improve well-being. We are not aware of any such approach as far as managing public personnel is concerned. Fourthly, unlike most scholarship, our work is based on large-sample surveys and replication efforts aimed at the testing the generalizability of the findings.

Limitations

From a practitioner standpoint, the main limitation of our study is that it provides valuable insights targeted to decision makers at the regional level. In other words, it is beyond the scope of this investigation providing analyses at the organizational level. The degree to which findings aggregated by region generalize to results aggregated by organization within regions remains to be tested. Similarly, providing analysis across typologies of health professionals – also through customized survey instruments – is outside the scope of our work, though an avenue of future work that might be worth pursuing.

Then, we must acknowledge that our work suffers from the same limitations that affect observational studies and combine logistic regression analyses with optimization techniques. Most notably, we are unable to establish cause-effect relationships between job satisfaction and its determinants or consequences. As to the representativeness of the sample, the inability to compare demographic statistics between the sample and the exact population of reference is due to the general data protection regulation—defined at the European Union level and detailed in national states—that is fully binding when doing research with real organizations. The regulation prohibits analyzing variables before the data collection is closed and storing any information of non-respondents. Although, a response rate of 80% or more is desired to establish scientific validity in epidemiology, researchers demonstrated that reaching that response rate is not always possible and can lead to other problems [ 57 ]. In addition, the response rates in our samples appear to be in line with those of established surveys, such as the NHS survey – where the lates response rate reached 46% or the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey – which registered a 34% participation in the latest edition. Of course, readers are encouraged to always keep in mind this feature when considering our work. Furthermore, concerns about the generalizability of results across operations (importantly of the job satisfaction variables), settings, and samples are legitimate. Similarly, the generalizability of our findings from the optimization analyses to other healthcare systems around the world is unknown because, to the best of our knowledge, this has no prior in the literature. Unfortunately, we are unable, at the moment, to expand our work by adding data collected in other countries around the globe. We very much encourage replication studies, which would serve as rigorous and challenging external validity tests of the current work. In fact, replication efforts are common practice for other topics in the healthcare management domains. As to regression analyses, omitted variable biases may impinge on the validity of the findings. Moreover, our analyses are nested within regions and comparisons across regions must be done with caution. In fact, our logistic regressions do not account for variables such as socio-demographic items that may be distributed differently in different regional healthcare systems.

As to the optimization techniques, we acknowledge that its sensitivity to changes in the magnitude of regression coefficients and the lack of cost structure impose a warning in deriving implications for practice. Indeed, the optimization model selects the best combination of correlates that might associate with an improved outcome based on their mean value and relative strength. This influences the stability of the optimization results. Also, the algorithm identifies a set of factors that together generate a preset level of increase in the overall satisfaction measures. Although these results are optimal within the context in which they were presented, they may not be the best possible from a cost perspective. Lacking cost information, the algorithm assumes that the cost to improve each of the predictors is equivalent. Form a practical perspective, however, implementing changes suggested by our findings may not translate into the most cost-effective reforms. To the contrary, there might be other interventions that improve job satisfaction and are less costly.

Our work on the job satisfaction correlates of about 73,000 public health employees paves the way for a more extensive use of work satisfaction and organizational climate survey among typologies of mission-driven organizations. Whereas questionnaires measuring the attitudes and the perceptions of government personnel such as the Federal Employee Viewpoint in the United States or of health professionals such as the survey of National Health System in the United Kingdom are now spread around the globe, similar inquiry are not yet common practice in other public institutions. Our study may be a systematic attempt to fill this gap. Furthermore, we emphasize the need to use any such survey for managerial efforts aimed at improving the quality of the organization and the well-being of their employees. In this regard, the optimization model seems helpful in deriving implications for practice.

Availability of data and materials

The datasets used and/or analysed during the current study are not publicly available to maintain employers' and employees' confidentiality but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Engaging Public Employees for a High-Performing Civil Service. Paris: OECD Publishing; 2016.

Ommen O, Driller E, Köhler T, Kowalski C, Ernstmann N, Neumann M, ..., Pfaff H. The relationship between social capital in hospitals and physician job satisfaction. BMC Health Serv Res 2009;9(1):1–9.

Tyssen R, Palmer KS, Solberg IB, Voltmer E, Frank E. Physicians’ perceptions of quality of care, professional autonomy, and job satisfaction in Canada, Norway, and the United States. BMC Health Serv Res. 2013;13(1):1–10.

Article   Google Scholar  

Tsai Y. Relationship between organizational culture, leadership behavior and job satisfaction. BMC Health Serv Res. 2011;11(1):1–9.

Schuster C, Weitzman L, Sass Mikkelsen K, Meyer‐Sahling J, Bersch K, et al. Responding to COVID‐19 Through Surveys of Public Servants. Public Adm Rev. 2020;80(5):792-6.

Batura N, Skordis-Worrall J, Thapa R, Basnyat R, Morrison J. Is the Job Satisfaction Survey a good tool to measure job satisfaction amongst health workers in Nepal? Results of a validation analysis. BMC Health Serv Res. 2016;16(1):1–13.

Fernandez S, Resh WG, Moldogaziev T, Oberfield ZW. Assessing the past and promise of the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey for public management research: a research synthesis. Public Adm Rev. 2015;75(3):382–94.

Battaglio RP, Belle N, Cantarelli P. Self-determination theory goes public: experimental evidence on the causal relationship between psychological needs and job satisfaction. Public Manag Rev 2021:1–18.

Vainieri M, Ferre F, Giacomelli G, Nuti S. Explaining performance in health care: How and when top management competencies make the difference. Health Care Manage Rev. 2019;44(4):306.

Article   PubMed   Google Scholar  

Vainieri M, Seghieri C, Barchielli C. Influences over Italian nurses’ job satisfaction and willingness to recommend their workplace. Health Serv Manage Res. 2021;34(2):62–9.

Angelis J, Glenngård AH, Jordahl H. Management practices and the quality of primary care. Public Money Manag. 2021;41(3):264–71.

Moynihan DP, Fernandez S, Kim S, LeRoux KM, Piotrowski SJ, Wright BE, Yang K. Performance regimes amidst governance complexity. J Public Adm Res Theory. 2011;21(suppl_1):i141–55.

Thomann E, Trein P, Maggetti M. What’s the problem? Multilevel governance and problem-solving. Eur Policy Anal. 2019;5(1):37–57.

Bevan G, Evans A, Nuti S. Reputations count: why benchmarking performance is improving health care across the world. Health Econ Policy Law. 2019;14(2):141–61.

Giacomelli G, Vainieri M, Garzi R, Zamaro N. Organizational commitment across different institutional settings: how perceived procedural constraints frustrate self-sacrifice. Int Rev Adm Sci. 2020:0020852320949629.

Glenngård AH, Anell A. The impact of audit and feedback to support change behaviour in healthcare organisations-a cross-sectional qualitative study of primary care centre managers. BMC Health Serv Res. 2021;21(1):1–12.

Abner GB, Kim SY, Perry JL. Building evidence for public human resource management: Using middle range theory to link theory and data. Review of Public Personnel Administration. 2017;37(2):139–59.

Krueger P, Brazil K, Lohfeld L, Edward HG, Lewis D, Tjam E. Organization specific predictors of job satisfaction: findings from a Canadian multi-site quality of work life cross-sectional survey. BMC Health Serv Res. 2002;2(1):1–8.

Raimondo E, Newcomer K. Mixed-methods inquiry in public administration: The interaction of theory, methodology, and praxis. Rev Public Pers Adm. 2017;37(2):183–201.

Brown AD, Sandoval GA, Levinton C, Blackstien-Hirsch P. Developing an efficient model to select emergency department patient satisfaction improvement strategies. Ann Emerg Med. 2005;46(1):3–10.

Sandoval GA, Levinton C, Blackstien-Hirsch P, Brown AD. Selecting predictors of cancer patients’ overall perceptions of the quality of care received. Ann Oncol. 2006;17(1):151–6.

Article   CAS   PubMed   Google Scholar  

Seghieri C, Sandoval GA, Brown AD, Nuti S. Where to focus efforts to improve overall ratings of care and willingness to return: the case of Tuscan emergency departments. Acad Emerg Med. 2009;16(2):136–44.

Barsanti S, Walker K, Seghieri C, Rosa A, Wodchis WP. Consistency of priorities for quality improvement for nursing homes in Italy and Canada: A comparison of optimization models of resident satisfaction. Health Policy. 2017;121(8):862–9.

Walker RM, Brewer GA, Lee MJ, Petrovsky N, Van Witteloostuijn A. Best practice recommendations for replicating experiments in public administration. J Public Adm Res Theory. 2019;29(4):609–26.

Zhu L, Witko C, Meier KJ. The public administration manifesto II: Matching methods to theory and substance. J Public Adm Res Theory. 2019;29(2):287–98.

Chamberlain SA, Hoben M, Squires JE, Estabrooks CA. Individual and organizational predictors of health care aide job satisfaction in long term care. BMC Health Serv Res. 2016;16(1):1–9.

Cantarelli P, Belardinelli P, Belle N. A meta-analysis of job satisfaction correlates in the public administration literature. Rev Public Pers Adm. 2016;36(2):115–44.

Judge TA, Heller D, Mount MK. Five-factor model of personality and job satisfaction: a meta-analysis. J Appl Psychol. 2002;87(3):530.

Judge TA, Thoresen CJ, Bono JE, Patton GK. The job satisfaction–job performance relationship: a qualitative and quantitative review. Psychol Bull. 2001;127(3):376.

Rainey HG. Understanding and managing public organizations. San Francisco, CA: John Wiley; 2009.

Google Scholar  

Kim S. Individual-level factors and organizational performance in government organizations. J Public Adm Res Theory. 2005;15:245–61.

Smith PC, Kendall LM, Hulin CL. The measurement of satisfaction in work and retirement. Chicago, IL: Rand McNally; 1969.

Locke EA. The nature and cause of job satisfaction. In: Dunnette MD, editor. Handbook of industrial and organizational psychology. Chicago, IL: Rand McNally; 1976. p. 1297–343.

Vigan FA, Giauque D. Job satisfaction in African public administrations: a systematic review. Int Rev Adm Sci. 2018;84(3):596–610.

Homberg F, McCarthy D, Tabvuma V. A meta-analysis of the relationship between public service motivation and job satisfaction. Public Adm Rev. 2015;75(5):711–22.

Judge TA, Piccolo RF, Podsakoff NP, Shaw JC, Rich BL. The relationship between pay and job satisfaction: A meta-analysis of the literature. J Vocat Behav. 2010;77(2):157–67.

Djukic M, Jun J, Kovner C, Brewer C, Fletcher J. Determinants of job satisfaction for novice nurse managers employed in hospitals. Health Care Manage Rev. 2017;42(2):172–83.

Kalisch B, Lee KH. Staffing and job satisfaction: nurses and nursing assistants. J Nurs Manag. 2014;22:465Y471.

Noblet AJ, Allisey AF, Nielsen IL, Cotton S, LaMontagne AD, Page KM. The work-based predictors of job engagement and job satisfaction experienced by community health professionals. Health Care Manage Rev. 2017;42(3):237–46.

Poikkeus T, Suhonen R, Katajisto J, Leino-Kilpi H. Relationships between organizational and individual support, nurses’ ethical competence, ethical safety, and work satisfaction. Health Care Manage Rev. 2020;45(1):83–93.

Vainieri M, Smaldone P, Rosa A, Carroll K. The role of collective labor contracts and individual characteristics on job satisfaction in Tuscan nursing homes. Health Care Manage Rev. 2019;44(3):224.

Zhang M, Yang R, Wang W, Gillespie J, Clarke S, Yan F. Job satisfaction of urban community health workers after the 2009 healthcare reform in China: a systematic review. Int J Qual Health Care. 2016;28(1):14–21.

Chordiya R, Sabharwal M, Battaglio RP. Dispositional and organizational sources of job satisfaction: a cross-national study. Public Manag Rev. 2019;21(8):1101–24.

Esteve M, Schuster C, Albareda A, Losada C. The effects of doing more with less in the public sector: evidence from a large-scale survey. Public Adm Rev. 2017;77(4):544–53.

Cantarelli P, Belle N, Longo F. Exploring the motivational bases of public mission-driven professions using a sequential-explanatory design. Public Manag Rev. 2019;22(10):1535-59.

Belle N, Cantarelli P. The role of motivation and leadership in public employees’ job preferences: evidence from two discrete choice experiments. Int Public Manag J. 2018;21(2):191–212.

Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey. https://www.opm.gov/fevs/ [Last accessed March 2023].

Nuti S. La valutazione della performance in Sanità, Edizione Il Mulino. 2008.

Pizzini S, Furlan M. L’esercizio delle competenze manageriali e il clima interno. Il caso del Servizio Sanitario della Toscana. Psicologia Sociale. 2012;3(1):429–46.

Giacomelli G, Ferré F, Furlan M, Nuti S. Involving hybrid professionals in top management decision-making: How managerial training can make the difference. Health Serv Manage Res. 2019;32(4):168–79.

Article   PubMed   PubMed Central   Google Scholar  

Vardè AM, Mennini FS. Analysis evolution of personnel in the Italian National Healthcare Service with a view to health planning. MECOSAN. 2019;110:9–43. https://doi.org/10.3280/MESA2019-110002 .

Aloisio LD, Gifford WA, McGilton KS, Lalonde M, Estabrooks CA, Squires JE. Individual and organizational predictors of allied healthcare providers’ job satisfaction in residential long-term care. BMC Health Serv Res. 2018;18(1):1–18.

van Diepen C, Fors A, Ekman I, Hensing G. Association between person-centred care and healthcare providers’ job satisfaction and work-related health: a scoping review. BMJ Open. 2020;10(12):e042658.

Cunningham R, Westover J, Harvey J. Drivers of job satisfaction among healthcare professionals: a quantitative review. Int J Healthcare Manag. 2022:1–9.

Rowan BL, Anjara S, De Brún A, MacDonald S, Kearns EC, Marnane M, McAuliffe E. The impact of huddles on a multidisciplinary healthcare teams’ work engagement, teamwork and job satisfaction: a systematic review. J Eval Clin Pract. 2022;28(3):382–93.

Sharma A, Borah SB, Moses AC. Responses to COVID-19: the role of governance, healthcare infrastructure, and learning from past pandemics. J Bus Res. 2021;122:597–607.

Hendra R, Hill A. Rethinking response rates: new evidence of little relationship between survey response rates and nonresponse bias. Eval Rev. 2019;43(5):307–30.

Download references

Acknowledgements

All authors are grateful to the Management and Healthcare Laboratory (Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna) and its Network delle Regioni .

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Management and Healthcare Laboratory, Institute of Management and L’EMbeDS, Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies, Piazza Martiri Della Libertà 33, Pisa, 56127, Italy

Paola Cantarelli, Milena Vainieri & Chiara Seghieri

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Contributions

All Authors contributed equally. The author(s) read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Paola Cantarelli .

Ethics declarations

Ethics approval and consent to participate.

Ethics approval is unnecessary according to national legislation D. Lgs. 150/2009, art. 14.

The Italian Legislative Decree 196/2003 Code of Privacy requires public institutions to conduct employee viewpoint surveys and authorizes the use of employees’ data to evaluate the quality of service and identify organizational improvement actions. This legislative act does not ask for permission from an Ethical Committee when interviewing workers with regard to job satisfaction and related perceptions. This survey is considered as a service quality measurement activity and does not require an Ethics committee involvement. Informed consent was obtained from all subjects, in written form. In other words, as human data are used, we confirm that all methods were performed in accordance with relevant guidelines and regulations.

Consent for publication

Not applicable.

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Additional information

Publisher's note.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article.

Cantarelli, P., Vainieri, M. & Seghieri, C. The management of healthcare employees’ job satisfaction: optimization analyses from a series of large-scale surveys. BMC Health Serv Res 23 , 428 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-023-09426-3

Download citation

Received : 18 January 2023

Accepted : 19 April 2023

Published : 03 May 2023

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-023-09426-3

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Job satisfaction
• Healthcare employees
• Healthcare governance
• Large-scale viewpoint surveys
• Optimization analysis

BMC Health Services Research

ISSN: 1472-6963

• General enquiries: [email protected]

The impact of healthy workplaces on employee satisfaction, productivity and costs

Journal of Corporate Real Estate

ISSN : 1463-001X

Article publication date: 25 November 2021

Issue publication date: 20 February 2023

This paper aims to explore the added value of healthy workplaces for employees and organizations, in particular regarding employee satisfaction, labour productivity and facility cost.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper is based on a narrative review of journal papers and other sources covering the fields of building research, corporate real estate management, facilities management, environmental psychology and ergonomics.

The review supports the assumption of positive impacts of appropriate building characteristics on health, satisfaction and productivity. Correlations between these impacts are still underexposed. Data on cost and economic benefits of healthy workplace characteristics is limited, and mainly regard reduced sickness absence. The discussed papers indicate that investing in healthy work environments is cost-effective.

Originality/value

The findings contribute to a better understanding of the complex relationships between physical characteristics of the environment and health, satisfaction, productivity and costs. These insights can be used to assess work environments on these topics, and to identify appropriate interventions in value-adding management of buildings and facilities.

• Productivity
• Satisfaction
• Added value

Voordt, T.v.d. and Jensen, P.A. (2023), "The impact of healthy workplaces on employee satisfaction, productivity and costs", Journal of Corporate Real Estate , Vol. 25 No. 1, pp. 29-49. https://doi.org/10.1108/JCRE-03-2021-0012

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2021, Theo van der Voordt and Per Anker Jensen.

Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode

1. Introduction

The WHO defines health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”. As such, a healthy workplace can be defined as a workplace that contributes to the physical, mental and social well-being of its users. Health is the result of a complex interaction between the physiological, psychological, personal and organizational resources available to individuals and the stress placed upon them by their physical and social environment at work and home ( Clements-Croome, 2018 ). Well-being reflects one’s feelings about oneself in relation to the world, personal feelings about motivation, competence, aspirations and degree of personal control.

1.1 Impact of the physical environment on health and well-being

The past decades show a growing awareness of the impact of the physical environment on peoples’ health and well-being, both in academic research and in professional publications. This may be because of the shift from a one-sided focus on cost reduction to a more holistic and integrated value-based approach and an optimal balance between costs and benefits of interventions in buildings, facilities and services ( Jensen and Van der Voordt, 2017 ). Besides, people have become more aware of the impact of health and well-being on our quality of life and the risk of health complaints, illness or – in worst cases – burnout ( Appel-Meulenbroek et al. , 2020 ). The relationship between physical workplace characteristics and health and well-being has been explored by a variety of studies, using reviews of the literature ( Forooraghi et al. , 2020 ; Van der Voordt, 2021 ), surveys ( Cordero et al. , 2020 ), case studies ( Bauer, 2020 ) and conducting short-term experiments using mobile devices ( Nelson and Holzer, 2017 ).

It appears that in particular a poor indoor climate, noise and distraction have a negative impact on employees’ health and well-being, whereas appropriate opportunities to communicate and to concentrate and contact with nature contribute to a healthy workplace. In a survey of 2,000 office workers, occupants reported preferences for lots of natural light, access to outdoor spaces, contemplation spaces, support from colleagues and private as well as collaborative spaces, whereas the main irritants were noise in open-plan areas, lack of natural light, lack of colour, lack of greenery, lack of artwork, lack of fresh air, no personal control of temperature, lack of privacy, clutter and inflexible space ( British Council for Offices, 2018 ).

Another frequently assessed factor is office type. A literature review by Colenberg et al. (2020) on the relationship between interior office space (layout, furniture, light, greenery, controls and noise) and employees’ physical, psychological and social well-being showed that open-plan offices, shared rooms and higher background noise are negatively related to health. Positive relationships were found between physical well-being and aspects that encourage physical activity; between physical/psychological well-being and (day)light, individual control and real/artificial greenery; and between social well-being and small shared rooms.

Other influencing factors on health and well-being are important as well, such as the context (cultural, social, economic, political), personal characteristics (age, gender, lifestyle), organizational issues (leadership, personal support) and job characteristics (work load, (mis)fit between demands and resources). The European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (2014) warns for a disbalance between high job demands and available job resources. Too little time, too much work and tight deadlines are the most widely recognized risk factors, resulting in sleep disturbance, changes in mood, fatigue, headaches and stomach irritability.

1.2 Relationship between healthy workplaces and other values

Healthy workplaces that support employees’ health and well-being can be a goal in itself, but may also have intended or unintended effects on other values, such as employee satisfaction, productivity, costs, corporate image and risk. Vice versa, values such as sustainability may contribute to health and well-being. For instance, green buildings are supposed to be healthier than non-green buildings, because of its focus on the triple P of people, planet and profit. Interrelationships between healthy workplaces and other values are much less studied. This paper aims to reduce this gap in our knowledge, and to answer two research questions: What is the relationship between healthy workplaces and employee satisfaction, productivity and costs? And which evidence is available for these relationships?

These three values turned out to be most frequently prioritized in interviews with corporate real estate and facility managers ( Van der Voordt and Jensen, 2014 ). It is hypothesized that health, satisfaction and productivity go hand in hand. Furthermore, because of the high staff costs compared to facility costs, it is hypothesized that health-supportive interventions are cost-effective. Figure 1 visualizes the key topics of this paper in blue.

Because of a limited number of available publications, it was decided to select a number of leading journals in the field and to conduct a narrative review ( Green et al. , 2006 ; Ferrari, 2015 ). In our earlier review of environmental impact factors on healthy workplaces ( Jensen and Van der Voordt, 2020 ), we checked four facilities management and corporate real estate management oriented journals in a 10-year period, covering 2008–2017: Journal of Corporate Real Estate , Corporate Real Estate Journal , Facilities and the Journal of Facilities Management . For the current paper, we extended our search to the period 2018–2021 and to other journals, based on paper citations and journal titles. We also screened the last six volumes of Applied Ergonomics , Building and Environment , Building Research and Information , Environment and Behavior , Ergonomics , Intelligent Buildings International and Journal of Environmental Psychology on the keywords workplace, health, well-being, satisfaction, productivity and cost.

All papers from the screened journals that discuss health in connection to workplace characteristics and satisfaction, productivity and/or cost were included in this review. This has resulted in a selection of 45 papers on health and satisfaction and/or productivity. Because very few scientific papers related to facility cost were found, we have included relevant industry reports and other publications. Papers that discuss the relationship between the physical environment and either health, satisfaction, productivity or cost, without discussing any interrelationships between these variables, have been excluded.

3. Findings on the added value of healthy workplaces

3.1 employee satisfaction.

Table 1 summarizes the research topics, methods and findings of eight papers that discuss relationships between physical characteristics of the built environment, health and satisfaction, ranked by year and per year in alphabetical order of the first author. Five out of eight studies investigate the impact of office type and workspaces. The other studies focus on environmental conditions, sense of coherence or green buildings. The findings show positive but also contradictory connections between office type; health and well-being; and employee satisfaction. Open-plan seems to have a negative impact, which can be partly compensated by improved environmental conditions. High density and poor acoustics affect health and satisfaction in a negative way. The green building study showed mixed results. Personal characteristics make a difference as well. Employees with high need for concentration report more distraction in all office types, except in cell, and more cognitive stress in all office types except cell and flex-offices. People suffering from claustrophobia perceive stronger effects.

3.2 Labour productivity

The findings on relationships between health and well-being and labour productivity are summarized in Table 2 . Four studies focus on office type and workplace concept (open-plan, work pattern–office type fit, high-performance hub, variety of workplaces). Five studies investigated the impact of indoor air quality (IAQ) and related issues such as thermal comfort and look-and-feel. Four studies focus on sit-stand/adjustable workstations. The other studies show a variety of research topics, i.e. the influence of a healing office design concept, wind-inducing motion of tall buildings, green buildings, workplace safety, biophilia, plants and time spent in the office. The findings show significant positive but also mixed impacts of IAQ, “green” buildings and sit–stand work on both health and productivity. Health and productivity are usually discussed separately; correlations between health and productivity were only explored in two studies. Interrelationships are affected by job demands and job stress

3.3 Satisfaction and productivity

Table 3 summarizes the findings from 17 studies on health and well-being and both satisfaction and productivity. Independent variables include office types, non-territorial workspaces, proximity, impact of break out areas, storage space, adopting the WELL criteria, indoor environmental quality (IEQ), shading conditions, sit–stand workstations and plants. Here, too, health, satisfaction and productivity are mainly discussed separately and less regarding possible correlations. In general, activity-based workplaces are perceived to have a positive impact on satisfaction, partly because of better technical qualities regarding IEQ. Searching for a workplace needs time and reduces productivity. Personal control, easiness of interaction and communication, availability of break out areas, windows, sit–stand workstations, comfort of furnishing, attractive IEQ, modern shading systems and applying to the WELL standard show to have a positive impact on both health and satisfaction, whereas distraction and lack of privacy are important predictors of productivity loss.

All presented studies on health in connection to satisfaction and/or productivity originate from Europe, USA, Australia and New Zealand.

3.4 Applied research methods to study health and satisfaction and/or productivity

The discussed papers on health and satisfaction and/or productivity show a variety of research designs and research methods ( Table 4 ). Ten studies conducted a before–after study; four studies used an experiment in a lab setting. About 80% of the presented studies used a questionnaire survey, some of them as part of a mixed-methods approach with interviews and observations, identifying healthy or unhealthy office design qualities, scores on the WELL standard and data about toxic substances in the air. Measuring physical conditions such as the heart rate or skin temperature is rather rare.

3.5 Financial costs and benefits

Clements-Croome (2018) mentions a return on investment of €5.7 for every euro invested in well-being. However, not much quantitative data was found about the financial impact of changing the spatial layout, supporting new ways of working, providing more contact with nature or the introduction of sit–stand desks. This may be because of the difficulties to quantify the results of healthy workplaces. Various papers discuss the monetary costs and benefits of health-promoting programs such as stop-smoking programs or providing sports facilities and healthier nutrition. However, these topics are not related to physical characteristics of workplaces and are beyond the scope of this paper. Table 5 summarizes the findings from 11 publications. Different research methods are used, such as literature reviews, surveys and analysis of sickness absence data (8 out of 11 studies) and costs. Some studies focus on the impact of stress, without clear links to physical characteristics. Not all project data on financial costs and benefits has been tested scientifically on reliability and validity.

4. Discussion and conclusions

The discussed studies show a huge variety in environmental characteristics that influence health and well-being, employee satisfaction and labour productivity, such as office type, proximity, density, IEQ of IAQ, furniture (ergonomics, sit–stand desks), plants and personal control. Some studies focus on specific building types such as certified green buildings, WELL-certified buildings and tall wind-excited building, specific building components such as shading systems or specific interior elements such as sit–stand desks and furniture comfort. Research methods range from questionnaire surveys to before–after studies and laboratory experiments. Measuring physical conditions such as heart rates and skin temperature is still underexposed. Remarkably, most discussed papers present findings on health and satisfaction and/or productivity without discussing correlations between health, satisfaction and productivity.

The reviewed studies indicate positive but also mixed and contradictory effects of healthy workplaces on satisfaction and productivity. Overall, a healthy IAQ, opportunities for communication, concentration and privacy, availability of break-out rooms, an attractive look-and-feel, ergonomic furniture, contact with nature and plants go hand-in-hand with higher employee satisfaction and perceived productivity. Large open-plan offices and centrally controlled air condition show a negative effect on health, satisfaction and productivity. There is some evidence that workplaces in green buildings are healthier than workplaces in conventional buildings. Adjustable workstations with sit–stand desks show to have beneficial effects for comfort and labour productivity. Practitioners should take these findings into account in their design and management activities.

What constitutes a healthy workplace is much dependent on the workstyles and the preferences of the users. The degree to which the workplace has impact on satisfaction is in particular dependent on user preferences in relation to privacy versus social contact. The impact on productivity is in particular dependent on the specific workstyle and how well the workplace supports the work activities. Involving the users in the planning process and change management during implementation is crucial.

Scientific research on monetary cost and benefits of healthy workplaces is limited. Overall, the data indicate a positive impact of healthy workplaces on the reduction of sickness absence.

Because of the impact of many interrelated variables, it is difficult to trace cause–effect relationships between characteristics of healthy work environments and support of other value dimensions. Usually, various interventions are conducted simultaneously. Furthermore, employees’ health not only depends on what the workplace does to employees, but also on what workers bring with them to the workplace.

The mixed findings make it hard to provide a sound business case for physical interventions to improve health and well-being. On the one hand, taking care of healthy work environments is a matter of moral responsibility and has in general a positive effect on employee satisfaction and labour productivity and on society as a whole. These advantages have to be balanced with the costs of interventions to provide more healthy environments. An obstacle for a more integrated, holistic business case may be that the cost of interventions and its resulting output and outcomes are not always easy to measure in a quantitative way. Another difficulty is that some outcomes might be experienced in the short term and perhaps only temporarily, while others might be sustained, reduced or only experienced in the long term. One solution is to base business cases not only on quantitative data but to take into account well-argued qualitative considerations as well. As such, we plea for a so-called value based business case or “value case”.

4.1 Suggestions for further research

Additional research is needed to get a deeper, holistic and evidence-based knowledge of the added value of healthy workplaces and interrelationships between health, satisfaction and productivity and financial impacts that integrate different research topics and research methods. A next step can be to use the research findings as input to follow-up transdisciplinary research by academics from different fields, including corporate real estate management, facilities management, human resource management, environmental psychology and work and organizational psychology. Reflections on data by an interdisciplinary team and experimenting with particular interventions may be helpful as well.

Other topics for future research are extension of this literature review with papers from other journals and databases such as Scopus and PubMed, and to conduct additional empirical research with before–after studies of particular interventions and data-collecting techniques such as workshops, group interviews, pilot projects and self-measurement of health and health-supportive behaviour, e.g. by using wearables and apps. Cost studies should not only focus on data analysis of sickness absence, but extend their scope to self-reported health risks and health conditions, to get a better understanding of what drives health costs and lost productivity ( Jinnett et al. , 2017 ). Besides, more studies are needed into the costs of particular interventions and return on investment.

A particular topic for further research is the use and experience of offices in the post Covid-19 period. Increased “infection risk mitigation” will affect the presence in the office, number of people per m 2 , need for fresh air access, etc. The Covid-19 crisis has resulted in a drastic increase in home working and this experience is likely to have profound implications for office work in the future.

Key topics of this paper

Health and well-being and satisfaction (eight studies)

Health and well-being and labour productivity (20 studies)

Health and well-being, satisfaction and labour productivity (17 studies)

Applied research methods in the presented studies

Al Horr , Y. , Arif , M. , Kaushik , A. , Mazroei , A. , Katafygiotou , M. and Elsarrag , E. ( 2016 ), “ Occupant productivity and office indoor environment quality: a review of the literature ”, Building and Environment , Vol. 105 , pp. 369 - 389 , doi: 10.1016/j.buildenv.2016.06.001 .

Appel-Meulenbroek , R. , Van der Voordt , T. , Le Blanc , P. , Aussems , R. and Arentze , T. ( 2020 ), “ Impact of activity-based workplaces on burnout and engagement ”, Journal of Corporate Real Estate , Vol. 22 No. 4 , pp. 279 - 296 , doi: 10.1108/JCRE-09-2019-0041 .

Bauer , A. ( 2020 ), “ Pride and productivity: post occupancy evaluation of the healing office design concept ”, Journal of Corporate Real Estate , Vol. 22 No. 4 , pp. 313 - 340 , doi: 10.1108/JCRE-02-2019-0012 .

Bodin Danielsson , C. and Bodin , L. ( 2008 ), “ Office-type in relation to health, well-being and job satisfaction among employees ”, Environment and Behavior , Vol. 40 No. 5 , pp. 636 - 668 , doi: 10.1177/0013916507307459\

Bodin Danielsson , C.B. , Chungkham , H.S. , Wulff , C. and Westerlund , H. ( 2014 ), “ Office design’s impact on sick leave rates ”, Ergonomics , Vol. 57 No. 2 , pp. 139 - 147 , doi: 10.1080/00140139.2013.871064 .

British Council for Offices ( 2018 ), “ Wellness matters ”, Report , available at: www.bco.org.uk/HealthWellbeing/WellnessMatters.aspx

Burton , J. ( 2008 ), The Business Case for a Healthy Workplace , Toronto , Industrial Accident Prevention Association IAPA .

Candido , C. , Marzban , S. , Haddad , S. , Mackey , M. and Loder , A. ( 2021 ), “ Designing healthy workspaces: results from Australian certified open-plan offices ”, Facilities , Vol. 39 Nos 5/6 , pp. 411 - 433 , doi: 10.1108/F-02-2020-0018 .

Candido , C. , Thomas , L. , Haddad , S. , Zhang , F. , Mackey , M. and Ye , W. ( 2019 ), “ Designing activity-based workspaces: satisfaction, productivity and physical activity ”, Building Research and Information , Vol. 47 No. 3 , pp. 275 - 289 , doi: 10.1080/09613218.2018.1476372 .

Candido , C. , Zhang , J. , Kim , J. , De Dear , R. , Thomas , L. , Strapasson , P. and Joo , C. ( 2016 ), “ Impact of workspace layout on occupant satisfaction, perceived health and productivity ”, Proceedings of 9th Windsor Conference: Making Comfort Relevant , Windsor , available at: http://nceub.org.uk/

Chambers , A.J. , Robertson , M.M. and Baker , N.A. ( 2019 ), “ The effect of sit-stand desks on office worker behavioral and health outcomes: a scoping review ”, Applied Ergonomics , Vol. 78 , pp. 37 - 53 , doi: 10.1016/j.apergo.2019.01.015 .

Clements-Croome , D. ( 2018 ), “ Effects of the built environment on health and well-being ”, in Clements-Croome , D. (Ed.), Creating the Productive Workplace: Places to Work Creatively , 3rd ed ., London , Routledge , pp. 3 - 40 .

Colenberg , S. , Jylhä , T. and Arkesteijn , M. ( 2020 ), “ The relationship between interior office space and employee health and well-being ”, Building Research and Information , Vol. 49 No. 3 , doi: 10.1080/09613218.2019.1710098 .

Cordero , A.B. , Babapour , M. and Karlsson , M. ( 2020 ), “ Feel well and do well at work: a post-relocation study on the relationships between employee wellbeing and office landscape ”, Journal of Corporate Real Estate , Vol. 22 No. 2 , pp. 113 - 137 , doi: 10.1108/JCRE-01-2019-0002 .

Davis , M.C. , Leach , D.J. and Clegg , D.J. ( 2020 ), “ Breaking out of open-plan: extending social interference theory through an evaluation of contemporary offices ”, Environment and Behavior , Vol. 52 No. 9 , pp. 945 - 978 , doi: 10.1177/0013916519878211 .

Eichholtz , P. , Kok , N. and Palacios , P. ( 2019 ), “ Moving to productivity: the benefits of healthy buildings ”, Preliminary Working Paper , Maastricht University , doi: 10.7910/DVN/ALUUEC .

Elnaklah , R. , Walker , I. and Natarajan , S. ( 2021 ), “ Moving to a green building: indoor environment quality, thermal comfort and health ”, Building and Environment , Vol. 191 , pp. 1 - 19 , doi: 10.1016/j.buildenv.2021.107592 .

Elzeyadi , I. ( 2011 ), “ Daylighting-Bias and biophilia: quantifying the impacts of daylight on occupants health ”, Thought and Leadership in Green Buildings Research. Greenbuild Proceedings , Washington, DC , USGBC Press .

Engelen , L. , Chau , J. , Young , S. , Mackey , M. , Jeyapalan , D. and Bauman , A. ( 2019 ), “ Is activity-based working impacting health, work performance and perceptions? A systematic review ”, Building Research and Information , Vol. 47 No. 4 , pp. 468 - 479 , doi: 10.1080/09613218.2018.1440958 .

European Agency for Safety and Health at Work ( 2014 ), Calculating the Cost of Work-Related Stress and Psychosocial Risks , Luxembourg , Publications Office of the European Union . 10.2802/20493

Ferrari , R. ( 2015 ), “ Writing narrative style literature reviews ”, The European Medical Writers Association , doi: 10.1179/2047480615Z.000000000329 .

Forooraghi , M. , Miedema , E. , Ryd , N. and Wallbaum , H. ( 2020 ), “ Scoping review of health in office design approaches ”, Journal of Corporate Real Estate , Vol. 22 No. 2 , pp. 155 - 180 , doi: 10.1108/JCRE-08-2019-0036 .

Franke , M. and Nadler , C. ( 2020 ), “ Towards a holistic approach for assessing the impact of IEQ on satisfaction, health, and productivity ”, Building Research and Information , Vol. 49 No. 4 , pp. 417 - 444 , doi: 10.1080/09613218.2020.1788917 .

Garland , E. , Watts , A. , Doucette , J. , Foley , M. , Senerat , A. and Sanchez , S. ( 2018 ), “ Stand up to work: assessing the health impact of adjustable workstations ”, International Journal of Workplace Health Management , Vol. 11 No. 2 , pp. 85 - 95 , doi: 10.1108/IJWHM-10-2017-0078 .

Green , B.N. , Johnson , C.D. and Adams , A. ( 2006 ), “ Writing narrative literature reviews for peer-reviewed journals: secrets of the trade ”, Journal of Chiropractic Medicine , Vol. 5 No. 3 , pp. 101 - 117 , doi: 10.1016/S0899-3467(07)60142-6 .

Groen , B. , van der Voordt , T. , Hoekstra , B. and van Sprang , H. ( 2019 ), “ Impact of employee satisfaction with facilities on self-assessed productivity support ”, Journal of Facilities Management , Vol. 17 No. 5 , pp. 442 - 462 , doi: 10.1108/JFM-12-2018-0069 .

Haapakangas , A. , Hallman , D.M. , Mathiassen , S.E. and Jahncke , H. ( 2018b ), “ Self-rated productivity and employee well-being in activity-based offices: the role of environmental perceptions and workspace use ”, Building and Environment , Vol. 145 , pp. 115 - 124 .

Haapakangas , A. , Hongisto , V. , Varjo , J. and Lahtinen , M. ( 2018a ), “ Benefits of quiet workspaces in open-plan offices: evidence from two office relocations ”, Journal of Environmental Psychology , Vol. 56 , pp. 63 - 75 , doi: 10.1016/j.jenvp.2018.03.003 .

Hähn , N. , Essah , E. and Blanusa , T. ( 2020 ), “ Biophilic design and office planting: a case study of effects on perceived health, well-being and performance metrics ”, Intelligent Buildings International , doi: 10.1080/17508975.2020.1732859 .

Herbig , B. , Schneider , A. and Nowak , D. ( 2016 ), “ Does office space occupation matter? The role of the number of persons per enclosed office space, psychosocial work characteristics, and environmental satisfaction in the physical and mental health of employees ”, Indoor Air 2016 , Vol. 26 No. 5 , pp. 755 - 767 , doi: 10.1111/ina.12263 .

Hodzic , S. , Kubicek , B. , Uhlig , L. and Korunka , C. ( 2021 ), “ Activity-based flexible offices: effects on work-related outcomes in a longitudinal study ”, Ergonomics , Vol. 64 No. 4 , pp. 455 - 473 , doi: 10.1080/00140139.2020.1850882 .

Isham , A. , Mair , S. and Jackson , T. ( 2019 ), Wellbeing and Productivity: A Review of the Literature , Report for the Economic and Social Research Council , December 2019 .

Jamrozik , A. , Clements , N. , Hasana , S.S. , Zhaoa , J. , Zhanga , R. , Campanellaa , C. , Loftness , V. , Portera , P. , Lya , S. , Wanga , S. and Bauera , B. ( 2019 ), “ Access to daylight and view in an office improves cognitive performance and satisfaction and reduces eyestrain: a controlled crossover study ”, Building and Environment , Vol. 165 , p. 106379 , doi: 10.1016/j.buildenv.2019.106379 .

Jensen , P.A. and Van der Voordt , T. (Eds) ( 2017 ), Facilities Management and Corporate Real Estate Management as Value Drivers: How to Manage and Measure Adding Value , London/New York, NY , Routledge

Jensen , P.A. and Van der Voordt , T. ( 2020 ), “ Healthy workplaces: what we know and what we should know ”, Journal of Corporate Real Estate , Vol. 22 No. 2 , pp. 95 - 112 , doi: 10.1108/JCRE-11-2018-0045 .

Jinnett , K. , Schwatka , N. , Tenney , L. , Brockbank , C.V.S. and Newman , L. ( 2017 ), “ Chronic conditions, workplace safety, and job demands contribute to absenteeism and job performance ”, Health Affairs , Vol. 36 No. 2 , pp. 237 - 244 , doi: 10.1377/hlthaff.2016.1151 .

Kar , G. and Hedge , A. ( 2021 ), “ Effect of workstation configuration on musculoskeletal discomfort, productivity, postural risks, and perceived fatigue in a sit-stand-walk intervention for computer-based work ”, Applied Ergonomics , Vol. 90 , pp. 1 - 11 , doi: 10.1016/j.apergo.2020.103211 .

Karakolis , T. and Callaghan , J.P. ( 2014 ), “ The impact of sit-stand office workstations on worker discomfort and productivity: a review ”, Applied Ergonomics , Vol. 45 No. 3 , pp. 799 - 806 , doi: 10.1016/j.apergo.2013.10.001 .

Kaushik , A. , Arif , M. , Tumula , P. and Ebohon , O.J. ( 2020 ), “ Effect of thermal comfort on occupant productivity in office buildings: response surface analysis ”, Building and Environment , Vol. 180 , pp. 1 - 9 , doi: 10.1016/j.buildenv.2020.107021 .

Kim , J. , Candido , C. , Thomas , L. and De Dear , R. ( 2016 ), “ Desk ownership in the workplace: the effect of non-territorial working on employee workplace satisfaction, perceived productivity and health ”, Building and Environment , Vol. 103 , pp. 203 - 214 , doi: 10.1016/j.buildenv.2016.04.015 .

Ko , W.H. , Schiavon , S. , Zhang , Z. , Graham , L.T. , Brager , G. , Mauss , I. and Lin , Y.-W. ( 2020 ), “ The impact of a view from a window on thermal comfort, emotion, and cognitive performance ”, Building and Environment , Vol. 175 , pp. 1 - 15 , doi: 10.1016/j.buildenv.2020.106779 .

Lamb , S. and Kwok , K.C.S. ( 2016 ), “ A longitudinal investigation of work environment stressors on the performance and wellbeing of office workers ”, Applied Ergonomics , Vol. 52 , pp. 104 - 111 , doi: 10.1016/j.apergo.2015.07.010 .

Lamb , S. and Kwok , K.C.S. ( 2017 ), “ Sopite syndrome in wind-excited buildings: productivity and wellbeing impacts ”, Building Research and Information , Vol. 45 No. 3 , pp. 347 - 358 , doi: 10.1080/09613218.2016.1190140 .

Laski , J. ( 2016 ), “ Doing right by planet and people ”, The Business Case for Health and Wellbeing in Green Building , London/Toronto , World Green Building Council .

Licina , D. and Yildirim , S. ( 2021 ), “ Occupant satisfaction with indoor environmental quality, sick building syndrome (SBS) symptoms and self-reported productivity before and after relocation into WELL-certified office buildings ”, Building and Environment , Vol. 204 , pp. 1 - 12 , doi: 10.1016/j.buildenv.2021.108183 .

Lu , M. , Hu , S. , Mao , Z. , Liang , P. , Xin , S. and Guan , H. ( 2020 ), “ Research on work efficiency and light comfort based on EEG evaluation method ”, Building and Environment , Vol. 183 , pp. 1 - 11 , doi: 10.1016/j.buildenv.2020.107122 .

MacNaughton , P. , Satish , U. , Laurent , J.G.C. , Flanigan , S. , Vallarino , J. , Coull , B. , Spengler , J.D. and Allen , J.G. ( 2017 ), “ The impact of working in a green certified building on cognitive function and health ”, Building and Environment , Vol. 114 , pp. 178 - 186 , doi: 10.1016/j.buildenv.2016.11.041 .

Marsden , D. and Moriconi , S. ( 2009 ), “ 'The value of rude health’: employees’ well being, absence and workplace performance ”, CEP Discussion Paper No 919 . London , The London School of Economics, Centre for Economic Performance .

Marsh , P. and French , S. ( 2020 ), “ The GSK workspace performance hub: promoting productivity and wellbeing through office design ”, Corporate Real Estate Journal , Vol. 9 No. 4 , pp. 345 - 360 .

Marson , M. ( 2018 ), “ The business value of an innovative building ”, Corporate Real Estate Journal , Vol. 8 No. 2 , pp. 154 - 164 .

Morrison , R.L. and Smollan , R.K. ( 2020 ), “ Open plan office space? If you're going to do it, do it right: a fourteen-month longitudinal case study ”, Applied Ergonomics , Vol. 82 , pp. 1 - 18 , doi: 10.1016/j.apergo.2019.102933 .

Muldavin , S. , Miers , C.R. and McMackin , K. ( 2017 /2018), “ Buildings emerge as drivers of health and profits ”, Corporate Real Estate Journal , Vol. 7 No. 2 , pp. 177 - 193 .

Nappi , I. , De Campos Ribeiro , G. and Cochard , N. ( 2020 ), “ The interplay of stress and workspace attachment on user satisfaction and workspace support to labour productivity ”, Journal of Corporate Real Estate , Vol. 22 No. 3 , pp. 215 - 237 , doi: 10.1108/JCRE-05-2019-0026 .

Nelson , E. and Holzer , D. ( 2017 ), The Healthy Office Revolution , Amstelveen , Learn Adapt Build Publishing .

Rasheed , E.O. , Khoshbakht , M. and Baird , G. ( 2021 ), “ Time spent in the office and workers’ productivity, comfort and health: a perception study ”, Building and Environment , Vol. 195 , pp. 1 - 9 , doi: 10.1016/j.buildenv.2021.107747 .

Roskams , M. and Haynes , B. ( 2019 ), “ An experience sampling approach to the workplace environment survey ”, Facilities , Vol. 38 Nos 1/2 , pp. 72 - 85 , doi: 10.1108/F-04-2019-0050 .

Seddigh , A. , Berntson , E. , Bodin Danielson , C. and Westerlund , H. ( 2014 ), “ Concentration requirements modify the effect of office type on indicators of health and performance ”, Journal of Environmental Psychology , Vol. 38 , pp. 167 - 174 , doi: 10.1016/j.jenvp.2014.01.009 .

Soriano , A. , Kozusnik , M.W. and Peiró , J.M. ( 2020 ), “ The role of employees’ work patterns and office type fit (and misfit) in the relationships between employee Well-Being and performance ”, Environment and Behavior , Vol. 52 No. 2 , pp. 111 - 138 , doi: 10.1177/0013916518794260 .

Tan , Z. , Roberts , A.C. , Lee , E.L. , Kwok , K.-W. , Car , J. , Soh , C.K. and Christopoulos , G. ( 2020 ), “ Transitional areas affect perception of workspaces and employee well-being: a study of underground and above-ground workspaces ”, Building and Environment , Vol. 179 , pp. 1 - 10 , doi: 10.1016/j.buildenv.2020.106840 .

Terrapin Bright Green ( 2012 ), “ The economics of biophilia ”, Why Designing with Nature in Mind Makes Financial Sense , New York, NY and Washington, DC .

Thatcher , A. , Adamson , K. , Bloch , L. and Kalantzis , A. ( 2020 ), “ Do indoor plants improve performance and well-being in offices? Divergent results from laboratory and field studies ”, Journal of Environmental Psychology , Vol. 71 No. 1.11 , p. 101487 , doi: 10.1016/j.jenvp.2020.101487 .

Van der Voordt , T. ( 2021 ), “ Designing for health and wellbeing: various concepts, similar goals ”, Gestão and Tecnologia de Projetos , Vol. 16 No. 4 , pp. 13 - 31 , doi: 10.11606/gtp.v16i4.178190 .

Van der Voordt , T. and Jensen , P.A. ( 2014 ), “ Adding value by FM: exploration of management practice in The Netherlands and Denmark ”, EFMC 2014 , Berlin , 4-6 June 2014 .

Wargocki , P. ( 2019 ), “ Productivity and health effects of high indoor air quality ”, Encyclopedia of Environmental Health , 2nd edition , Vol. 5 , pp. 382 - 388 , doi: 10.1016/B978-0-12-409548-9.01993-X .

Wijk , K. , Bergsten , E.L. and Hallman , D.M. ( 2020 ), “ Sense of coherence, health, Well-Being, and work satisfaction before and after implementing activity-based workplaces ”, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health , Vol. 17 No. 14 , p. 5250 , doi: 10.3390/ijerph17145250 .

Wolkoff , P. ( 2020 ), “ Dry eye symptoms in offices and deteriorated work performance. A perspective ”, Building and Environment , Vol. 172 , p. 106704 , doi: 10.1016/j.buildenv.2020.106704 .

Zerguine , H. , Johnston , V. , Healy , G.N. , Abbott , A. and Goode , A.D. ( 2021 ), “ Usage of sit-stand workstations: benefits and barriers from decision makers’ perspective in Australia ”, Applied Ergonomics , Vol. 94 , pp. 1 - 11 , doi: 10.1016/j.apergo.2021.103426 .

Further reading

Jensen , P.A. and Van der Voordt , T. ( 2021 ), “ Productivity as a value parameter for FM and CREM ”, Facilities , Vol. 39 Nos 5/6 , pp. 305 - 320 , doi: 10.1108/F-04-2020-0038 .

Measuremen consultancy (no year ), “ Why should you incorporate a healthy workplace strategy? ”, available at: www.measuremen.io/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Measuremen-Whitepaper-Why-should-you-incorporate-a-healthy-workplace-strategy.pdf

Pejtersen , J.H. , Feveile , H. , Christensen , K.B. and Burr , H. ( 2011 ), “ Sickness absence associated with shared and open-plan offices – a national cross sectional questionnaire survey ”, Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment and Health , Vol. 37 No. 5 , pp. 376 - 382 , doi: 10.5271/sjweh.3167 .

Platts , L.G. , Seddigh , A. , Berntson , E. and Westerlund , H. ( 2020 ), “ Sickness absence and sickness presence in relation to office type: an observational study of employer-recorded and self-reported data from Sweden ”, Plos One , Vol. 15 No. 4 , p. e0231934 , doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0231934 .

Roskams , M. and Haynes , B. ( 2020 ), “ Salutogenic design in the workplace: Supporting sense of coherence through resources in the workplace environment ”, Journal of Corporate Real Estate , Vol. 22 No. 2 , pp. 193 - 153 , doi: 10.1108/JCRE-01-2019-0001 .

WHO ( 2021 ), “ Constitution of the world health organization ”, available at: www.who.int/about/governance/constitution . ( accessed August 30, 2021 ).

World Green Building Council ( 2014 ), “ Health, wellbeing and productivity in offices: the next chapter for green building ”, available at: www.worldgbc.org/sites/default/files/compressed_

Corresponding author

Related articles, all feedback is valuable.

Please share your general feedback

Report an issue or find answers to frequently asked questions

Contact Customer Support

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS A lock ( Lock Locked padlock icon ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

• Publications
• Account settings
• Advanced Search
• Journal List

Job Satisfaction: Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices Analysis in a Well-Educated Population

Paolo montuori, michele sorrentino, pasquale sarnacchiaro, fabiana di duca, alfonso nardo, bartolomeo ferrante, daniela d’angelo, salvatore di sarno, francesca pennino, armando masucci, maria triassi, antonio nardone.

• Author information
• Article notes
• Copyright and License information

Correspondence: [email protected] ; Tel.: +39-0817463027; Fax: +39-0817463352

Received 2022 Oct 4; Accepted 2022 Oct 28; Collection date 2022 Nov.

Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ).

Job satisfaction has a huge impact on overall life quality involving social relationships, family connection and perceived health status, affecting job performances, work absenteeism and job turnover. Over the past decades, the attention towards it has grown constantly. The aim of this study is to analyze simultaneously knowledge, attitudes, and practices toward job satisfaction in a general population in a large metropolitan area. The data acquired from 1043 questionnaires—administered to subjects with an average age of 35.24 years—revealed that only 30% is satisfied by his job. Moreover, among all the tested sample, 12% receive, or often receive intimidation by their superior, and 23% wake up unhappy to go to work. Marital status and having children seem to be an important factor that negatively influences job satisfaction through worst behaviours. The multiple linear regression analysis shows how knowledge is negatively correlated to practices; although this correlation is not present in a simple linear regression showing a mediation role of attitudes in forming practices. On the contrary, attitudes, correlated both to knowledge and practices, greatly affect perceived satisfaction, leading us to target our proposed intervention toward mindfulness and to improve welfare regulation towards couples with children.

Keywords: job satisfaction, knowledge, attitude, practice, cross-sectional survey

1. Introduction

Job satisfaction has been defined as a “pleasurable or positive emotional state, resulting from the appraisal of one’s job experiences” [ 1 ]. Job satisfaction reflects on overall life quality involving social relationships, family connection and perceived health status, affecting job performances, work absenteeism and job turnover, leading, in some cases, to serious psychological condition such as burnout [ 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 ].

The recent Gallup statistics on job satisfaction indicated that a very large portion of the world’s 1 billion full-time workers is disengaged, more precisely, only 15% of workers are happy and production in the workplace, the remaining 47% of workers are “not engaged,” psychologically unattached to their work and company [ 7 ]. In the EU, approximately one in five residents (16.9%) currently in employment expressed low levels of satisfaction with their job, on the other hand approximately one in four (24.6%) expressed high levels of satisfaction, the remaining residents (58.5%) declared medium levels of satisfaction with their job [ 8 ]. Characteristics such as age, sex, education, occupation, commuting time and difficulty as inadequate income, seems to be related to job satisfaction as they tent to influence expectation and preferences of individuals’ reflection on their perceived working condition [ 9 , 10 ]; however, as assessed in Eurofound, European Working Conditions Surveys [ 11 ] the relation between age and job satisfaction is very weak, although a slight increase in low satisfaction prevalence was found in elder population, it does not increase significantly with age even though expectations change during lifetime; educational attainment and income seem to play a significant role in job satisfaction as they grow in parallel, leading to better positions and a higher wages, along with power and more decisional autonomy. Sex is a factor as women seems to be overall more satisfied by their job in despite of the worst general conditions [ 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 ]. Job satisfaction also relates to marital status as single subjects’ results as the most satisfied by their work in some European Countries [ 15 ]. In Italy, the overall perceived job satisfaction seems to be similar to other regions in EU, and social relations as well as family composition appear to play a relevant role [ 16 ].

Job satisfaction has been studied mostly over a specific category of workers [ 17 , 18 ], as some types of works seems to be more related to pathological conditions such as burnout [ 19 , 20 ] and job-related stress [ 21 , 22 , 23 ]; however, as reported by those authors, this kind of selection method could lead to selection biases. According to van Saane [ 24 ], although many studies were carried as since Job Satisfaction broke out in the last 70’s as a central topic of interest, nor a mathematical instrument as reliable as desired nor a comparative method were found, usually those studies were based on single components of job satisfaction, taken out from extra working environment, and without analysing the consequences on behaviours in day life [ 25 , 26 , 27 ]. The literature research demonstrated that practices are the results of knowledge, attitudes, or their interaction. The KAP Survey Questionnaire [ 28 ] can be applied to highlight the main features of knowledge, attitude, and practice of a person, and to assess that person’s views on the matter. The purpose, when using the KAP Survey Model, is to measure a phenomenon through the quantitative collection method of a large amount of data through the administration of questionnaires and then statistically process the information obtained. Through a questionnaire, however, seems to be easier to quantify job satisfaction. In addition to that, studying broader populations’ consent to explore different components, both personal and environmental, which concur to influence it [ 29 , 30 ].

In the recent literature, a KAP model was used only once to analyse behaviours toward job satisfaction. In his work, Alavi [ 31 ] conducted a survey based cross-sectional study on 530 Iranian radiation workers; although it comprehends simultaneously knowledge, attitude, and practices, it was conducted on a specific category of workers and on a narrower population. Therefore, since to the best of our knowledge none of the studies presented in the literature are carried out on a broader population relating both knowledge and attitudes to behaviours on job satisfaction, the aim of this study is to analyse simultaneously knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours toward job satisfaction in a large metropolitan area. It is important to investigate this phenomenon to evaluate the condition and develop health education programs and community-based intervention to increase job satisfaction and knowledge and positively orienting attitudes.

2. Material and Methods

2.1. participants and procedure.

This cross-sectional study was conducted from November 2021 to February 2022 in the large metropolitan area of Naples, southern Italy, among working places, universities, and community centres. No specific category of participants was selected. In the questionnaire, respondents indicated their occupation by choosing from the following options: lawyer, architect, engineer, doctor, accountant, entrepreneur, teacher, law enforcement, trader, student, employee, worker, unemployed, other. Table 1 shows the categories indicated by the participants. The criteria for inclusion in the study required that respondents of a general population were over 18 years old, belonging to one of the categories of employment listed in Table 1 , and resided in the metropolitan area of Naples. Every participant directly received a questionnaire (available upon request from the corresponding author) and at the time of filling out the questionnaire, the aim of the study and the anonymity and privacy of the data collecting method being used was explained, both in written form, as an introduction part of the questionnaire, and verbally to each of the participants. The questionnaire consisted of basic information about participants (age, gender, children, civil state, education level, profession, smoke habits) and three pools of questions divided in knowledge, attitudes and behaviours concerning their job satisfaction for a total number of 37 questions. The construction of the questionnaire was carried out as recommended by the KAP Model [ 28 ], briefly was divided into four phases: (1) Constructing the survey protocol; (2) Preparing the survey; (3) Course of the KAP survey in field; (4) Data analysis and presentation of the survey report. To develop the questionnaire, research questions based on the “Objectives of the study” were first carried out to develop the research questions, according to KAP Survey Model [ 28 ], the knowledge was considered as a set of understandings, knowledge, and “science” while Attitude as a way of being, a position. After, the research questions were reduced in number by removing those questions that require unnecessary information. When the above step is also done, the difficult questions have been changed/removed (closed questions have been used because one of the most important things that will increase the relevance of the questions is that the questions must be closed questions). Knowledge and attitudes were assessed on a three-point Likert scale with options for “agree”, “uncertain”, and “disagree”, while inquiries regarding behaviours were in a four-answer format of “never”, “sometimes”, “often”, and “yes/always”. A pilot study was also carried out to test the questionnaire and to verify the reliability of questions. Finally, all the collected questionnaires were digitalized submitting the codified answers in an Excel worksheet (MS Office).

Study population characteristics.

2.2. Statistical Analysis

Data reported by the study were analysed using IBM SPSS (vers. 27) statistical software program. The analysis was carried out in two stages. In the first stage, a descriptive statistic was used to summarize the basic information of the statistical units. In the second stage, a Multiple Linear Regression Analysis (MLRA) was used to model the linear relationship between the independent variables and dependent variable.

The dependent variables (Knowledge, Attitudes and Behaviours) had been obtained by adding the scores obtained in the corresponding questions (questions with inverse answers have been coded inversely). The independent variables were included in all models: sex (1 = male, 2 = female); age, in years; education level (1 = primary school, 2 = middle school, 3 = high school, 4 = university degree); civil state (1 = Single; 2 = In a relationship; 3 = Married; 4 = Separated/Divorced; 5 = Widowed).

The main results from a MLRA contains the statistical significance of the regression model as well as the estimation and the statistical significance of the beta coefficients ( p -value < 0.05) and the coefficient of determination (R-squared and adjusted R-squared), used to measure how much of the variation in outcome can be explained by the variation in the independent variables. Three MLRA were developed:

Knowledge about job satisfaction (Model 1);

Attitudes toward resilience and mindfulness (Model 2);

Actual behaviours regarding Job and Job-related life (Model 3).

In Model 2, we added Knowledge to the independent variables, and in Model 3, we added Knowledge and Attitudes to the independent variables. In the analysis, we considered Attitudes and Knowledge as indexes rather than a scale, which means that each observed variable (A1, …, A13 and K1, …, K12) is assumed to cause the latent variables associated (Attitude and Knowledge). In other terms, the relationship between observed variables and latent variables is formative. Therefore, inter-observed variables correlations are not required. On the contrary, the relationship between the observed variables (B1, …, B14) and latent variable Behaviour could be considered reflective (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.825). All statistical tests were two-tailed, and the results were statistically significant if the p -values were less than or equal to 0.05.

3. Results and Discussion

Out of the 1057 participants, 1043 anonymous self-report surveys were returned, resulting in a response rate of 98.7%. Table 1 shows the characteristics of the study population: the mean age of the study population is 35.24 years; in 18–70 age range, the main group of distribution was 18–30 representing 44.6% of the sample; sex distribution shows that: 427 are men, 616 are woman. A large majority (73.5%) does not have children, while 26.5% of the sample has them. Most of the participants have a post graduate degree, while 29.1% are high school graduates. Among them, 22.2% are physicians, 15.1% teachers and 14.0% students ( Table 1 ).

Respondent’s knowledge about job satisfaction is presented in Table 2 . While a large majority of the sample population (91.7%) has a well-defined knowledge about job satisfaction main characteristics such as mains definitions, both of work-related stress and mobbing, most of them does not know or are not aware which risks are specifically related as only 31.4% knows that job related stress and mobbing are a threat to their cardiovascular health. Only 28.7% of the population knows that “Only 15% of worker, globally, are satisfied by their work” demonstrating that while knowledge regarding job related stress is well spread, the sample does not know how diffused it is and what kind of risks it involves, and that state provide a compensation for job related stress.

Knowledge of respondents toward job satisfaction.

* INAIL: Istituto Nazionale Assicurazione Infortuni sul Lavoro (National Institute for Occupational Accident Insurance).

In Table 3 are described attitudes toward job satisfaction. Most of the participants think that working out is relaxing and spending time is regenerating, showing a good attitude to copy with work related stress. According to 93.4% of the sample, workload plays a key role in job satisfaction, as well as adequate wages and a clear task schedule. Several studies have enlightened that when workers lack a clear definition of the tasks which are necessary to fulfil a specific role, their levels of job satisfaction are likely to be negatively affected [ 32 , 33 , 34 ]. Interestingly, most of the population sees challenges as a motivation to do better (80.2%) and are motivated by career opportunities (90.7%); however, 50.5% of the population has a negative attitude about changes. In confirmation of that, when asked if “Changes lead to stress”, only a small fraction of the sample (14.6%) disagreed. This allowed us to assume that, although most of the population sees problems as an opportunity to learn, improve and progress in their work, they are aware of the difficulties connected to changing scenarios. About 27.2% of the sample does not have a positive attitude toward sharing their feeling about problems at work talking out loud. Bad interpersonal relationships with co-workers are another reason for job dissatisfaction. Poor or unsupportive relationships and conflicts with colleagues and/or supervisors lead to negative psychological intensions, resulting in job dissatisfaction [ 35 , 36 ].

Attitude of respondents toward job satisfaction.

Behaviours of respondents are listed in Table 4 : A consistent part of the sample responded positively to the group of question toward behaviours regarding their coping level of stressful situation (B2, B4, B8, B9, B10) showing a reported good resilience. Commuting seems to be a problem for at least a third of the sample, also in a metropolitan area served by 2 subways, full bus service, car sharing services and a speedway. Job satisfaction is associated negatively with constraints such as commuting time. This dead time, mostly unpaid, is mandatory for workers to reach workplace. Although this is not considered as working time, and only a specific class is refunded, from the employers’ perspective, it is time dedicated to work and a strong determinant for low satisfaction levels. EU workers were much more likely to be highly (37.9%) or moderately satisfied (41.7%) with their commuting time compared to their job satisfaction. Most of the sample responded to not having experienced mobbing; although even a “low” result, such as a cumulative, summing both “yes/always” and “often”, of 11.8% is alarming and pushes us to study more about this phenomenon. Interestingly, 30.9% of respondents are satisfied about their work, reaching a total of 59.5%. In addition, with a “often” response showing a large appreciation of their jobs, 22.9% of the respondents “wake up unhappy to go to work”, and feel “stuck in a job with no career opportunities” (27.7%). The sample has no problems managing their work and social life (48.3%); however, only a complex of 35% of the sample usually spend their time with colleagues outside the office.

Behaviour of respondents toward job satisfaction.

Table 5 illustrates results of linear multiple regression in three models: in Model I Knowledge, as dependent variable, correlate, with a p -value < 0.001; with “sex”, interestingly, woman seem to have a higher overall score of knowledge in disagreement with Gulavani [ 37 ] whose study was conducted among a sample of nurses and found no significant relation between sex and knowledge on job satisfaction. Al-Haroon [ 38 ] evidenced that among health workers, men had a better overall level of knowledge. These results, however, were collected over specific categories of employees, in a narrower sample; whereas our study was represented by a general population of a metropolitan area. No statistically significant correlation between knowledge and age, civil status, children, and education levels was encountered.

Results of the linear multiple regression.

Previous research asses that attitude plays a key a role in job satisfaction, as some attitudinal characteristics of the subject influence perspective, coping skills and stressful situation management [ 39 , 40 , 41 ]. In Model II ( Table 5 ) we correlated, through MLRA, attitudes with age, sex, civil state, having children, education, and overall knowledge score. With a p -value < 0.001, two correlations were found with education and overall knowledge score, both positively. Those results reflect, in accordance with Alavi [ 31 ], who found that higher level of education was among 3 factors that predicted job satisfaction and attaining a higher university degree compared to lower degrees contributes to a feeling of coherence, success at work, personal growth and self-respect, self-realization and intrinsic motivation, that education level and therefore a higher level of knowledge contributes to generating a sense of job satisfaction. In the questionnaire we tried to collect all those propension and as a result: in agreement with Hermanwan [ 42 ], Andrews [ 43 ] and Choi [ 44 ], subjects with better knowledge and high levels of education tent to have better attitudes.

In Model III, behaviours taken as a dependent variable are correlated to age, sex, civil state, children, education, knowledge, and attitudes. The results of linear multiple regression in this model assess that behaviours are negatively correlated to civil state, sons, and knowledge, and positively correlated to attitudes. Our findings show that there is a positive correlation between behaviours and attitudes, in agreement with previous literature [ 45 , 46 , 47 ], demonstrating that people with better attitudes tent to have a better overall behaviour. Surprisingly, in Model III, knowledge also has a statistically significant correlation to behaviours but in a negative way. This correlation, however, is not present when we correlate those variables alone in a Pearson’s correlation between knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours ( Table 6 ). This evidence, therefore, suggests that attitude mediates the effect of knowledge on behaviours, assessing an important relation between those two determinants. People with a better overall score in behaviours tend to have a higher score in knowledge and attitude. In this sample, those who have a lower score in knowledge also has a higher behaviour score in accordance with a part of the previous literature [ 48 , 49 ]. This enlightens the importance of high levels of knowledge in order to form better attitudes in the pursuit of job satisfaction. Civil state and having children seem to play a key role in performing a better behaviour about job satisfaction; which is also evident in one specific question about behaviour: Question “B14” enlightens the social practices of subjects with colleagues outside the work environment, and the statistical analysis on this topic shows that subject with a more stable sentimental situation or with child tend to hang out with their colleagues less, likely worsening their relationships at work and getting a worse overall behaviour score and worse attitude toward the topic in agreement with Sousa-Poza [ 50 ] and Armstrong [ 51 ]. Job satisfaction has a strong correlation to family characteristics: Subjectst who have families with children have less positive behaviours towards their job satisfaction, directly affecting their overall behaviour score; this evidence is in contrast with Alavi [ 31 ], who states that job satisfaction is positively affected by family, assessing that “married employees have opportunities to receive support or advice from their family to mediate job conflicts,” Although he admits that in the literature, this result is controversial as some authors, such as Clark [ 52 ], found that “married employees experienced a higher level of job satisfaction than their unmarried co-workers”, and Booth and Van Ours’ [ 53 ], study did not find a statistically relevant correlation with the presence of children. Those results, therefore, suggest creating targeted educational programs, community-based intervention, and legal regulation, to improve self-awareness and resilience among workers, and a more practical intervention could be directed to families with child.

Pearson’s correlation between knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours.

4. Conclusions

This study shows that the metropolitan population has general good knowledge about job satisfaction as well as a positive attitude. Job satisfaction, however, is reflected accordingly only with attitudes. While it has a negative relation to civil state and having children, this means that the experimental results of this study may be used to create targeted educational programs, community-based intervention, and legal regulation, to improve self-awareness and resilience among workers. A more direct intervention could be directed to families with children. Social networking with colleagues has an important impact on job satisfaction, as the part of the sample who responded positively to the specific question, had an overall better behaviour. Although, in this case, having children seems to be, as they negative correlate, a huge limitation to this practice. Considering that, as previously stated, the impact of job satisfaction on the population has a strong impact in terms of life balance, health, and economics, and it is well known that only a small fraction of workers are fully satisfied. It might be important to promote welfare regulation to allow a larger part of the population to conciliate work and family. Results of this paper could be an indicator of how to establish an educational program more efficiently. It is mandatory to strengthen specific knowledge about job satisfaction through the general population toward the importance of job satisfaction and the benefits related to a correct approach to work-life. The impact of a public health intervention could be even more effective by integrating another program to orient and define attitudes, which in turn will influence people to practice a mindfulness mental setting toward job satisfaction. In conclusion, a training program based on fundamental practices of job satisfaction should be improved in the young population, in early stage of family life, or before they have children, in order to achieve a double objective: “training family and spreading the practice to a future generation”.

Author Contributions

Data curation: P.M., M.S., P.S., F.D.D., A.N. (Alfonso Nardo), B.F., D.D., S.D.S., F.P., A.M. and M.T.; Formal analysis: M.S., F.D.D., A.N. (Alfonso Nardo), B.F., D.D., S.D.S. and F.P.; Resources: P.M. and M.T.; Software: P.S.; Supervision, P.M., M.T. and A.N. (Antonio Nardone); Writing—original draft: M.S., F.D.D., A.N. (Alfonso Nardo), B.F., D.D. and S.D.S.; Writing—review and editing: P.M., M.S., P.S., F.P., A.M., M.T. and A.N. (Antonio Nardone). All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Institutional Review Board Statement

Not applicable.

Informed Consent Statement

Data availability statement.

The data that support the findings of this study are available upon reasonable request from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available due to privacy or ethical restrictions.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Funding Statement

This research received no external funding.

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

• 1. Locke E.A. The nature and causes of job satisfaction. Handbook of industrial and organizational psychology. Chic. RandMc Narlly. 1976;2:360–580. [ Google Scholar ]
• 2. Penn M., Romano J.L., Foat D. The relationship between job satisfaction and burnout: A study of human service professionals. Adm. Ment. Health. 1988;15:157–165. doi: 10.1007/BF00869249. [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 3. Tsigilis N., Koustelios A., Togia A. Multivariate relationship and discriminant validity between job satisfaction and burnout. J. Manag. Psychol. 2004;19:666–675. doi: 10.1108/02683940410559365. [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 4. Leiter M.P., Hakanen J.J., Ahola K., Toppinen-Tanner S., Koskinen A., Väänänen A. Organizational predictors and health consequences of changes in burnout: A 12-year cohort study. J. Organ. Behav. 2013;34:959–973. doi: 10.1002/job.1830. [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 5. Erdogan V., Yildirim A. Healthcare professionals’ exposure to mobbing behaviors and relation of mobbing with job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Procedia Comput. Sci. 2017;120:931–938. doi: 10.1016/j.procs.2017.11.328. [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 6. Lee H.J. How emotional intelligence relates to job satisfaction and burnout in public service jobs. Int. Rev. Adm. Sci. 2018;84:729–745. doi: 10.1177/0020852316670489. [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 7. Gallup S. 2020. [(accessed on 10 June 2022)]. Available online: https://www.gallup.com/workplace/316064/employee-engagement-hits-new-high-historic-drop.aspx .
• 8. Eurostat Quality of Life in Europe–Facts and Views–Employment. 2018. [(accessed on 10 October 2022)]. Available online: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/ILC_PW05__custom_1172964/bookmark/table?lang=en&bookmarkId=6df73e07-c51b-40a2-9543-454eddc53166 .
• 9. Albertsen K. Working Time Arrangements and Social Consequences: What Do We Know? Nordic Council of Ministers; Copenhagen, Denmark: 2008. [ Google Scholar ]
• 10. Magee W. Effects of gender and age on pride in work, and job satisfaction. J. Happiness Stud. 2015;16:1091–1115. doi: 10.1007/s10902-014-9548-x. [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 11. EWCS European Working Conditions Surveys (EWCS) 2021. [(accessed on 9 July 2022)]. Available online: https://www.eurofound.europa.eu/surveys/european-working-conditions-surveys-ewcs .
• 12. Janssen S., Backes-Gellner U. Occupational stereotypes and gender-specific job satisfaction. Ind. Relat. A J. Econ. Soc. 2016;55:71–91. doi: 10.1111/irel.12126. [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 13. Hauret L., Williams D.R. Cross-national analysis of gender differences in job satisfaction. Ind. Relat. A J. Econ. Soc. 2017;56:203–235. doi: 10.1111/irel.12171. [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 14. Perugini C., Vladisavljević M. Gender inequality and the gender-job satisfaction paradox in Europe. Labour Econ. 2019;60:129–147. doi: 10.1016/j.labeco.2019.06.006. [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 15. EFILWC Measuring Job Satisfaction in Surveys–Comparative Analytical Report. 2007. [(accessed on 14 May 2022)]. Available online: https://archives.eui.eu/en/isaar/645 .
• 16. Fiorillo D., Nappo N. Job satisfaction in Italy: Individual characteristics and social relations. Int. J. Soc. Econ. 2014;41:683–704. doi: 10.1108/IJSE-10-2012-0195. [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 17. Platis C., Reklitis P., Zimeras S. Relation between job satisfaction and job performance in healthcare services. Procedia-Soc. Behav. Sci. 2015;175:480–487. doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.01.1226. [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 18. Zhang M., Yang R., Wang W., Gillespie J., Clarke S., Yan F. Job satisfaction of urban community health workers after the 2009 healthcare reform in China: A systematic review. Int. J. Qual. Health Care. 2016;28:14–21. doi: 10.1093/intqhc/mzv111. [ DOI ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 19. Lacy B.E., Chan J.L. Physician burnout: The hidden health care crisis. Clin. Gastroenterol. Hepatol. 2018;16:311–317. doi: 10.1016/j.cgh.2017.06.043. [ DOI ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 20. Wu F., Ren Z., Wang Q., He M., Xiong W., Ma G., Zhang X. The relationship between job stress and job burnout: The mediating effects of perceived social support and job satisfaction. Psychol. Health Med. 2021;26:204–211. doi: 10.1080/13548506.2020.1778750. [ DOI ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 21. Trivellas P., Reklitis P., Platis C. The effect of jobrelated stress on employees’ satisfaction: A survey in health care. Procedia-Soc. Behav. Sci. 2013;73:718–726. doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2013.02.110. [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 22. Yavuzer Y., Civilidag A. Mediator role of depression on the relationship between mobbing and life satisfaction of health professionals. Dusunen Adam J. Psychiatry Neurol. Sci. 2014;27:115. doi: 10.5350/DAJPN2014270203. [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 23. Yusop Y.M., Dempster M., Stevenson C. Understanding inappropriate behaviour: Harassment, bullying and mobbing at work in Malaysia. Procedia-Soc. Behav. Sci. 2014;127:179–183. doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.03.236. [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 24. Van Saane N., Sluiter J.K., Verbeek J.H.A.M., Frings-Dresen M.H.W. Reliability and validity of instruments measuring job satisfaction—A systematic review. Occup. Med. 2003;53:191–200. doi: 10.1093/occmed/kqg038. [ DOI ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 25. Jackson S.E., Maslach C. After-effects of job-related stress: Families as victims. J. Organ. Behav. 1982;3:63–77. doi: 10.1002/job.4030030106. [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 26. Bin A.S. The relationship between job satisfaction, job performance and employee engagement: An explorative study. Issues Bus. Manag. Econ. 2015;4:1–8. [ Google Scholar ]
• 27. Batura N., Skordis-Worrall J., Thapa R., Basnyat R., Morrison J. Is the Job Satisfaction Survey a good tool to measure job satisfaction amongst health workers in Nepal? Results of a validation analysis. BMC Health Serv. Res. 2016;16:1–13. doi: 10.1186/s12913-016-1558-4. [ DOI ] [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 28. KAP Survey Model . Retrieved from The KAP Survey Model (Knowledge, Attitude & Practices) United States Agency for International Development (USAID); Washington, DC, USA: 2011. [ Google Scholar ]
• 29. Spector P.E. Job Satisfaction: Application, Assessment, Causes, and Consequences (Vol. 3) Sage; Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: 1997. [ Google Scholar ]
• 30. Li L., Hu H., Zhou H., He C., Fan L., Liu X., Sun T. Work stress, work motivation and their effects on job satisfaction in community health workers: A cross-sectional survey in China. BMJ Open. 2014;4:e004897. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2014-004897. [ DOI ] [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 31. Alavi S.S., Dabbagh S.T., Abbasi M., Mehrdad R. Job satisfaction and its relationship to radiation protection knowledge, attitude and practice [RP-KAP] of Iranian radiation workers. EMHJ-East. Mediterr. Health J. 2016;22:727–734. doi: 10.26719/2016.22.10.727. [ DOI ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 32. Lee C., Schuler R.S. A constructive replication and extension of a role and expectancy perception model of participation in decision making. J. Occup. Psychol. 1982;55:109–118. doi: 10.1111/j.2044-8325.1982.tb00083.x. [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 33. Wood J., Wallace J.P., Zeffane R., Schermerhorn J., Hunt J.B., Osborne R.H. Organisational Behaviour: An Asian-Pacific Perspective. John Wiley & Sons; Hoboken, NJ, USA: 1998. [ Google Scholar ]
• 34. English F.W., editor. Encyclopedia of Educational Leadership and Administration. Sage Publications; Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: 2006. [ Google Scholar ]
• 35. Amarantidou S. Ph.D. Thesis. University of Thessaly; Volos, Greece: 2010. Job Burnout and Job Satisfaction among Teachers: A Longitudinal Study. (In Greek) [ Google Scholar ]
• 36. Belias D., Koustelios A. Leadership and job satisfaction—A review. Eur. Sci. J. 2014;10 doi: 10.19044/esj.2014.v10n8p%p. [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 37. Gulavani A., Shinde M. Occupational stress and job satisfaction among nurses. Int. J. Sci. Res. 2014;3:733–740. [ Google Scholar ]
• 38. Al-Haroon H.I., Al-Qahtani M.F. The demographic predictors of job satisfaction among the nurses of a major public hospital in KSA. J. Taibah Univ. Med. Sci. 2020;15:32. doi: 10.1016/j.jtumed.2019.11.003. [ DOI ] [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 39. Judge T.A., Weiss H.M., Kammeyer-Mueller J.D., Hulin C.L. Job attitudes, job satisfaction, and job affect: A century of continuity and of change. J. Appl. Psychol. 2017;102:356. doi: 10.1037/apl0000181. [ DOI ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 40. Shahab M.A., Nisa I. The influence of leadership and work attitudes toward job satisfaction and performance of employee. Int. J. Manag. Stud. Res. 2014;2:69–77. [ Google Scholar ]
• 41. Judge T.A., Zhang S.C., Glerum D.R. Essentials of Job Attitudes and Other Workplace Psychological Constructs. Routledge; London, UK: 2020. Job satisfaction; pp. 207–241. [ Google Scholar ]
• 42. Hermawan S., Wati L.R., Hanif A., Rahayu R.A., Rahayu D. Healthy Lifestyle, Role Ambiguity, Spiritual Quotient, and Job Burnout on Job Satisfaction. Muhammadiyah Int. J. Econ. Bus. 2019;2:170–182. [ Google Scholar ]
• 43. Andrews M.C., Kacmar K.M., Kacmar C. The mediational effect of regulatory focus on the relationships between mindfulness and job satisfaction and turnover intentions. Career Dev. Int. 2014;19:494–507. doi: 10.1108/CDI-02-2014-0018. [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 44. Im Choi J., Koh M.S. Relations of job stress, burnout, mindfulness and job satisfaction of clinical nurses. Int. J. Biosci. Biotechnol. 2015;7:121–128. [ Google Scholar ]
• 45. Van der Walt F., De Klerk J.J. Workplace spirituality and job satisfaction. Int. Rev. Psychiatry. 2014;26:379–389. doi: 10.3109/09540261.2014.908826. [ DOI ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 46. Tharikh S.M., Ying C.Y., Saad Z.M. Managing job attitudes: The roles of job satisfaction and organizational commitment on organizational citizenship behaviors. Procedia Econ. Financ. 2016;35:604–611. doi: 10.1016/S2212-5671(16)00074-5. [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 47. Srimarut T., Mekhum W. The Influence of Workload and Co-Worker Attitude on Job Satisfaction among Employees of Pharmaceutical Industry in Bangkok, Thailand: The Mediating Role of Training. Syst. Rev. Pharm. 2020;11:603–611. [ Google Scholar ]
• 48. Trivellas P., Akrivouli Z., Tsifora E., Tsoutsa P. The impact of knowledge sharing culture on job satisfaction in accounting firms. The mediating effect of general competencies. Procedia Econ. Financ. 2015;19:238–247. doi: 10.1016/S2212-5671(15)00025-8. [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 49. Kianto A., Vanhala M., Heilmann P. The impact of knowledge management on job satisfaction. J. Knowl. Manag. 2016;20:484–498. doi: 10.1108/JKM-10-2015-0398. [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 50. Sousa-Poza A., Sousa-Poza A.A. Well-being at work: A cross-national analysis of the levels and determinants of job satisfaction. J. Socio-Econ. 2000;29:517–538. doi: 10.1016/S1053-5357(00)00085-8. [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 51. Armstrong G.S., Atkin-Plunk C.A., Wells J. The relationship between work–family conflict, correctional officer job stress, and job satisfaction. Crim. Justice Behav. 2015;42:1066–1082. doi: 10.1177/0093854815582221. [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 52. Clark A.E. Job satisfaction in Britain. Br. J. Ind. Relat. 1996;34:189–217. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8543.1996.tb00648.x. [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 53. Booth A.L., Van Ours J.C. Job satisfaction and family happiness: The part-time work puzzle. Econ. J. 2008;118:F77–F99. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-0297.2007.02117.x. [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]

Associated Data

This section collects any data citations, data availability statements, or supplementary materials included in this article.

• View on publisher site
• PDF (328.8 KB)
• Collections

Similar articles

Cited by other articles, links to ncbi databases.

• Download .nbib .nbib
• Format: AMA APA MLA NLM

Add to Collections

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.

Adams, J. S. (1963). Towards an understanding of inequity. J. Abnorm. Soc. Psychol. 67:422.

Google Scholar

Alderfer, C. P. (1969). An empirical test of a new theory of human needs. Organ. Behav. Hum. Perform. 4, 142–175. doi: 10.1016/0030-5073(69)90004-X

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Angle, H. L., and Perry, J. L. (1983). Organizational commitment: individual and organizational influences. Work Occupat. 10, 123–146. doi: 10.1177/0730888483010002001

Bateman, T. S., and Strasser, S. (1984). A longitudinal analysis of the antecedents of organizational commitment. Acad. Manag. J. 27, 95–112. doi: 10.2307/255959

PubMed Abstract | CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Blau, G., and Boal, K. (1989). Using job involvement and organizational commitment interactively to predict turnover. J. Manag. 15, 115–127. doi: 10.1177/014920638901500110

Brayfield, A. H., and Rothe, H. F. (1951). An index of job satisfaction. J. Appl. Psychol. 35:307.

Brewer, A. M., and Lok, P. (1995). Managerial strategy and nursing commitment in australian hospitals. J. Adv. Nurs. 21, 789–799. doi: 10.1046/j.1365-2648.1995.21040789.x

Brooks, I., and Swailes, S. (2002). Analysis of the relationship between nurse influences over flexible working and commitment to nursing. J. Adv. Nurs. 38, 117–126. doi: 10.1046/j.1365-2648.2002.02155.x

Brown, S. P. (1996). A meta-analysis and review of organizational research on job involvement. Psychol. Bull. 120, 235–255. doi: 10.1037/0033-2909.120.2.235

Chen, Y.-J. (2007). Relationships among service orientation, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment in the international tourist hotel industry. J. Amer. Acad. Business 11, 71–82.

Colakoglu, U., Culha, O., and Atay, H. (2010). The effects of perceived organisational support on employees'affective outcomes: evidence from the hotel industry. Tourism Hospital. Manag. 16, 125–150.

Currivan, D. B. (1999). The causal order of job satisfaction and organizational commitment in models of employee turnover. Hum. Resour. Manag. Rev. 9, 495–524. doi: 10.1016/S1053-4822(99)00031-5

Curry, J. P., Wakefield, D. S., Price, J. L., and Mueller, C. W. (1986). On the causal ordering of job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Acad. Manag. J. 29, 847–858. doi: 10.2307/255951

Denhardt, R. B., Denhardt, J. V., and Aristigueta, M. P. (2012). Managing Human Behavior in Public and Nonprofit Organizations . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Dillman, D. A. (2011). Mail and Internet Surveys: The Tailored Design Method–2007 Update with New Internet, Visual, and Mixed-Mode Guide . New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons.

Donovan, J. J. (2001). Work motivation. Handb. Indust. Work Organ. Psychol. 2, 53–76. doi: 10.4135/9781848608368.n4

Falkenburg, K., and Schyns, B. (2007). Work satisfaction, organizational commitment and withdrawal behaviours. Manag. Res. News 30, 708–723. doi: 10.1108/01409170710823430

Fields, D. L. (2002). Taking the Measure of Work: A Guide to Validated Scales for Organizational Research and Diagnosis . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Fu, W., and Deshpande, S. P. (2014). The impact of caring climate, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment on job performance of employees in a china's insurance company. J. Business Ethics 124, 339–349. doi: 10.1007/s10551-013-1876-y

Fulmer, I. S., and Ployhart, R. E. (2014). “Our most important asset” a multidisciplinary/multilevel review of human capital valuation for research and practice. J. Manag. 40, 161–192.

GDP (2017). GDP Growth . Available online at: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?end=2016&locations=RS&start=1996&view=chart (Accessed December 14, 2017).

Getahun, S., Sims, B., and Hummer, D. (2008). Job satisfaction and organizational commitment among probation and parole officers: a case study. Professional Issues Crim. Just. 3, 1–16.

Glen, C. (2006). Key skills retention and motivation: the war for talent still rages and retention is the high ground. Indust. Commer. Train. 38, 37–45. doi: 10.1108/00197850610646034

Govaerts, N., Kyndt, E., Dochy, F., and Baert, H. (2011). Influence of learning and working climate on the retention of talented employees. J. Workplace Learn. 23, 35–55. doi: 10.1108/13665621111097245

Govender, S., and Parumasur, S. B. (2010). The relationship between employee motivation and job involvement. South Afr. J. Econ. Manag. Sci. 13, 237–253. doi: 10.4102/sajems.v13i3.102

Greenberg, J., and Baron, R. A. (2008). Behavior in Organizations: Understanding and Managing the Human Side of Work. Upper saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.

Griffin, M. L., Hogan, N. L., Lambert, E. G., Tucker-Gail, K. A., and Baker, D. N. (2010). Job involvement, job stress, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment and the burnout of correctional staff. Crim. Just. Behav. 37, 239–255. doi: 10.1177/0093854809351682

Hall, D. T., and Mansfield, R. (1975). Relationships of age and seniority with career variables of engineers and scientists. J. Appl. Psychol. 60:201.

Kanungo, R. N. (1982). Measurement of job and work involvement. J. Appl. Psychol. 67:341.

Locke, E. A. (1976). “The nature and causes of job satisfaction,” in Handbook of Industrial and Organizational Psychology , ed M. D. Dunnette (Chicago, IL: Rand McNally), 1297–1349.

Locke, E. A. (1968). Toward a theory of task motivation and incentives. Organ. Behav. Hum. Perform. 3, 157–189. doi: 10.1016/0030-5073(68)90004-4

Locke, E. A., and Latham, G. P. (2004). What should we do about motivation theory? Six recommendations for the twenty-first century. Acad. Manag. Rev. 29, 388–403. doi: 10.5465/AMR.2004.13670974

Lodahl, T. M., and Kejnar, M. (1965). The definition and measurement of job involvement. J. Appl. Psychol. 49:24.

PubMed Abstract | Google Scholar

Malhotra, N., and Mukherjee, A. (2004). The relative influence of organisational commitment and job satisfaction on service quality of customer-contact employees in banking call centres. J. Serv. Market. 18, 162–174. doi: 10.1108/08876040410536477

Martin, C. L., and Bennett, N. (1996). The role of justice judgments in explaining the relationship between job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Group Organ. Manag. 21, 84–104. doi: 10.1177/1059601196211005

Maslow, A. H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychol. Rev. 50:370.

Mathieu, J. E., and Zajac, D. M. (1990). A review and meta-analysis of the antecedents, correlates, and consequences of organizational commitment. Psychol. Bull. 108:171.

Mayo, E. (1933). The Human Problems of an Industrial Organization . New York, NY: McMillan.

Meyer, J. P., Stanley, D. J., Herscovitch, L., and Topolnytsky, L. (2002). Affective, continuance, and normative commitment to the organization: a meta-analysis of antecedents, correlates, and consequences. J. Vocat. Behav. 61, 20–52. doi: 10.1006/jvbe.2001.1842

Milisavljevic, S., Mitrovic, S., and Konja, V. (2013). “Serbian reindustrialization as a chance for better tomorrow opportunities and threats from customers perspective,” in Proceedings of the International Scientific Conference “Deindustrialization: Phenomena, Consequences” (Novi Sad: Faculty of Technical Sciences), 173–182.

Millar, C. C. J. M., Chen, S., and Waller, L. (2017). Leadership, knowledge and people in knowledge-intensive organisations: implications for HRM theory and practice. Int. J. Hum. Res. Manag. 28, 261–275. doi: 10.1080/09585192.2016.1244919

Mitchell, T. R., and Daniels, D. (2002). “Motivation,” in Handbook of Psychology , Vol. 12, eds W. Borman, D. Ilgen, and R. Klimoski (New York, NY: Wiley), 225–254. doi: 10.1002/0471264385.wei1210

Morrow, P. C. (2011). Managing organizational commitment: insights from longitudinal research. J. Vocat. Behav. 79, 18–35. doi: 10.1016/j.jvb.2010.12.008

Mowday, R. T., Steers, R. M., and Porter, L. W. (1979). The measurement of organizational commitment. J. Vocat. Behav. 14, 224–247. doi: 10.1016/0001-8791(79)90072-1

Moynihan, D. P., and Pandey, S. K. (2007). Finding workable levers over work motivation: comparing job satisfaction, job involvement, and organizational commitment. Admin. Soc. 39, 803–832. doi: 10.1177/0095399707305546

Porter, L. W., and Lawler, E. E. (1968). Management Attitudes and Performance . Homewood, IL: Richard D. Irwin Company.

Porter, L. W., Steers, R. M., Mowday, R. T., and Boulian, P. V. (1974). Organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and turnover among psychiatric technicians. J. Appl. Psychol. 59:603.

Price, J. L., and Mueller, C. W. (1981). A causal model of turnover for nurses. Acad. Manag. J. 24, 543–565. doi: 10.2307/255574

Rabinowitz, S., and Hall, D. T. (1977). Organizational research on job involvement. Psychol. Bull. 84:265.

Radun, V., Dragic, R., and Curcic, R. (2015). “Transition, institutions and neoinstitutionalism,” in Institutional Assumptions about Socio-Economic Dynamics in East and Central Europe-Proceedings , Vol. 1 (Novi Sad), 91–106.

Ratkovic-Njegovan, B., and Grubic-Nesic, L. (2015). “Transition, institutions and neoinstitutionalism,” in Institutional Assumptions about Socio-Economic Dynamics in East and Central Europe-Proceedings , Vol. 1 (Novi Sad), 107–122.

Raymond, T., and Mjoli, T. (2013). The relationship between job involvement, job satisfaction and organizational commitment among lower-level employees at a motor-car manufacturing company in East London, South Africa. J. Business Econ. Manag. 6, 25–35.

Roe, R., Zinovieva, I., Dienes, E., and Ten Horn, L. (2000). A comparison of work motivation in bulgaria, hungary, and the netherlands: test of a model. Appl. Psychol. 49, 658–687. doi: 10.1111/1464-0597.00039

Saal, F. E. (1978). Job involvement: a multivariate approach. J. Appl. Psychol. 63:53.

Saari, L. M., and Judge, T. A. (2004). Employee attitudes and job satisfaction. Hum. Resour. Manag. 43, 395–407. doi: 10.1002/hrm.20032

Schneider, B., and Snyder, R. A. (1975). Some relationships between job satisfaction and organization climate. J. Appl. Psychol. 60:318.

Sjöberg, A., and Sverke, M. (2000). The interactive effect of job involvement and organizational commitment on job turnover revisited: a note on the mediating role of turnover intention. Scand. J. Psychol. 41, 247–252. doi: 10.1111/1467-9450.00194

Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia (2017). Statistical Yearbook of the Republic of Serbia . Belgrade.

Stevens, J. M., Beyer, J. M., and Trice, H. M. (1978). Assessing personal, role, and organizational predictors of managerial commitment. Acad. Manag. J. 21, 380–396. doi: 10.2307/255721

Toga, R. (2011). The Relationship between Job Involvement, Job Satisfaction and Organizational Commitment Among Lower-Level Employees at Mercedes Benz South Africa . Doctoral dissertation, University of Fort Hare.

Tsai, M.-T., and Huang, C.-C. (2008). The relationship among ethical climate types, facets of job satisfaction, and the three components of organizational commitment: a study of nurses in Taiwan. J. Business Ethics 80, 565–581. doi: 10.1007/s10551-007-9455-8

Uvalic, M. (2013). “Why has serbia not been a frontrunner?,” in Handbook of the Economics and Political Economy of Transition , eds P. Hare and G. Turley (London; New York, NY: Routledge, Taylor & Francis), 365–375.

Valaei, N., Valaei, N., Rezaei, S., and Rezaei, S. (2016). Job satisfaction and organizational commitment: an empirical investigation among ICT-SMEs. Manag. Res. Rev. 39, 1663–1694. doi: 10.1108/MRR-09-2015-0216

Vandenberg, R. J., and Lance, C. E. (1992). Examining the causal order of job satisfaction and organizational commitment. J. Manag. 18, 153–167. doi: 10.1177/014920639201800110

Vomberg, A., Homburg, C., and Bornemann, T. (2015). Talented people and strong brands: the contribution of human capital and brand equity to firm value. Strat. Manag. J. 36, 2122–2131. doi: 10.1002/smj.2328

Vroom, V. H. (1964). Work and Motivation . Oxford, UK: Wiley.

Wegge, J., Schmidt, K.-H., Parkes, C., and Dick, R. (2007). Taking a sickie: job satisfaction and job involvement as interactive predictors of absenteeism in a public organization. J. Occupat. Organ. Psychol. 80, 77–89. doi: 10.1348/096317906X99371

Weiss, D. J., Dawis, R. V., and England, G. W. (1967). Manual for the minnesota satisfaction questionnaire. Minnesota Stud. Vocat. Rehabil . 22.

Williams, L. J., and Hazer, J. T. (1986). Antecedents and consequences of satisfaction and commitment in turnover models: a reanalysis using latent variable structural equation methods. J. Appl. Psychol. 71:219.

Yang, F.-H., and Chang, C.-C. (2008). Emotional labour, job satisfaction and organizational commitment amongst clinical nurses: a questionnaire survey. Int. J. Nurs. Stud. 45, 879–887. doi: 10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2007.02.001

Yücel, İ. (2012). Examining the relationships among job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and turnover intention: an empirical study. Int. J. Business Manag. 7:44. doi: 10.5539/ijbm.v7n20p44

CrossRef Full Text

Zopiatis, A., Constanti, P., and Theocharous, A. L. (2014). Job involvement, commitment, satisfaction and turnover: evidence from hotel employees in cyprus. Tourism Manag. 41, 129–140. doi: 10.1016/j.tourman.2013.09.013

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.

Job satisfaction as a determinant of employees’ optimal well-being in an instrumental variable approach

• Published: 07 January 2019
• Volume 53 , pages 1721–1742, ( 2019 )

Cite this article

• Emiliano Sironi   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-9129-3133 1  

3612 Accesses

35 Citations

3 Altmetric

Explore all metrics

The correlation between measures of a high level of job satisfaction and well-being is well documented in the literature; however, such a relationship may be potentially bidirectional. If an increase in job satisfaction affects optimal well-being, the reverse relationship can also be hypothesized. In addition, the relationship between job satisfaction and well-being may be polluted by the presence of omitted variables that can be correlated both with the satisfaction in the workplace and with a measure of optimal wellbeing. Using the sixth round of the European Social Survey, this paper utilizes an instrumental variable approach to isolate the effect of job satisfaction on optimal well-being variation that is independent of unobserved individual characteristics. After having controlled for the role of socio-economic profiles of interviewed individuals, our findings confirm a strong and significantly positive influence of job satisfaction on optimal well-being. The novelty of our analysis is twofold: firstly, we employ an instrumental variable approach to correct for endogeneity that might the effect of job satisfaction on well-being. Secondly, we use an innovative measure of optimal well-being, which we adopt as an outcome variable for measuring a multi-dimensional definition of well-being dealing with both hedonic and eudemonic streams.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Subscribe and save.

• Get 10 units per month
• Download Article/Chapter or eBook
• 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
• Cancel anytime

Price includes VAT (Russian Federation)

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Rent this article via DeepDyve

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

What Makes for a Good Job? Evidence Using Subjective Wellbeing Data

Job satisfaction in the “big four” of europe: reasoning between feeling and uncertainty through cub models.

Does Positive Wellbeing Predict Job Performance Three Months Later?

Eastern (post - communist) countries include Estonia, Bulgaria, Russia, Slovakia, Ukraine. Continental category includes Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Nordic category includes Denmark, Finland, Norway, Netherlands, Sweden, Anglo-Saxon category includes United Kingdom and Ireland; Mediterranean countries are Spain, Portugal and Cyprus. Other is a residual category including the remaining countries which have controversial or mixed attributions (e.g. include both traits from post-communist and continental).

Results from the model do not change after varying the cut-point. In particular, if we separate micro enterprises (below 10 workers) from the others, the regression results are exactly the same.

Baptiste, N.R.: Tightening the link between employee wellbeing at work and performance: a new dimension for HRM. Manag. Decis. 46 , 284–309 (2008)

Article   Google Scholar  

Baum, C.F., Schaffer, M.E., Stillman, S.: Instrumental variables and GMM: estimation and testing. Stata J. 3 (1), 1–31 (2003)

Blanchflower, D.G., Oswald, A.J.: Is well-being U-shaped over the life cycle?. NBER Working Paper No. 12935. National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge (2007)

Bowling, N.A., Eschleman, K.J., Wang, Q.: A meta-analytic examination of the relationship between job satisfaction and subjective well-being. J. Occup. Organ. Psychol. 83 (4), 915–934 (2010)

Campbell, A.: The Sense of Well-Being in America: Recent Patterns and Trends. McGraw Hill, New York (1981)

Google Scholar  

Campbell, A., Converse, P.E., Rodgers, W.L.: The Quality of American Life. Russell Sage Foundation, New York (1976)

Chen, W.C.: How education enhances happiness: comparison of mediating factors in four East Asian countries. Soc. Indic. Res. 106 (1), 117–131 (2012)

Cheung, F., Lucas, R.E.: Assessing the validity of single-item life satisfaction measures: results from three large samples. Qual. Life Res. 23 (10), 2809–2818 (2014)

Clark, A.E., Oswald, A.J.: Unhappiness and unemployment. Econ. J. 104 (424), 648–659 (1994)

Crisp, R.: Well-Being. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stanford (2008)

De Neve, J.E., Diener, E., Tay, L., Xuereb, C.: The Objective Benefits of Subjective Well-Being. World Happiness Report 2013. UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, New York (2013)

Diener, E.: Subjective well-being. Psychol. Bull. 95 , 542–575 (1984)

Diener, E., Sandvik, E., Seidlitz, L., Diener, M.: The relationship between income and subjective well-being: relative or absolute? Soc. Indic. Res. 28 (3), 195–223 (1993)

Diener, E., Suh, E.M., Lucas, R.E., Smith, H.L.: Subjective well-being: three decades of progress. Psychol. Bull. 125 (2), 276–303 (1999)

Dolbier, C.L., Webster, J.A., McCalister, K.T., Mallon, M.W., Steinhardt, M.A.: Reliability and validity of a single-item measure of job satisfaction. Am. J. Health Promot. 19 (3), 194–198 (2005)

Donegani, C.P., McKay, S.: Is there a paradox of lower job satisfaction among trade union members? European evidence. Eur. Rev. Labour Res. 18 (4), 471–489 (2012)

Easterlin, R.A.: Does economic growth improve the human lot? Some empirical evidence. In: David, P.A., Reder, M.W. (eds.) Nations and Households in Economic Growth: Essays in Honor of Moses Abramowitz, pp. 89–125. Academic Press, New York (1974)

Edwards, J.R., Rothbard, N.P.: Work and family stress and well-being: an examination of person-environment fit in the work and family domains. Organ. Behav. Hum. Decis. Process. 77 (2), 85–129 (1999)

ESS Round 6: European Social Survey Round 6 Data, file edition 2.3. NSD—Norwegian Centre for Research Data, Norway—Data Archive and distributor of ESS data for ESS ERIC (2012)

Faragher, E.B., Cass, M., Cooper, C.L.: The relationship between job satisfaction and health: a meta-analysis. Occup. Environ. Med. 62 (2), 105–112 (2005)

Flavin, P., Shufeldt, G.: Labor union membership and life satisfaction in the United States. Labor Stud. J. 41 (2), 171–184 (2016)

Foote, D.A., Li-Ping Tang, T.: Job satisfaction and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) does team commitment make a difference in self-directed teams? Manag. Decis. 46 , 933–947 (2008)

Frey, B., Stutzer, A.: The economics of happiness. World Econ. 3 (1), 25–41 (2002)

García-Serrano, C.: Does size matter? The influence of firm size on working conditions, job satisfaction and quit intentions. Scott. J. Polit. Econ. 58 (2), 221–247 (2011)

Giovannini, E., Rondinella, T.: Measuring equitable and sustainable wellbeing in Italy. In: Maggino, F., Nuvolati, G. (eds.) Quality of Life in Italy, pp. 9–25. Springer, Dordrecht (2012)

Chapter   Google Scholar  

Green, F., Zhu, Y.: Overqualification, job dissatisfaction and increasing dispersion in the returns to graduate education. Oxf. Econ. Pap. 62 , 740–763 (2010)

Headey, B., Veenhoven, R., Wearing, A.: Top-down versus bottom-up theories of subjective well-being. Soc. Indic. Res. 24 , 81–100 (1991)

Herzberg, F.: One more time: how do you motivate employees. Harvard Bus. Rev. 46 (1), 53–62 (1968)

Hipp, L., Givan, R.K.: What do unions do? A cross-national reexamination of the relationship between unionization and job satisfaction. Soc. Forces 94 (1), 349–377 (2015)

Huppert, F.A., So, T.T.: Flourishing across Europe: application of a new conceptual framework for defining well-being. Soc. Indic. Res. 110 (3), 837–861 (2013)

Judge, T.A., Hulin, C.L.: Job satisfaction as a reflection of disposition: a multiple source causal analysis. Organ. Behav. Hum. Decis. Process. 56 , 388–421 (1993)

Judge, T.A., Locke, E.A.: Effect of dysfunctional thought processes on subjective well-being and job satisfaction. J. Appl. Psychol. 78 (3), 475–490 (1993)

Judge, T.A., Watanabe, S.: Another look at the job satisfaction–life satisfaction relationship. J. Appl. Psychol. 78 , 939–948 (1993)

Judge, T.A., Watanabe, S.: Individual differences in the nature of the relationship between job and life satisfaction. J. Occup. Organ. Psychol. 67 (2), 101–107 (1994)

Judge, T.A., Locke, E.A., Durham, C.C., Kluger, A.N.: Dispositional effects on job and life satisfaction: the role of core evaluations. J. Appl. Psychol. 83 , 17–34 (1998)

Judge, T.A., Thoresen, C.J., Bono, J.E., Patton, G.K.: The job satisfaction–job performance relationship: a qualitative and quantitative review. Psychol. Bull. 127 (3), 376–407 (2001)

Kabanoff, B.: Work and nonwork: a review of models, methods, and findings. Psychol. Bull. 88 (1), 60–77 (1980)

Kahneman, D., Deaton, A.: High income improves evaluation of life but not emotional well-being. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 107 (38), 16489–16493 (2010)

Kahneman, D., Diener, E., Schwarz, N.: Well-Being: Foundations of Hedonic Psychology. Russell Sage Foundation, New York (1999)

Kunin, T.: The construction of a new type of attitude measure. Pers. Psychol. 8 (1), 65–77 (1955)

LaPiere, R.T.: Attitudes vs. actions. Soc. Forces 13 (2), 230–237 (1934)

Locke, E.A.: The nature and causes of job satisfaction. In: Dunnette, M.D. (ed.) Handbook of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, pp. 1297–1343. Rand McNally, Chicago (1976)

Millán, J.M., Hessels, J., Thurik, R., Aguado, R.: Determinants of job satisfaction: a European comparison of self-employed and paid employees. Small Bus. Econ. 40 (3), 651–670 (2013)

Moorman, R.H.: The influence of cognitive and affective based job satisfaction measures on the relationship between satisfaction and organizational citizenship behavior. Hum. Relat. 46 (6), 756–776 (1993)

Morrone, A., Piscitelli, A., D’Ambrosio, A.: How disadvantages shape life satisfaction: an alternative methodological approach. Soc. Indic. Res. (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-017-1825-8

Musick, K., Bumpass, L.: Reexamining the case for marriage: union formation and changes in well-being. J. Marriage Fam. 74 (1), 1–18 (2012)

Nagy, M.S.: Using a single-item approach to measure facet job satisfaction. J. Occup. Organ. Psychol. 75 (1), 77–86 (2002)

Nussbaum, M., Sen, A.: The Quality of Life. Clarendon Press, Oxford (1993)

Book   Google Scholar  

Pder, K., Kerem, K.: Social models in a European comparison. East. Eur. Econ. 49 (5), 55–74 (2011)

Prendergast, K.B., Schofield, G.M., Mackay, L.M.: Associations between lifestyle behaviours and optimal wellbeing in a diverse sample of New Zealand adults. BMC Public Health 16 (1), 1–11 (2016)

Quoidbach, J., Dunn, E.W., Petrides, K.V., Mikolajczak, M.: Money giveth, money taketh away: the dual effect of wealth on happiness. Psychol. Sci. 21 (6), 759–763 (2010)

Rain, J.S., Lane, I.M., Steiner, D.D.: A current look at the job satisfaction/life satisfaction relationship: review and future considerations. Hum. Relat. 44 (3), 287–307 (1991)

Rice, R.W., Near, J.P., Hunt, R.G.: The job-satisfaction/life-satisfaction relationship: a review of empirical research. Basic Appl. Soc. Psychol. 1 , 37–64 (1980)

Rivers, D., Vuong, Q.H.: Limited information estimators and exogeneity tests for simultaneous probit models. J. Econom. 39 , 347–366 (1988)

Robins, L., Reiger, D.: Psychiatric Disorders in America: The Epidemiological Catchment Area Study. Free Press, New York (1991)

Ryan, R.M., Deci, E.L.: On happiness and human potentials: a review of research on hedonic and eudaimonic well-being. Annu. Rev. Psychol. 52 (1), 141–166 (2001)

Ryff, C.D., Singer, B.H.: Know thyself and become what you are: a eudaimonic approach to psychological well-being. J. Happiness Stud. 9 (1), 13–39 (2008)

Saridakis, G., Muñoz-Torres, R., Tracey, P.: The endogeneity bias in the relationship between employee commitment and job satisfaction. Cambridge Judge Business School, Working Paper Series, vol. 2009, no. 3, pp. 1–15 (2009)

Shmotkin, D.: Happiness in the face of adversity: reformulating the dynamic and modular bases of subjective well-being. Rev. Gen. Psychol. 9 , 291–325 (1990)

Smith, P.C., Kendall, L.M., Hulin, C.L.: The Measurement of Satisfaction in Work and Retirement: A Strategy for the Study of Attitudes. Rand McNally, Chicago (1969)

Spector, P.E.: Job Satisfaction: Applications, Assessment, Causes and Consequences. Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks (1997)

Statt, D.: The Routledge Dictionary of Business Management, 3rd edn. Routledge Publishing, Detroit (2004)

Thompson, E.R., Phua, F.T.: A brief index of affective job satisfaction. Group Org. Manag. 37 (3), 275–307 (2012)

Thuen, F., Reime, M.H., Skrautvoll, K.: The effect of widowhood on psychological wellbeing and social support in the oldest groups of the elderly. J. Ment. Health 6 (3), 265–274 (1997)

Verbakel, E.: Subjective well-being by partnership status and its dependence on the normative climate. Eur. J. Popul. 28 (2), 205–232 (2012)

Wanous, J.P., Reichers, A.E., Hudy, M.J.: Overall job satisfaction: how good are single-item measures? J. Appl. Psychol. 82 (2), 247–252 (1997)

Warr, P.: Work, Unemployment, and Mental Health. Clarendon Press, Oxford (1987)

Weiss, H.M., Nicholas, J.P., Daus, C.S.: An examination of the joint effects of affective experiences and job beliefs on job satisfaction and variations in affective experiences over time. Organ. Behav. Hum. Decis. Process. 78 (1), 1–24 (1999)

Wright, T.A., Cropanzano, R.: Psychological well-being and job satisfaction as predictors of job performance. J. Occup. Health Psychol. 5 (1), 84–94 (2000)

Yahyagil, M.Y.: Values, feelings, job satisfaction and well-being: the Turkish case. Manag. Decis. 53 (10), 2268–2286 (2015)

Yu, Z., Chen, L.: Income and well-being: relative income and absolute income weaken negative emotion, but only relative income improves positive emotion. Front. Psychol. 7 (2012), 1–6 (2016). https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.02012

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Department of Statistical Sciences, Catholic University, Largo Gemelli 1, 20123, Milan, Italy

Emiliano Sironi

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Emiliano Sironi .

Additional information

Publisher's note.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Sironi, E. Job satisfaction as a determinant of employees’ optimal well-being in an instrumental variable approach. Qual Quant 53 , 1721–1742 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11135-019-00835-3

Download citation

Published : 07 January 2019

Issue Date : 15 July 2019

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11135-019-00835-3

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Job satisfaction
• Optimal well-being
• Instrumental variables
• Find a journal
• Publish with us
• Track your research