Empirical Study Of Employees' Job Satisfaction And Positive Stress In Retail Enterprises

Positive psychology emphasizes the positive influences of positive traits inside human being, such as subjective well-being, optimism, tolerance and hope, on particular individuals and organizations. The emergence of positive psychology movement shows light on the traditional stress research which overstates the negative outcomes of stress and thus neglects the positive side of stress. It is highly valuable if the positive potential of stress could be discovered and organizations establish the corresponding stress management system so that the well being and job satisfaction of worker could be significantly improved.This paper defines the positive stress responses as a pleasant, enjoying and positive emotion which enables the individual feel passionately, meaningfully and hopefully. Any stressor that could lead to such response will be classified as positive stressor. The range of positive psychology is tremendous, though this paper only concentrates on the three possibly most important ones:subjective well-being, optimism, and self efficacy. The paper hypothesizes that there exists positive correlations between positive psychology factors and positive stress responses, and between positive stress responses and job satisfaction.The tools of this research consists of three foreign scales, Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire, COPSOQ (COPSOQ),General Well-Being (GWB), Life Orientation Test Revised (LOT-R) and one domestic scale, the General Self-Efficacy Scale(GSES). COPSOQ is re-analyzed to construct positive stressors and positive stress responses factors, while GWB, LOT-R and GSES contributes to subjective well-being, optimism and self efficacy, respectively. After the process of translation, back translation and pilot study, a sample of 383 workers is drawn from 10 retail enterprises located in Beijing, Tianjin and Shandong Province, from June 2008 to January 2009, to verify the hypotheses stated above.After factor analysis, Positive stressors are divided into 6 factors, namely: meaning of work, team spirit, relationship with leader, control of the work, freedom during work, and workplace recognition. Positive stress responses are divided into three factors:total healthy, mentally healthy and energetic. Meanwhile, job satisfaction is divided into 7 factors, namely:the leader's ability, on the overall sense of satisfaction, the work itself, the role of conflict, the role clarity, the insecurity at work, the work of well-targeted.Results show that positive stressor and positive stress response do exists. Meaning of work is positively correlated with all job satisfaction factors; team sprit is positively correlated with 6 factors other than insecurity of work; relationship with leader is positively correlated with 6 factors other than role conflict; control of work and workplace recognition are positively correlated with factors other than insecurity at workplace.On the relationship between positive stress responses and job satisfaction, total healthy is positively correlated with factors other than insecurity at workplace; mental healthy is positively correlated with factors other than insecurity at workplace and role clarity; energetic factor is positively correlated with factors other than insecurity at workplace.Besides, on the relationship between positive psychology factors and job satisfaction, subjective well-being, optimism and self-efficacy are positively correlated with all job satisfaction factors other than the relationship between role clarity and optimism, and the relationship between subjective well-being and work well targeted. In addition, the paper examines the statistical significant of individual differences on the demographic dimensions:gender, age, working age, duty, and educational level. Three regression functions are also established to elaborate the relationship between meaning of job, workplace recognition and self efficacy and job satisfaction, respectively.Finally, a two-dimension stress management model is proposed to retail enterprises which suggests that manages should provide and stimulate positive stressor as well as control negative stressors. Couples of additional suggestion are also drawn for the consideration of similar enterprises.