An investigation of individual job satisfaction as an outcome of individual perception of organizational culture

Although job satisfaction and organizational culture have been compared in a number of studies, most focus on a limited single-venue sample. This effort considers a very large sample spanning a diversity of organizations. Three propositions state that individual job satisfaction is positively correlated with a "constructive" organizational culture, negatively correlated with a "passive/defensive" culture and negatively correlated with an "aggressive/defensive culture." The twelve hypotheses are corollaries to the propositions and based on the twelve subcultural scales that constitute the Organizational culture Inventory (OCI), i.e. four subcultural scales for each of three overall cultures. The subcultural scales are tested by multi-level regression analysis, using 100 archival surveys from each of 35 different organizations. Further, research findings related to work value congruence and person-organization fit suggest that the influence of the culture of an organization increases for an individual who fits in more with an organization. Consequently, the degree to which an employee fits in with the organization, expressed as person-organization fit (P-O fit), is expected to moderate the relationship between job satisfaction and organizational culture. The study finds support for the positive effect that the perception of the four constructive subcultures have on job satisfaction and some limited support for the negative effect that the four passive-defensive subcultures have on job satisfaction. The findings regarding the effect that the perception of an aggressive-defensive subculture has on job satisfaction were largely unsupported. The mixed results for the defensive subcultures appear to be due, in part, to the dominance of constructive cultures in the sample. For the same reason, there was virtually no support for PO-fit as a moderator in this sample.