Conceptualizing satisfaction and performance more broadly: What can be gained by the addition of life satisfaction and citizenship behavior

Many supervisors and managers build relationships with employees based on the assumption that if employees are happy at their jobs, they will exhibit superior job performance. Business practices such as empowerment, participative decision making, and quality of work life programs are just a few examples of ways managers put this assumption into practice. Scholars in the fields of industrial/organizational psychology and organizational behavior have examined the accuracy of the “happy worker is a productive worker” postulation for decades, and a conclusion that appears repeatedly is that the relationship between an employee's job satisfaction and his or her job performance is not as strong as one would expect.; While several possible explanations have been advanced, researchers have not been able to reach consensus on the reason for the weak relationship between these two variables. The current research focused on further investigation of several possible explanations pertaining to the job satisfaction job performance relationship. In particular, the operationalizations of the satisfaction and performance variables are examined and the extent to which the relationship operates differently for professional/supervisory and nonprofessional/nonsupervisory employees was investigated.; In a cross-sectional survey-based study using information from 87 respondents and their direct supervisors, the addition of two variables—life satisfaction and organizational citizenship behavior—to the satisfaction-performance model was tested. Respondents included individuals from an array of occupations and industries, including educators, social workers, medical personnel, salespersons, and managerial and administrative personnel. The addition of life satisfaction to the model increased our ability to predict employee performance on the job when both in-role and extra-role behaviors were used to assess performance. The addition of organizational citizenship behavior alone to the measure of employee performance, however, did not substantially contribute to our understanding of the satisfaction-performance relationship. Results indicate managers who are able to impact the overall life satisfaction of their employees may be able to garner the high levels of performance they have been attempting to achieve through increased job satisfaction.