PSYCH 658 Week 4 Job Satisfaction and Organizational Commitment Example

Staying Because They Want To or Because They Have To? Satisfaction and Three Kinds of Commitment in a Food Bank Staff Survey

[Student Name]

University of Phoenix

PSYCH/658: Work Motivation and Job Attitudes

Week 4 Assignment

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The food bank, its staff and survey results are composites written for a model paper; theories and research findings come from the sources listed.

Job attitudes, how people feel about their jobs and employers, shape whether they stay, help others and give extra effort. Satisfaction and commitment are related but distinct, and commitment itself comes in different forms. Our fall staff survey supplies the numbers.

The Survey

Each fall, staff complete an anonymous survey measuring satisfaction with five facets of the job, the work itself, coworkers, supervision, pay and promotion opportunities, along with overall satisfaction, and a standard measure of three forms of organizational commitment. This year thirty-nine of forty-two staff responded.

Why Measure Facets

An overall satisfaction score can hide important differences. A staff member who loves the mission but resents low pay may report the same overall rating as one who is lukewarm about everything, yet the two would respond to very different changes. Measuring facets separately lets the organization see which parts of the job are working and which are not, and it guards against reading a moderate average as a sign that nothing needs attention. Facet measures also allow comparisons with other nonprofits that use the same instrument, which helps the board judge whether low pay satisfaction is unusual or typical for the sector.

Satisfaction Results

On a scale of one to five, satisfaction with the work itself averaged 4.1 and with coworkers 4.0, while supervision averaged 3.4, promotion opportunities 2.6 and pay 2.3. Overall satisfaction averaged 3.5. Warehouse leads and sorting staff, after the pod redesign, reported higher satisfaction with the work itself than truck drivers, whose routes keep them alone most of the day.

Three Kinds of Commitment

Commitment research distinguishes affective commitment, emotional attachment and identification with the organization; continuance commitment, staying because leaving would be costly, such as losing benefits or seniority; and normative commitment, a feeling of obligation to stay.

Meyer et al. (2002) meta-analyzed studies of the three-component model. Affective commitment had the strongest favorable relationships with outcomes: lower turnover and withdrawal, better job performance, more citizenship behavior and lower stress. Normative commitment showed similar but weaker relationships. Continuance commitment was related to lower turnover intentions but was unrelated or negatively related to performance and citizenship and positively related to stress and work-family conflict.

Commitment Results by Group

Warehouse leads scored high on affective commitment, 4.2, and moderate on continuance, 2.9. Sorting staff were moderate on both. Truck drivers scored low on affective commitment, 2.7, and high on continuance, 3.9. In comments, several drivers wrote that they stayed for the health insurance and pension contributions, which delivery companies did not match, and that they did not feel part of the organization.

The drivers were not planning to leave; they were planning to stay without caring.

What That Pattern Predicts

The drivers' pattern, low affective and high continuance commitment, is concerning even though turnover is low. Meyer and colleagues' findings suggest that such employees stay but are less likely to go beyond their job duties and more likely to experience stress. Drivers are the food bank's face to partner pantries; their attitudes affect relationships with dozens of agencies.

Personality and Satisfaction

Judge et al. (2002) meta-analyzed relationships between the five-factor personality traits and job satisfaction. Neuroticism had the strongest relationship, negatively, followed by conscientiousness and extraversion, positively; agreeableness and openness had weaker relationships. Together the traits accounted for a meaningful share of variance in job satisfaction. The finding means that some differences in satisfaction reflect people's dispositions rather than the job.

This caution matters when interpreting small differences between individuals, but group-level patterns, such as all drivers reporting lower affective commitment, are more likely to reflect shared job conditions than personality.

How Much Do Attitudes Matter?

Some board members asked whether attitudes matter if work gets done. Harrison et al. (2006) used meta-analytic data to test whether overall job attitude, combining satisfaction and commitment, predicts a broad criterion of individual effectiveness that includes performance, citizenship, lateness, absence and turnover. Overall job attitude strongly predicted this broad criterion, more strongly than it predicted any single behavior. The authors argued that attitudes matter for the overall pattern of how people engage with their work.

Volunteers Have Attitudes Too

The staff survey does not include volunteers, but their attitudes matter just as much for the food bank's work. A short volunteer survey last spring found high satisfaction with the cause and with shift leads and lower satisfaction with how shifts are scheduled and communicated. Volunteers cannot have continuance commitment in the usual sense, since they lose nothing by leaving, so their participation rests almost entirely on affective and normative commitment. That makes the experiences that build attachment, a familiar crew, a lead who knows their names and evidence that their work matters, even more important for volunteers than for staff.

Satisfaction and Commitment Over Time

Attitudes are not fixed. Sorting staff's satisfaction with the work itself rose after the pod redesign, and drivers' affective commitment fell during the year of the pay dispute. Tracking the same measures each year, alongside changes in policies and jobs, turns the survey from a snapshot into a record of what changes actually do to how staff feel.

Likely Causes

The drivers' low affective commitment likely reflects job characteristics, since they work alone and rarely interact with the rest of staff, and fairness, given the pay dispute addressed earlier this year. Satisfaction with promotion was low across groups because few promotion paths existed until recently.

Normative Commitment

Normative commitment, a sense of obligation to stay, averaged 3.3 across staff and was highest among employees who had once received food assistance themselves or who joined through a church partnership. Several wrote that they felt they owed the work to their community. This form of commitment supports staying and helping, though less strongly than affective commitment, and it reflects the food bank's mission in a way that a for-profit warehouse could not easily match.

Actions

Target the drivers' affective commitment: invite drivers to monthly staff meetings at a time compatible with routes, include them in pantry partner visits, publish stories from pantries about deliveries and give senior drivers roles training new drivers. Continue the posted promotion path and communicate it. Track affective commitment by group next fall.

Every action carries a name and a deadline for the spring board meeting, where results will be reviewed against this year's numbers.

Limits

A single fall snapshot, all of it self-report, cannot show what causes what. Small groups make averages unstable, and anonymous comments may overrepresent strong opinions.

Conclusion

Satisfaction at the food bank is high for the work and coworkers and low for pay and promotion. Commitment differs by group, and drivers stay mainly because leaving is costly. Research on the three forms of commitment, personality and overall job attitude explains why that pattern deserves attention and points to actions that build attachment rather than simply raising scores.

References

Harrison, D. A., Newman, D. A., & Roth, P. L. (2006). How important are job attitudes? Meta-analytic comparisons of integrative behavioral outcomes and time sequences. Academy of Management Journal, 49(2), 305-325. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2006.20786077

Judge, T. A., Heller, D., & Mount, M. K. (2002). Five-factor model of personality and job satisfaction: A meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87(3), 530-541. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.87.3.530

Meyer, J. P., Stanley, D. J., Herscovitch, L., & Topolnytsky, L. (2002). Affective, continuance, and normative commitment to the organization: A meta-analysis of antecedents, correlates, and consequences. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 61(1), 20-52. https://doi.org/10.1006/jvbe.2001.1842