Anger, excitement, apprehension, attraction, sadness, elation, grief ... An emotion is a strong positive or negative feeling directed toward someone or something.^[195] Emotions are usually intense, not long-lasting, and always associated with a source—someone or something that makes us feel the way we do. For example, you might feel positive emotion of elation when an instructor congratulates you on a fine class presentation; you might feel negative emotion of anger when an instructor criticizes you in front of the class. In both situations the object of your emotion is the instructor, but the impact of the instructor's behavior on your feelings is quite different in each case. And your behavior in response to the aroused emotions is likely to differ as well—perhaps breaking into a wide smile after the compliment, or making a nasty side comment or withdrawing from further participation after the criticism.

All of us are familiar with the notions of cognitive ability and intelligence, or IQ, which have been measured for many years. A more recent concept is emotional intelligence, or EI. First introduced in Chapter 1 as a component of a manager's essential human skills, it is defined by scholar Daniel Goleman as an ability to understand emotions in ourselves and others and to use that understanding to manage relationships effectively.^[196] EI is demonstrated in the ways in which we deal with affect, for example, by knowing when a negative emotion is about to cause problems and being able to control that emotion so that it doesn't become disruptive.

Goleman's point with the concept of emotional intelligence is that we perform better when we are good at recognizing and dealing with emotions in ourselves and others. When we are high in EI, we are more likely to behave in ways that avoid having our emotions "get the better of us." Knowing that an instructor's criticism causes us to feel anger, for example, we might be better able to control that anger when being criticized, maintain a positive face, and perhaps earn the instructor's praise when we make future class contributions. If the unchecked anger caused us to act in a verbally aggressive way—creating a negative impression in the instructor's eyes—or to withdraw from all class participation—causing the instructor to believe we have no interest in the course, our course experience would likely suffer.

Figure 3.1. Four key emotional intelligence competencies for leadership success.

The essential argument is that if you are good at knowing and managing your emotions and are good at reading others' emotions, you may perform better while interacting with other people. This applies to work and life in general, and to leadership situations in particular.^[197] Figure 3.1 identifies four essential emotional intelligence competencies that can and should be developed for leadership success and, we can say, success more generally in all types of interpersonal situations.^[198] The competencies are self-awareness, social awareness, self-management, and relationship management.

Self-awareness is the ability to understand our emotions and their impact on our work and on others. You can think of this as a continuing appraisal of your emotions that results in a good understanding of them and the capacity to express them naturally. Social awareness is the ability to empathize, to understand the emotions of others, and to use this understanding to better relate to them. It involves continuous appraisal and recognition of others' emotions, resulting in better perception and understanding of them.

Self-management in emotional intelligence is the ability to think before acting and to be in control of otherwise disruptive impulses. It is a form of self-regulation in which we stay in control of our emotions and avoid letting them take over. Relationship management is an ability to establish rapport with others in ways that build good relationships and influence their emotions in positive ways. It shows up as the capacity to make good use of emotions by directing them toward constructive activities and improved relationships.

When it comes to emotions and emotional intelligence, researchers have identified six major types of emotions: anger, fear, joy, love, sadness, and surprise. The key question from an emotional intelligence perspective is: Do we recognize these emotions in ourselves and others, and can we manage them well? Anger, for example, may involve disgust and envy, both of which can have very negative consequences. Fear may contain alarm and anxiety; joy may contain cheerfulness and contentment; love may contain affection, longing, and lust; sadness may contain disappointment, neglect, and shame.

Leaders on Leadership

Even at NPR, what Fast Company magazine calls "the country's brainiest, brawniest news-gathering giant," there can be a fair amount of conflict as NPR central and its member stations try to work together. And that's precisely what new CEO Vivian Schiller knows she has to master.

Money, of course, is the crux of the problem. NPR itself doesn't broadcast anything; it produces several shows like Morning Edition and All Things Considered and sends them to local stations for use with local programming for their audiences. The nonprofit member stations survive through donations from listeners and sponsors, and pay dues and fees to NPR for rights of affiliation and use of the national shows.

Since NPR puts its content online just about anyone can access it over the Internet; there's even an NPR app for iPhones. In one month alone NPR had 14 million Podcast downloads. And if you can get programs through NPR's Web site, you don't need to listen to and support the local channel. Right?

One of NPR's own commentators, Paul Farhi describes the problem this way: "If I'm running a station in Chapel Hill or Boomington, I pay dues to NPR to get marquee programming that brings people to my station ... I don't care about your digital initiative.... You're siphoning my dues to build your national brand. That's the essence of the conflict."

With experience at five other major media organizations, most recently the NYTimes.com and previously Discovery Channel, CNN, and TBS, Schiller is confident as CEO. She talks not about conflict and NPR being viewed as a "competitor" to the local stations, but about "opportunity," and says her job is to "figure out a way to work together so that people in every community who go to their local NPR-member-station sites can get the benefit of NPR's international, national, and local coverage in a seamless experience."

Schiller seems to be saying all the right things. But her task is going to be challenging; there's a lot to be worked out in the NPR—member station relationships and emotions can run high. At KCRW in Los Angeles, general manager Ruth Seymour says: "There is hope on NPR's part that somehow we can work collaboratively online. I am truly dubious about it. In online, everybody is competitive with everybody else."

It is also common to differentiate between self-conscious emotions that arise from internal sources and social emotions that are stimulated by external sources.^[199] Shame, guilt, embarrassment, and pride are examples of internal emotions. Understanding self-conscious emotions helps individuals regulate their relationships with others. Social emotions like pity, envy, and jealousy derive from external cues and information. An example is feeling envious or jealous upon learning that a co-worker received a promotion or job assignment that you were hoping to get.

Whereas emotions tend to be short-term and clearly targeted at someone or something, moods are more generalized positive and negative feelings or states of mind that may persist for some time. Everyone seems to have occasional moods, and we each know the full range of possibilities they represent. How often do you wake up in the morning and feel excited and refreshed and just happy, or wake up feeling grouchy and depressed and generally unhappy? And what are the consequences of these different moods for your behavior with friends and family, and at work or school?

In respect to OB a key question relating to moods is how do they affect someone's likeability and performance at work? When it comes to CEOs, for example, a Business Week article claims that it pays to be likable; "harsh is out, caring is in."^[200] Some CEOs are even hiring executive coaches to help them manage their affects to come across as more personable and friendly in relationships with others. If a CEO goes to a meeting in a good mood and gets described as "cheerful," "charming," "humorous," "friendly," and "candid," she or he may be viewed as on the upswing. But if the CEO goes into a meeting in a bad mood and is perceived as "prickly," "impatient," "remote," "tough," "acrimonious," or even "ruthless," the view will more likely be of a CEO on the downslide.

Figure 3.2 offers a brief comparison of emotions and moods. In general, emotions are intense feelings directed at someone or something; they always have rather specific triggers; and they come in many types—anger, fear, happiness, and the like. Moods tend to be more generalized positive or negative feelings. They are less intense than emotions and most often seem to lack a clear source; it's often hard to identify how or why we end up in a particular mood.^[201] But moods tend to be more long-lasting than emotions. When someone says or does something that causes a quick and intense positive or negative reaction from you, that emotion will probably quickly pass. However, a bad or good mood is likely to linger for hours or even days, is generally displayed in a wide range of behaviors, and is less likely to be linked with a specific person or event.

Although emotions and moods are influenced by different events and situations, each of us may be prone to displaying some relatively stable tendencies.^[203] Some people seem most always positive and upbeat about things. For these optimists we might say the glass is nearly always half full. Others, by contrast, seem to be often negative or downbeat. They tend to be pessimists viewing the glass as half empty. Such tendencies toward optimism and pessimism not only influence the individual's behavior, they can also influence other people he or she interacts with—co-workers, friends, and family members.

Researchers are increasingly interested in emotion and mood contagion—the spillover effects of one's emotions and mood onto others.^[204] You might think of emotion and mood contagion as a bit like catching a cold from someone. Evidence shows that positive and negative emotions are "contagious" in much the same ways, even though the tendency may be underrecognized in work settings. In one study team members were found to share good and bad moods within two hours of being together; bad moods, interestingly, traveled person-to-person faster than good moods.^[205] Other research found that when mood contagion is positive followers report being more attracted to their leaders and rate the leaders more highly. Mood contagion can also have inflationary and deflationary effects on the moods of co-workers and teammates, as well as family and friends.^[206]

Daniel Goleman and his colleagues studying emotional intelligence consider emotion and mood contagion an important leadership issue that should be managed with care. "Moods that start at the top tend to move the fastest," they say, "because everyone watches the boss."^[207] This was very evident as CEOs in all industries—business and nonprofit alike, struggled to deal with the impact of economic crisis on their organizations and workforces. "Moaning is not a management task," said Rupert Stadler of Audi: "We can all join in the moaning, or we can make a virtue of the plight. I am rather doing the latter."^[208]

Life is Good

Bert and John Jacobs began selling tee shirts on Boston streets and now run an $80 million company-Life is Good. John says: "Life is good ... Don't determine that you're going to be happy when you get the new car or the big promotion or meet that special person. You can decide that you're going to be happy today."

The concept of emotional labor relates to the need to show certain emotions in order to do a job well. It is a form of self-regulation to display organizationally desired emotions in one's job. Good examples come from service settings such as airline check-in personnel or flight attendants. They are supposed to appear approachable, receptive, and friendly while taking care of the things you require as a customer. Some airlines like Southwest go even further in asking service employees to be "funny" and "caring" and "cheerful" while doing their jobs.

Emotional labor isn't always easy; it can be hard to be consistently "on," projecting the desired emotions associated with one's work. If you're having a bad mood day or just experienced an emotional run-in with a neighbor, for example, being "happy" and "helpful" with a demanding customer might seem a little much to ask. Such situations can cause emotional dissonance where the emotions we actually feel are inconsistent with the emotions we try to project.^[210] That is, we are expected to act with one emotion while we actually feel quite another.

Using the service setting as an example again, imagine how often service workers struggling with personal emotions and moods experience dissonance when having to display very different ones toward customers.^[211] Scholars point out that deep acting occurs when someone tries to modify their feelings to better fit the situation—such as putting yourself in the position of the air travelers whose luggage went missing and feeling the same sense of loss. Surface acting is a case of hiding true feelings while displaying very different ones—such as smiling at a customer even though they just offended you.

ETHICS IN OB

WELL-TREATED STAFF DELIVERS CONSISTENT RESULTS

Have you had a Chick-fil-A sandwich lately? Don't plan on stopping in on a Sunday; the chain's stores are all closed. It is a tradition started by 85-year-old founder Truett Cathy, who believes that employees deserve a day of rest. As someone who believes in "people before profits," Truett has built a successful, fast-growing, fast-food franchise known for consistent quality and great customer service. He says: "It's important to keep people happy."

The president of the national Restaurant Association Educational Foundation says: "I don't think there's any chain that creates such a wonderful culture around the way they treat their people and the respect they have for their employees."

Current President Dan T. Cathy, the founder's son, believes the Sunday day of rest is a statement about Chick-fil-A's culture. "If we take care of our team members and operators behind the counter," he says, "then they are going to do a better job on Monday. In fact I say our food tastes better on Monday because we are closed on Sunday."

Another statement of the family values behind the firm is the Leadership Scholarship program for employees. When the 20,000th education scholarship was awarded, Truett said: "It has long been my goal to encourage our restaurant employees to strive for excellence ... so they will have the tools necessary to secure a bright future for themselves and our nation."

Note

Ethics Question: There seems to be something ethical, almost spiritual about Truett's notion of "people before profits." How about it? Can ethics in leadership result in positive emotion and mood contagion among members of a workforce? And when Dan Cathy says "our food tastes better on Monday because we are closed Sunday," what does this suggest about how emotions, attitudes, and job satisfaction influence work performance?

Issues of emotional intelligence, emotion and mood contagion, and emotional labor, become even more complicated in cross-cultural situations. The frequency and intensity of emotions has been shown to vary among cultures. In mainland China, for example, research suggests that people report fewer positive and negative emotions as well as less intense emotions than in other cultures.^[212] Yet people's interpretations of emotions and moods appear similar across cultures, with the major emotions of happiness, joy, and love all valued positively.^[213]

Norms for emotional expression can vary across cultures. In collectivist cultures that emphasize group relationships, individual emotional displays are less likely to occur and less likely to be accepted than in individualistic cultures.^[214] Informal cultural standards called display rules govern the degree to which it is appropriate to display emotions. For example, British culture tends to encourage downplaying emotions, while Mexican culture is much more demonstrative in public. When Wal-Mart first went to Germany, its executives found that an emphasis on friendliness embedded in its U.S. Roots, didn't work as well in the local culture. The more "serious" German shoppers did not respond well to Wal-Mart's friendly greeters and helpful personnel. And along the same lines, Israeli shoppers equate smiling cashiers with inexperience; cashiers are encouraged to look somber while performing their jobs.^[215] Overall, the lesson is that we should be sensitive to the way emotions are displayed in other cultures; often they may not mean what they do at home.

Figure 3.3 summarizes the Affective Events Theory as a way of summarizing and integrating this discussion of emotions, moods, and human behavior in organizations.^[216] The basic notion of the theory is that our emotions and moods are influenced by events involving other people and situations, and these emotions and moods, in turn, influence the work performance and satisfaction of us and others.

The left-hand side of Figure 3.3 indicates how the work environment, including emotional labor requirements, and work events like hassles and uplifts create emotional reactions. These, in turn, influence satisfaction and performance.^[217]

We have all experienced hassles and uplifts on the job, sometimes many of these during a work day. People respond to these experiences through positive and negative emotional reactions. Personality may influence positive and negative reactions, as can moods. Your mood at a given time can exaggerate the nature of the emotions you experience as a result of an event. For example, if you have just been laid off, you are likely to feel worse than you would otherwise when a colleague says something to you that was meant as a neutral comment.

In the final analysis, we should remember that emotions and moods can be functional as well as dysfunctional. The important thing is to manage them well—the essence of emotional intelligence. Emotions and moods communicate; they are messages to us that can be valuable if heard and understood.^[218] Some, such as Charles Darwin, have argued that emotions are useful in a person's survival process. For instance, the emotion of excitement may encourage you to deal with situations requiring high levels of energy, such as special school and job assignments. Although the emotion of anger is often bad, when channeled correctly it might stop someone from taking advantage of you.

Figure 3.3. Figurative summary of affective events theory.

The three basic components of an attitude are shown in Figure 3.4—cognitive, affective, and behavioral.^[220] The cognitive component of an attitude reflects underlying beliefs, opinions, knowledge, or information a person possesses. It represents a person's ideas about someone or something and the conclusions drawn about them. The statement "My job lacks responsibility" is a belief shown in the figure. The statement "Job responsibility is important to me" reflects an underlying value. Together they comprise the cognitive component of an attitude toward one's work or workplace.

The affective component of an attitude is a specific feeling regarding the personal impact of the antecedent conditions evidenced in the cognitive component. In essence this becomes the actual attitude, such as the feeling "I don't like my job." Notice that the affect in this statement displays the negative attitude; "I don't like my job" is a very different condition than "I do like my job."

Figure 3.4. A work-related example of the three components of attitudes.

The behavioral component is an intention to behave in a certain way based on the affect in one's attitude. It is a predisposition to act, but one that may or may not be implemented. The example in the figure shows behavioral intent expressed as "I'm going to quit my job." Yet even with such intent, whether or not the person really quits is quite another story indeed.

Employee Morale Varies Around the World

FDS International surveyed the morale of workers in 23 countries. Those with the highest worker morale were in the Netherlands, Ireland and Thailand (tie), and Switzerland. The U.S. ranked 10th in the sample and Japan came in last.

As just discussed, the link between attitudes and behavior is tentative. An attitude expresses an intended behavior that may or may not be carried out. In general we can say that the more specific attitudes are, the stronger the relationship with eventual behavior. A person who feels "I don't like my job" may be less likely to actually quit than someone who feels "I can't stand another day with Alex harassing me at work." It's also necessary to have the opportunity or freedom to behave in the intended way. In today's recessionary economy there are most likely many persons who stick with their jobs while still holding negative job attitudes. The fact is they may not have any other choice.^[221]

An important issue in the attitude-behavior linkage is consistency. Leon Festinger, a noted social psychologist, uses the term cognitive dissonance to describe a state of inconsistency between an individual's attitudes and/or between attitudes and behavior.^[222] Let's assume that you have the attitude that recycling is good for the economy; you also realize you aren't always recycling everything you can while traveling on vacation. Festinger points out that such cognitive inconsistency is uncomfortable and results in attempts to reduce or eliminate the dissonance. This can be done in one of three ways: (1) changing the underlying attitude, (2) changing future behavior, or (3) developing new ways of explaining or rationalizing the inconsistency.

The way we respond to cognitive dissonance is influenced by the degree of control we seem to have over the situation and the rewards involved. In the case of recycling dissonance, for example, the lack of convenient recycling containers would make rationalizing easier and changing the positive attitude less likely. A reaffirmation of intention to recycle in the future can also reduce the dissonance.

Even though attitudes do not always predict behavior, the link between attitudes and potential or intended behavior is important for managers to understand. Think about your work experiences or conversations with other people about their work. It isn't uncommon to hear concerns expressed about someone's "bad attitude" or another's "good attitude." Such attitudes appear in different forms, including job satisfaction, job involvement, organizational commitment, and employee engagement.

You often hear the term "morale" used when describing the feelings of a is the workforce toward their employer. It relates to the more specific notion of job satisfaction, an attitude reflecting a person's positive and negative feelings toward a job, co-workers, and the work environment. Indeed, you should remember that helping others achieve job satisfaction is considered as a key result that effective managers accomplish. That is, they create a work environment in which people achieve both high performance and high job satisfaction. This concept of job satisfaction is very important in OB and receives special attention in the following section.

In addition to job satisfaction there are other attitudes that OB scholars and researchers study and measure. One is job involvement, which is defined as the extent to which an individual is dedicated to a job. Someone with high job involvement psychologically identifies with her or his job, and, for example, would be expected to work beyond expectations to complete a special project.

Another work attitude is organizational commitment, or the degree of loyalty an individual feels toward the organization. Individuals with a high organizational commitment identify strongly with the organization and take pride in considering themselves members. Researchers recognize two primary dimensions to organizational commitment. Rational commitment reflects feelings that the job serves one's financial, developmental, professional interests. Emotional commitment reflects feelings that what one does is important, valuable, and of real benefit to others. Evidence is that strong emotional commitments to the organization, based on values and interests of others, are as much as four times more powerful in positively influencing performance than are rational commitments, based primarily on pay and self-interests.^[223]

A survey of 55,000 American workers by the Gallup Organization suggests that profits for employers rise when workers' attitudes reflect high job involvement and organizational commitment. This combination creates a high sense of employee engagement—a positive work attitude that Gallup defines as working with "passion" and feeling "a profound connection" with one's employer.^[224] Active employee engagement shows up as a willingness to help others, to always try to do something extra to improve performance, and to speak positively about the organization. Things that counted most toward high engagement in the Gallup research were believing one has the opportunity to do one's best every day, believing one's opinions count, believing fellow workers are committed to quality, and believing there is a direct connection between one's work and the company's mission.^[225]

Managers can infer the job satisfaction of others by careful observation and interpretation of what people say and do while going about their jobs. Interviews and questionnaires can also be used to more formally examine levels of job satisfaction.^[227] Two of the more popular job satisfaction questionnaires used over the years are the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (MSQ) and the Job Descriptive Index (JDI).^[228] Both address components of job satisfaction with which all good managers should be concerned. The MSQ measures satisfaction with working conditions, chances for advancement, freedom to use one's own judgment, praise for doing a good job, and feelings of accomplishment, among others. The five facets of job satisfaction measured by the JDI are

If you watch or read the news, you'll regularly find reports on the job satisfaction of workers. You'll also find lots of job satisfaction studies in the academic literature. The results don't always agree, but they usually fall within a common range. We can generally conclude that the majority of American workers are at least somewhat satisfied with their jobs, with a recent survey placing this figure at about 65 percent even during a time of economic down-turn.^[229] But job satisfaction has been declining for a dozen years or more. It also tends to be higher in small firms and lower in large ones; it tends to be lower among the youngest workers. And, job satisfaction and overall life satisfaction tend to run together.^[230] When workers in a global study were asked to report on common job satisfaction or "morale" problems, they identified pay dissatisfaction, number of hours worked, not getting enough holiday or personal time off, lack of flexibility in working hours, and time spent commuting to and from work.^[231]

Surely you can agree that job satisfaction is important on quality-of-work-life grounds alone. Don't people deserve to have satisfying work experiences? But is job satisfaction important in other than a "feel good" sense? How does it impact job behaviors and performance?

Withdrawal Behaviors There is a strong relationship between job satisfaction and physical withdrawal behaviors like absenteeism and turnover. Workers who are more satisfied with their jobs are absent less often than those who are dissatisfied. And satisfied workers are more likely to remain with their present employers, while dissatisfied workers are more likely to quit or at least be on the lookout for other jobs.^[232] Withdrawal through absenteeism and turnover can be very costly in terms of lost experience, and the expenses for recruiting and training of replacements. In fact, one study found that up or down changes in retention rates result in magnified changes to corporate earnings.^[233]

On this issue of turnover and retention, a survey by Salary.com showed not only that employers tend to overestimate the job satisfactions of their employees, they underestimate the amount of job seeking they were doing. Whereas employers estimated that 37 percent of employees were on the lookout for new jobs, 65 percent of the employees said they were actively or passively job seeking by networking, Web surfing, posting resumes, or checking new job possibilities. Millennials in their 20's and early 30's were most likely to engage in these "just-in-case" job seeking activities. The report concluded that "most employers have not placed enough emphasis on important retention strategies.^[234]

There is also a relationship between job satisfaction and psychological withdrawal behaviors. These show up in such things as daydreaming, cyber loafing by Internet surfing or personal electronic communications, excessive socializing, and even just giving the appearance of being busy when you're not. Such psychological withdrawal behaviors are forms of work disengagement, something that Gallup researchers say as many as 71 percent of workers report feeling at times.^[235]

Organizational Citizenship Job satisfaction is also linked with organizational citizenship behaviors.^[236] These are discretionary behaviors, sometimes called "OCBs," that represent a willingness to "go beyond the call of duty" or "go the extra mile" in one's work.^[237] A person who is a good organizational citizen does things that although not required of them help others—interpersonal OCBs, or advance the performance of the organization as a whole—organizational OCBs.^[238] You might observe interpersonal OCBs in a service worker who is extraordinarily courteous while taking care of an upset customer or a team member who is altruistic in taking on extra tasks when a co-worker is ill or absent. Examples of organizational OCBs are evident as co-workers who are always willing volunteers for special committee or task force assignments, and those who whose voices are always positive when commenting publicly on their employer.

The flip-side of organizational citizenship shows up in a variety of possible counterproductive work behaviors shown in OB Savvy.^[239] Often associated with some form of job dissatisfaction, they purposely disrupt relationships, organizational culture or performance in the workplace.^[240] Counterproductive workplace behaviors cover a wide range from things like work avoidance to physical and verbal aggression of others to bad mouthing to outright work sabotage to theft.

At Home Affect When OB scholars talk about "spillover" effects, they are often referring to how what happens to us at home can affect our work attitudes and behaviors, and how the same holds true as work experiences influence how we feel and behave at home. Research finds that people with higher daily job satisfaction show more positive after-work home affect.^[241] In a study that measured spouse or significant other evaluations, more positive at-home affect scores were reported on days when workers experienced higher job satisfaction.^[242] Issues of the job satisfaction and at-home affect link are especially significant as workers in today's high-tech and always-connected world struggle with work-life balance.

RESEARCH INSIGHT

Job Satisfaction Spillover onto Family Lives

The spillover of job satisfaction onto workers' family lives is the subject of a study published in the Academy of Management Journal by Remus Ilies, Kelly Schwind Wilson, and David T. Wagner. Noting that communication technologies and flexibility in work schedules have narrowed the gap between work and home, the researchers asked the question: how does daily job satisfaction spill over to affect a person's feelings and attitudes in the family role?

Citing inconsistent findings from previous studies, Ilies et al. surmised that work-family role integration would influence the possible spillover. High work-family role integration was defined as making "little distinction between their work and family roles," while low work-family role integration meant that work and family were quite segmented from one another. A key hypothesis in the research was that job satisfaction spillover from work to home on any given day would be higher for the high work-family role integration employees.

The research was conducted by survey and telephone interviews with 101 university employees and their spouses or significant others over a two-week period. Results showed that workers displayed higher positive affect at home on days when they also reported higher job satisfaction. As shown in the figure, workers with high work-family role integration showed a stronger relationship between daily job satisfaction and positive affect at home versus those with low work-family role integration. In fact, workers with low work-family integration, those that tended to segment work and family roles, positive home affect actually declined as job satisfaction increased.

Do the Research

How can the findings for the low-work family integration group be explained? What research questions does this study raise in your mind that might become the topics for further study in this area? Would you hypothesize that the job satisfaction-home spillover effects would vary by type of occupation, age of worker, family responsibilities such as number of at-home children, or other factors?

Source: Remus Ilies, Kelly Schwind Wilson, and David T. Wagner, "The Spillover of Daily Job Satisfaction onto Employees' Family Lives: The Facilitating Role of Work-Family Integration," Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 52, No. 1 (2009), pp. 87–102.

The importance of job satisfaction can be viewed in the context of two decisions people make about their work—belonging and performing. The first is the decision to belong—that is, to join and remain a member of an organization. This was just discussed in respect to the link between job satisfaction and withdrawal behaviors, both absenteeism and turnover. The second decision, the decision to perform, raises quite another set of issues. We all know that not everyone who belongs to an organization, whether it's a classroom or workplace or sports team or voluntary group, performs up to expectations. So, what is the relationship between job satisfaction and performance?^[243] A recent study, for example, finds that higher levels of job satisfaction are related to higher levels of customer ratings received by service workers.^[244] But can it be said that high job satisfaction causes high levels of customer service performance?

There is considerable debate on the issue of causality in the satisfaction-performance relationship, with three different positions being advanced. The first is that job satisfaction causes performance; "a happy worker is a productive worker." The second is that performance causes job satisfaction. The third is that job satisfaction and performance are intertwined, influencing one another, and mutually affected by other factors such as the availability of rewards. Perhaps you can make a case for one or more of these positions based on your work experiences.

Satisfaction Causes Performance If job satisfaction causes high levels of performance, the message to managers is: to increase employees' work performance, make them happy. Research, however, finds no simple and direct link between individual job satisfaction at one point in time and later work performance. A sign once posted in a tavern near one of Ford's Michigan plants helps tell the story: "I spend 40 hours a week here, am I supposed to work too?" Even though some evidence exists for the satisfaction → performance relationship among professional or higher-level employees, the best conclusion is that job satisfaction alone is not a consistent predictor of individual work performance.

Millennials Need Special Handling

Also called "Gen Ys" or "Echo Boomers" or the "Net Generation," The Wall Street Journal says Millennials want "a good work environment ... meaningful responsibility, continuous feedback from managers and peers, an active say in what goes on, and a good work-life-balance."

Performance Causes Satisfaction If high levels of performance cause job satisfaction, the message to managers is quite different. Rather than focusing on job satisfaction as the pathway to performance, attention shifts to creating high performance as a precursor to job satisfaction, that is performance → satisfaction. It generally makes sense that people should feel good about their job when they perform well. And indeed, research does find a link between individual performance measured at one time and later job satisfaction.

Figure 3.5 shows a basic model explaining this relationship as based on the work of Edward E. Lawler and Lyman Porter. It suggests that performance leads to rewards that, in turn, lead to satisfaction.^[245] Rewards are intervening variables that, when valued by the recipient, link performance with later satisfaction. The model also includes a moderator variable—perceived equity of rewards. This indicates that high performance leads to satisfaction only if rewards are perceived as fair and equitable. Although this model is a good starting point, and one that we will use again in discussing motivation and rewards in Chapter 6, we also know from personal experience that some people may perform great but still not like the jobs that they have to do.

Figure 3.5. Simplified Porter-Lawler model of the performance → satisfaction relationship.

Rewards Cause Both Satisfaction and Performance The final position in the job satisfaction-performance discussion builds from and somewhat combines the prior two. It suggests that the right rewards allocated in the right ways will positively influence both performance and satisfaction, which also influence one another. The key issue in respect to the allocation of rewards is performance contingency, or varying the size of the reward in proportion to the level of performance.

Research generally finds that rewards influence satisfaction while performance-contingent rewards influence performance.^[246] Thus the management advice is to use performance-contingent rewards well in the attempt to create both. Although giving a low performer a small reward may lead to dissatisfaction at first, the expectation is that he or she will make efforts to improve performance in order to obtain higher rewards in the future.^[247]