Integrating person and situation perspectives on work satisfaction: A social-cognitive view

Abstract

Social cognitive career theory (Lent, Brown, & Hackett, 1994) was originally designed to help explain interest development, choice, and performance in career and educational domains. These three aspects of career/academic development were presented in distinct but overlapping segmental models. This article presents a fourth social cognitive model aimed at understanding satisfaction experienced in vocational and educational pursuits. The model posits paths whereby core social cognitive variables (e.g., self-efficacy, goals) function jointly with personality/affective trait and contextual variables that have been linked to job satisfaction. We consider the model’s implications for forging an understanding of satisfaction that bridges the often disparate perspectives of organizational and vocational psychology.

Introduction

Job satisfaction has been defined as “a pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one’s job or job experiences” (Locke, 1976, p. 1300) or, more simply, the extent to which people enjoy their jobs (Fritzsche & Parrish, 2005). It has long been a focus of both vocational-counseling and industrial-organizational psychology researchers, although their interests in this topic typically differ. Vocational psychology, with a predominant emphasis on person-focused outcomes, tends to be concerned with job satisfaction as either an end in itself or as an aspect of individuals’ work adjustment. Organizational psychology, meanwhile, has been more concerned with the potential organizational consequences of job satisfaction, such as productivity, role engagement or withdrawal, and turnover (Fritzsche & Parrish, 2005). Although these differing perspectives have spawned largely distinct literatures, we believe that efforts to unify them may yield a more comprehensive understanding of job satisfaction—and one with increased relevance to practice.

Indeed, this may be an opportune time for integrative models of job satisfaction, as evidenced by recent empirical and theoretical advances on the larger topic of subjective well-being (SWB; Diener, Suh, Lucas, & Smith, 1999) as well as by renewed vigor in research on job satisfaction specifically. Consistent with trends in the personality literature on SWB and overall life satisfaction, organizational psychologists have shown increasing interest in the extent to which job satisfaction may be linked to dispositional factors, such as the Big Five personality factors (Judge, Heller, & Mount, 2002) and trait positive and negative affect (Thoresen, Kaplan, Barsky, Warren, & de Chermont, 2003). Organizational scholars have also begun to develop models designed to integrate affective-dispositional and situational influences on job satisfaction (e.g., Brief, 1998, Weiss and Cropanzano, 1996). From our vantage point, it would be valuable to further this integrative momentum by considering how additional variables—specifically, social-cognitive and behavioral elements—function along with affective, trait, and situational/job condition factors in promoting (or reducing) job satisfaction.

This recent research activity on life and job satisfaction (and their inter-relations; e.g., Heller, Watson, & Ilies, 2004) has, to this point, not had a great deal of impact on vocational psychology models of educational or work satisfaction. Although Dawis and Lofquist’s (1984) and Holland’s (1997) person–environment fit theories have certainly stimulated valuable research, Holland’s theory appears to offer a limited explanation of satisfaction (Tranberg, Slane, & Ekeberg, 1993), and neither theory has incorporated more recent advances on dispositional and situational influences on job satisfaction.

The purpose of this article is to propose social cognitive career theory (SCCT; Lent et al., 1994) as a foundation for forging closer linkages between vocational and organizational perspectives on job satisfaction. Based on Bandura’s (1986) larger social cognitive framework, SCCT currently consists of three segmental models of vocational-educational interest development, choice, and performance. Yet it also seems possible to adapt many of the theory’s central person and contextual variables to fashion a fourth model, one focused on job satisfaction (and relevant to other aspects of work-related affect as well). After outlining the model, we consider its implications for future research and practice.

In this article, we use the terms job and work satisfaction interchangeably. Our focus also includes the domain of educational or academic satisfaction, that is, enjoyment of one’s role or experiences as a student. We include it here alongside work satisfaction because, in SCCT, school and work are viewed as dovetailing developmental spheres, with adjustment in each being subject to similar causal determinants. A more general, integrative model may therefore help to explain satisfaction in both spheres, though research on the model would require context or role-specific measures. For convenience, we mostly refer to “work satisfaction,” but we intend for educational satisfaction to fit within this larger conceptual umbrella.