Assignment 2: An Effective Training Evaluation Plan

Instructions:

In the online lectures in Module 3 and your textbook readings (“Training and Development”, Leadership”, and “Motivation, Job Satisfaction, and Job Involvement”) you learned about the importance of training your employees. However, training is only effective when employees can retain the information and incorporate what they learn to improve their job performance.

You have just learned that your company is looking for ways to cut back expenses. One of the cost cutting measures being considered is to terminate the training department, as the company considers this an expense and they do not believe training is contributing to the profitability of the company. As the head of the training department it is your job to defend the value of the department. You realize that well trained employees perform their jobs more efficiently and consequently can contribute to higher productivity and profits for the company. One way to show the value of training is to have tools that will allow a manager to track the performance of an employee both before and after they have received training. 1.Report Write a report that will be shared with senior management on why training is a very important part of the company’s overall financial success. Discuss the advantages of having well-trained employees.

2.Evaluation Tool Using what you have learned about transfer training and the evaluation of training programs create an evaluation tool which can be used to evaluate how effective any given employee training program is in terms of: ◦Increasing the level of transfer of knowledge (knowledge retention) ◦Monitoring the effectiveness of the skill performance in the job performance improvement ◦Include common attributes in your evaluation tool which could be applicable to most employees at the organization such as: employees showing concern for saving the company money or consistently turning in error free work. Your training tool should contain a minimum of 10 evaluation criteria.

Your training evaluation tool must be included with your report defending the value of the training department. You know that your report will be shared with senior level managers and eventually to the board of directors. However, you are uncertain whether or not you will be allowed to present your work at a later time or in a different manner. Therefore it is important that your report is well written and professional.

Report Details The report should be 5-7 pages in length and include: •Executive Summary highlighting all the factors in the scenario. •Justification of the importance of retaining the training department in the company and explanation of how the training department is important to the overall success of the company. •Training Evaluation Tool to evaluate knowledge retention and job performance improvement (10 criteria minimum). •Explanation of how the evaluation tool will be implemented. •Describe how the evaluation tool will help evaluate the level of transfer of knowledge and skill performance for current training programs as well as, monitor and improve planning for future training effectiveness. •Summary and conclusion of tool’s effectiveness.

Submit your assignment to the M3: Assignment 2 Dropbox by Wednesday, September 16, 2015.

Assignment 2 Grading Criteria Maximum Points

Executive Summary highlighting the scenario. 24

Justify why a training department is an important part of a company’s overall success, structure and culture. Discuss the advantages of having well-trained employees. 28

Create an Evaluation Tool to evaluate the effectiveness of a training program. Tool should evaluate knowledge transfer and performance of skills (10 question minimum). 32

Explain how the tool will be implemented at the company. 24

Describe how the evaluation tool will help evaluate knowledge transfer and skill performance of current training programs and monitor/ improve planning for future training effectiveness. 28

Write a Summary and Conclusion that highlights the tool’s effectiveness. 20

Writing Components (20% of LASA 1 grade) Organization (12 points): Introduction, Thesis, Transitions, and Conclusion.

Usage and Mechanics (12 points): Grammar, Spelling, and Sentence structure.

APA Elements (16 points): Attribution, Paraphrasing, and Quotations.

Style (4 points): Audience, and Word Choice.

44

Total: 200

CHAPTER OUTLINE
THE SCOPE OF ORGANIZATIONAL TRAINING
GOALS OF ORGANIZATIONAL TRAINING PROGRAMS
Newsbreak: Can Your Employees Read? Are You Sure?
STAFFING FOR ORGANIZATIONAL TRAINING
THE PRETRAINING ENVIRONMENT
HOW PEOPLE LEARN: PSYCHOLOGICAL ISSUES
Newsbreak: It’s OK to Bring Your iPod to Work
TYPES OF TRAINING PROGRAMS
On-the-Job Training Vestibule Training Apprenticeship Computer-Assisted Instruction Net-Based Training Behavior Modification Newsbreak: Coast-to-Coast Commuting: San Diego to Tampa? Job Rotation Case Studies Business Games In-Basket Training Role Playing Behavior Modeling Executive Coaching Diversity Training Newsbreak: Virtual Training: How Not to Crash a Multimillion Dollar Airplane
CAREER DEVELOPMENT AND PLANNING
Career Self-Management
EVALUATING ORGANIZATIONAL TRAINING PROGRAMS
Newsbreak: Obsolete at Midlife? Retrain, Retrain, Retrain
SUMMARY
KEY TERMS
REVIEW QUESTIONS
ADDITIONAL READING
THE SCOPE OF ORGANIZATIONAL TRAINING
Hamburger University does not have a football team. What it does have is a 130,000-square foot, state-of-the-art training facility with a faculty of 30 professors. Located in Oak Brook, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, Hamburger U. was started more than 40 years ago by (who else?) McDonald’s. Since then, more than 65,000 managers of the company’s restaurants have graduated. In addition, Hamburger U. offers training for employees and franchise holders, who come from all over the world to attend courses. Classes are also given online in more than 25 languages. McDonald’s has 10 other training centers in countries such as England, Japan, Germany, and Australia. It’s expensive, but management believes that the training it offers is one of the main reasons for the organization’s success. In the United States, the McDonald’s curriculum is eligible for 46 credits at most colleges. In England, McDonald’s trainees can earn credits toward a high school diploma (Hamburger University, 2008; Margulies, 2004; Wardell, 2008).
Training is big business. “When I look at the money we spend on education and training,” said a chemical company executive, “I wonder whether we’re running a chemical business or a college.” From the high school dropout to the college graduate, from the long-time unemployed to the high-level executive, millions of people today are participating in some form of organizational training in their workplace. Employers spend some $55 billion annually on formal training programs and another $180 billion on informal on-the-job instruction.
Training often begins at an elementary level, teaching basic literacy and mathematics skills before offering instruction in specific job skills. When Motorola geared up to meet global competition by converting a plant to cellular technology, the company found that 60% of its workforce had difficulty doing simple arithmetic and reading and understanding English. Without remedial training in these skills, the employees could not be taught to perform their new jobs. Polaroid spent $700,000 to offer basic language and math instruction to 1,000 employees. Domino’s Pizza teaches reading and math so that employees can follow instructions for making pizza dough. Training for skilled, high-tech jobs is a priority in industry, government, and the military. Aerospace, telecommunications, and Web-based industries rely heavily on reprogrammable robots, multifunctional machinery, and computer-assisted design and manufacturing equipment. The companies need a highly trained workforce to design, operate, and maintain this sophisticated equipment.
As we described in chapter 1, the nature of work today has changed. People can no longer count on learning one job and keeping it until retirement. Workers must learn to think not of choosing a single career for a lifetime, but of having several careers during which they will master a cluster of skills that must be continually upgraded. Careers now require lifelong learning, which means that training has become even more vital today than it was for previous generations.
A Sample Training Program
A classic example of a high-level organizational training program involved the Western Electric Company, which established a company college, the Corporate Education Center, to provide instruction in engineering and management. The facility contained state-of-the-art equipment and offered more than 300 courses on a 190-acre campus, complete with dormitories.
Newly hired engineers participated in 6-week orientation programs, one during the first 6 months of employment and a second during the next 6 months. Engineers were able to choose among various courses in their specialty areas, classes designed to keep them up-to-date. Supervisors could select courses to upgrade their technical knowledge and managerial skills. The center provided management training at several levels to persons with promotion potential; courses ranged from planning and interdepartmental relations to urban affairs and I-O psychology.
This ambitious venture is not unusual in American business. Training centers have been established by organizations such as IBM, Xerox, General Electric, and Avis Rent A Car. So, do not be surprised if, during your first month on the job and periodically throughout your career, you find yourself back in the classroom.
Training for Disabled Employees.
Many organizations provide specialized training for disabled employees. At McDonald’s, more than 9,000 workers with visual, hearing, orthopedic, or learning disabilities, or mental retardation, have been trained for various jobs at the company’s fast-food restaurants. In an attempt to dispel stereotypes and to make all employees sensitive to the problems of being disabled, training is provided not only for the disabled employees but also for the employees who will be working with them. Over a 10-year period, more than 90% of the disabled persons who began training in a McJobs program completed it and became productive employees. The company believes that people with disabilities constitute a large pool of underused labor and is determined to train them to do whatever they are capable of doing.

New employees find themselves back in the classroom to learn about company policies and objectives.
Training and Fair Employment Practices.
Organizational training programs may have an adverse impact on minority employees. Performance in a training program is often used as a basis for career decisions about promotion, transfer, or dismissal—any technique that results in personnel decisions has the potential for discriminating against ethnic minority, female, older, or disabled employees. Therefore, training programs must meet equal employment opportunity guidelines and must be clearly related to job performance before their results can be applied to career decisions.
GOALS OF ORGANIZATIONAL TRAINING PROGRAMS
The first step in establishing a formal training program is the precise formulation of objectives. These objectives must be stated in terms of specific behavioral criteria, the acts or operations employees must perform on the job and the way they should perform them to maximize job efficiency. It is impossible to determine what the training program should include unless the organization knows what the program is supposed to accomplish. In other words, what knowledge, skills, and abilities are critical to learning how to perform the job successfully?
Needs Assessment.
The goals of the training program should be derived from the needs of the organization and the employees. A needs assessment should be conducted to determine corporate and individual goals and how a training program would help to achieve them. Such assessments are used to determine specific job components and the skills required to perform them.
Needs assessment An analysis of corporate and individual goals undertaken before designing a training program.
Despite the recognized importance of conducting needs assessments, most companies do not do so, probably because the process is so time-consuming and expensive. In a meta-analysis of 397 studies of training programs, investigators found that only 6% of the programs reported conducting needs assessments prior to establishing the training program (Arthur, Bennett, Edens, & Bell, 2003).
Of course there are situations in which the need for a training program is obvious. For example, a company that automates a manufacturing process, eliminating a number of jobs, may choose to retrain its employees for other work. Rapid expansion that creates new jobs requires a program to train workers to fill the positions. A high accident rate may call for additional safety training. Frequent complaints from dissatisfied customers may lead to employee training in human relations skills. In the absence of a clear indication that training is needed, however, it is management’s responsibility to analyze its operations periodically to determine if any aspect could benefit from additional training.
Newsbreak Can Your Employees Read? Are You Sure?
Cindy Marano forgot her glasses when she left her office to go to lunch, otherwise she would never have noticed it. Marano, who directs a job training program in Washington, DC, could not read the menu posted on the wall of her local sandwich shop without her glasses. She asked the middle-age woman behind the counter to read it to her. At first, the woman pretended not to hear; then she became flustered and rude before finally asking another waitress to read the menu aloud. “Suddenly, the light went on for me,” Marano said. The woman was unable to read. And Marano knew, from her work with the job training program, that many of the 40 million Americans who have trouble reading and writing are able to fake it on the job and conceal their handicap, as the waitress had done.
Marano also knew how expensive employee illiteracy is, costing the American economy $225 billion a year in lost productivity. Someone else very much aware of that cost is Peter Coors, CEO of Colorado’s Coors Brewing Company. He calls employee illiteracy a crisis for American industry, and he has taken the lead in promoting corporate awareness and creating industry-based training programs to teach employees how to read.
With today’s increasingly high-tech jobs, it is becoming harder to pretend you can read when you can’t. Coors found that out when the company instituted a computerized inventory control system. The new system required forklift operators to punch information into a computer, and it soon became obvious that many of them could not do the job. Why? Because they could not recognize the letters on the computer keyboard or read the product codes on the items to be inventoried.
Even low-tech companies lose money to illiteracy. The Outback Steakhouse chain found that some of its cooks were mistakenly preparing more expensive instead of less expensive steaks because they could not read the waiters’ orders. Outback started a training program to teach all employees a list of abbreviations, so that even workers for whom English was a new language could do their jobs without making costly mistakes. Other restaurant and fast-food chains use symbols instead of words on their computer screens.
Every company would operate more efficiently if all employees could read. It would be better for the employees, too. Sharon Thomas, a 34-year-old high school dropout living in Washington was on welfare for 15 years, until she learned to read and was hired for a well-paid job in construction. “I had a lot of hurdles to get over,” she said, “but once I was in the workforce, I was so happy. I feel good about myself.”
Organizational Analysis.
A general organizational analysis can suggest broad training needs that can then be translated into specific needs of employees or work groups. The next step is a task analysis to identify the specific tasks performed on a job and the knowledge, skills, and abilities needed for those tasks. A person analysis is undertaken to determine which workers need retraining and what kind of training is necessary. These evaluations can be accomplished by job analysis methods, the critical-incidents technique, performance appraisal techniques, and self-assessments.
Job analysis is the most frequently used technique for determining training needs and objectives. It yields a detailed list of the characteristics needed to perform a job successfully and the sequence of operations required. From a job analysis, the company can determine how new training procedures can improve job performance.
The critical-incidents technique, which focuses on specific desirable or undesirable job behaviors, provides information on how employees are equipped to cope with significant workday events. For example, how do assembly-line workers deal with jammed machinery? How do supervisors handle disputes among subordinates? How do managers deal with charges of sexual harassment? An analysis of critical incidents can alert the training director to areas in which additional training or instruction is needed.
Performance appraisals are an obvious source of information on training needs. They can document employee weaknesses and lead to recommendations for retraining to correct specific deficiencies. Self-assessment is based on the assumption that the person who is performing a job well is a good source of information about the skills needed to do that job and the areas in which training may be desirable.
STAFFING FOR ORGANIZATIONAL TRAINING
The quality of an instructor can have a tremendous impact on your performance as a student. Some teachers are able to bring the subject matter to life, to organize and present the material with enthusiasm, and to inspire interest among the class members. Other instructors teaching the same material can make the classroom experience frustrating, tiring, and boring. The most important factor in teaching anything at any level seems not to be competence or expertise in the subject matter. Although competence is necessary, the instructor must have the ability to teach—to impart information in a clear and compelling manner.
The same principle holds for organizational training. Too often, corporate training is conducted by people who have vast experience on the job but no ability to communicate their skills effectively to others. The solution is to use professional instructors, persons trained in teaching methods and in job skills. Larger organizations maintain full-time training staffs equipped to teach a number of subjects and job skills.
A meta-analysis of 136 studies involving more than 27,000 trainees demonstrated the importance of the teaching style and manner of the trainers. Those who were more relaxed and open, and who interacted more with the trainees, were found to be more effective as trainers (Sitzmann, Brown, Casper, Ely, & Zimmerman, 2008).
THE PRETRAINING ENVIRONMENT
The pretraining environment established by an organization includes those decisions and cues, communicated directly or indirectly to employees by supervisors and peers, which indicate the value management places on training programs. These factors may include organizational policies, supervisor attitudes toward training, resources available for training, and employee participation in needs assessments. Such cues influence the effectiveness of training programs because they tell employees how supportive the company is of training efforts.
The more training opportunities a company offers, the more likely its employees are to believe that training is an important and relevant activity for their careers. Trainees are also more likely to regard training as worthwhile and to be more motivated to achieve in training programs when they know their supervisors support training, know their posttraining skills will be assessed, and are given a realistic picture of what the training involves. When these conditions are not met—when the organization’s pretraining attitude or climate is perceived as unsupportive—a training program is likely to be rendered ineffective before it even begins.
A number of psychological characteristics can influence employees’ desire to learn from a training program as well as the amount and kind of material they are capable of learning. These attributes include individual differences in ability, pretraining expectations, motivation, job involvement, locus of control, and self-efficacy.
Individual Differences in Ability.
Individual differences in training ability can be predicted through cognitive ability tests, biographical data, and performance in an initial training experience, such as a work sample. Trainability tests, such as work samples or minicourses, are also valid predictors of performance in a full course of training. Work samples, when used as measures of trainability, offer a short period of formal job skill instruction followed by a test of job performance in a training facility.
Pretraining Expectations.
Employees’ expectations about the outcome of training can influence a program’s effectiveness. A study of 84 employees in a call center in Germany found that those employees whose expectations were being fulfilled by their training program learned significantly more than did those whose expectations were not being met (Rowold, 2007).
When a training program fails to live up to the trainees’ expectations, the trainees are less likely to complete the program. Trainees whose expectations are not met but who do complete the program are likely to be dissatisfied on the job, to have a low sense of commitment to the organization, and to have a high rate of job turnover. In contrast, trainees whose pretraining expectations are met by the training program develop strong organizational commitment, a high sense of self-efficacy, and enhanced motivation to succeed.
Motivation.
The motivation or desire to learn is vital to employees’ success in a training program. Regardless of their ability, trainees will not learn unless they truly want to learn. Every occupation has people who have achieved success with less than an optimal level of ability but with a great drive or motivation to succeed.
Research has shown that trainees with higher motivation learn more in training programs than do trainees with lower motivation. Trainees who are highly motivated are more likely to complete the program and to apply their training on the job (Salas & Cannon-Bowers, 2001). Management can increase trainees’ motivation by involving them in decisions about the training program, allowing them to participate in the needs-assessment process, and giving them a choice of training courses.
Job Involvement.
Trainees who show greater job involvement—whose sense of self-identity is closely linked with their work—show higher motivation to learn than do trainees who are less involved. Long-term career plans are also a factor. Training opportunities may be wasted on employees who display low job involvement and a lack of career interest because their motivation to learn is likely to be low. Furthermore, employees with low job involvement have low potential for showing improvement in their job performance as a result of their training. Thus, pretraining programs to increase job and career involvement may be desirable for some employees.
Locus of Control.
Another variable that affects trainee motivation is locus of control. People identified as having an internal locus of control believe that job performance and such work-related rewards as pay and promotion are under their personal control, dependent on their own behaviors, abilities, and efforts. People with an external locus of control believe that life events in and out of the workplace are beyond their control. They are dependent on such outside forces as luck, chance, or whether their boss likes them.
In a meta-analysis of studies on locus of control, researchers found that people who scored high in internal locus of control also scored higher on measures of job performance, job satisfaction, job commitment, and motivation than did those who scored low in internal locus of control (Ng, Sorensen, & Eby, 2006).
Employees who have an internal locus of control are likely to be highly motivated to succeed in a training program because they believe that mastering the job skills is under their control and within their capabilities. They are more likely to accept feedback during training and to take action to correct deficiencies. They also show higher levels of job and career involvement than do employees with an external locus of control.
Self-Efficacy.
Another factor that influences employee motivation to succeed in training programs is self-efficacy, the belief in one’s capacity to perform a task. It may be described as our sense of adequacy, efficiency, and competence in coping with life’s demands. A study of 19,120 people in 25 countries demonstrated that self-efficacy existed in similar ways across these cultures (Scholz, Dona, Sud, & Schwarzer, 2002).
The relationship between self-efficacy and motivation to learn, and between self-efficacy and actual success in training programs, has been amply demonstrated. Several meta-analyses of studies dealing with self-efficacy beliefs concluded that efficacy beliefs contribute significantly to a person’s level of motivation and performance in the workplace and in the classroom (Bandura & Locke, 2003). In turn, self-efficacy can be influenced by training. Certain types of training, such as behavior modeling, can be used to increase self-efficacy. Even simply telling trainees that the skill they are trying to learn can be mastered through practice can increase self-efficacy.
HOW PEOPLE LEARN: PSYCHOLOGICAL ISSUES
Psychologists have devoted considerable effort to the study of learning. The published literature in the field contains thousands of research reports on human and animal learning under various conditions. In this section we deal with several factors that relate to teaching methods and to the nature of the material to be learned.
Active Practice.
Practice may not always make perfect, as the saying goes, but it does help. For learning to be most effective, trainees must be actively involved in the learning process, not merely passive recipients of information. For example, it is not sufficient to read about the operation of a construction crane or to watch a video of someone operating it. The training program should provide the opportunity for the trainee to sit in the operator’s cab and have hands-on practice of the skills required to perform the job.
Imagine learning to drive a car only by listening to a lecture and memorizing traffic regulations. This can make you a better driver, but you will not actually learn how to drive until you sit in the driver’s seat and start practicing. The same principle holds for academic material. Actively taking notes during lectures, highlighting and outlining the textbook, and discussing questions with classmates facilitate learning much more than sitting passively in the lecture hall.
Massed and Distributed (Spaced) Practice.
Some tasks are learned more readily when the training program schedules one or a few relatively long practice sessions (massed practice). Other tasks require a large number of relatively short practice sessions (distributed, or spaced, practice). In general, spaced practice results in better learning, particularly for motor skills.
For jobs requiring relatively simple tasks, spaced practice interspersed with short rest periods is more effective. For more complex tasks, longer rest periods between the spaced practice sessions results in more effective learning.
The research evidence is less clear for the learning of verbal skills. Massed practice may be more useful, but much depends on the complexity of the task to be mastered and the type of material to be learned. Short, simple material can be learned well by massed practice because the sessions do not have to be too long for trainees to absorb the content. More difficult material must be divided into shorter units and learned by distributed practice.
Whole and Part Learning.
The concept of whole or part learning refers to the relative size of the unit of material to be learned. The training course content can be divided into small parts, each of which is studied individually, or the material can be learned as a whole. The decision depends on the nature and complexity of the material and the ability of the trainees. More intelligent trainees are capable of rapidly learning larger units of material than are less intelligent trainees. However, when slower learners are offered the chance to learn the same material in smaller units, they may be able to master it better than when forced to apprehend it as a whole.
Some skills are obviously better suited to the whole learning method. For example, when learning to drive a car, it serves no useful purpose to divide driving behavior into component skills. You do not practice separately and repeatedly movements such as fastening the seat belt, turning on the ignition, releasing the emergency brake, adjusting the rearview mirror, and moving the gearshift lever from park to drive. Driving is an interdependent flow of movements and actions that can be learned more effectively as a whole.
When a task requires the initial learning of several subskills, the part method is more efficient. For example, piano students confronting a new piece of music may choose at first to practice the right-hand and the left-hand parts separately. Trainees can practice these various subskills until a particular level of efficiency has been achieved before integrating them into the total behavior or operation.
Transfer of Training.
Organizational training often takes place in an artificial setting, a training facility that may differ in several ways from the actual job environment. This discrepancy between training and job situations must be bridged. The training program must ensure that there will be a transfer of training—a carryover of the skills mastered during the training program—to the job itself.
The issue is one of relevance: Is the information provided during the training program relevant and meaningful to actual job performance? Is there a correspondence between the behaviors and attitudes taught in the training sessions and the behaviors and attitudes needed to perform the job successfully? Can all the information mastered in the training facility be applied in the production facility or the office? In many instances, the answer to these questions is no.
If there is close correspondence between training requirements and job requirements, positive transfer will develop. The material learned during training will aid or improve job performance. The greater the similarity between the training and work situations, the greater will be the transfer. This question of similarity is important because of the growing use of virtual work environments for training purposes.
If there is little similarity between training situations and work situations, negative transfer will result. In that case, the skills learned in the training program will hamper or interfere with job performance, and these skills or behaviors must be unlearned or modified before employees can perform the job. A survey of 299 managers, supervisors, and employees in Nepal found that more than 70% of them rated positive transfer of training to actual job tasks as the most important criterion for evaluating the worth of a training program (Subedi, 2006).
Several conditions in the posttraining environment can facilitate positive transfer. The most important is supervisor support for and reinforcement of the behaviors and skills taught in the training program (Smith-Jentsch, Salas, & Brannick, 2001). Research on 182 employees of a food marketing company in Portugal confirmed the importance of supervisor support in facilitating transfer of training. In addition, investigators found that support from the organization and from co-workers aided in positive transfer, as did high self-efficacy among the trainees (Velada, Caetano, Michek, Lyons, & Kavanagh, 2007).
Also influential are the opportunity to apply on the job the skills learned in the training program and a follow-up discussion or assessment shortly after completing the training program. Another important factor is the overall organizational climate. The more supportive it is of training, the greater the opportunities for transfer of the training experience to the actual work situation.
Newsbreak It’s OK to Bring Your iPod to Work
People used to hide their iPods from their boss at work, and many still do, but a growing number of employees are being given iPods by their companies and told that it’s OK to listen to them on the job. In fact, some employees are told they have to listen to them in order to download files of company training courses.
A semiconductor manufacturer in California spent $2.5 million to buy video iPods for its 8,500 employees, including those who work overseas, so they can view the training sessions. A fast-food restaurant in Tennessee distributes iPods to new employees with instructions on food preparation, so they can listen while they are actually in the kitchen and follow the procedures step by step.
Some employees report that they use their iPods to listen to training material off the job, during their commute to and from work, or even while working out at the gym. It’s almost as though they don’t want their bosses to see them using them at work for fear they will look like slackers.
Younger employees said they were happy with their new training tools, but not so for those over age 50, many of whom had no idea what the gadgets were or what they could be used for. They learned quickly, however. The only reported disappointment came when an employee was laid off or quit and had to return the iPod!
Source: Athavaley, A. (2006, October 25). The Boss Puts the iPod to Work. Wall Street Journal.
A survey of 150 members of a training and development organization dealt with the judgments of training professionals about the effectiveness of on-the-job training programs. The trainers expected that two thirds of the employees would apply what they learn in training programs directly to their jobs. However, a year after training only one third of the employees applied what they had learned in the training programs directly to their jobs. Thus, the effectiveness of transfer appears to decline over time (Saks & Belcourt, 2006).
Feedback.
People learn more readily when they are given a clear idea of how well they are doing. Feedback (sometimes called “knowledge of results”) indicates to the trainees their level of progress. Feedback is also important in maintaining motivation. If trainees are not provided with feedback during a training program, they might persist in learning and practicing inappropriate behaviors and incorrect techniques of job performance.
To be maximally effective, feedback must be offered as soon as possible after the inappropriate behavior occurs. If a sequence of operations is being practiced incorrectly, the desired change is more likely to be brought about if the trainees are told immediately. Overall training progress is greater when a program allows for frequent feedback. The more specific and detailed the correction, the more useful it will be.
Reinforcement.
The greater the reward that follows a behavior, the more easily and rapidly that behavior will be learned. The reward, or reinforcement, can take many forms—a good test grade, a gold star on a chart, a pat on the back from a supervisor, or a promotion for successful completion of a training program. By establishing a program of reinforcement, management can maintain employee motivation and effectively shape behavior by rewarding only those actions that the trainees are supposed to learn and display.
The most frequently used reinforcers in business and industry are money (such as pay raises or bonuses), social recognition (compliments or expressions of approval), and positive feedback about job performance. In a meta-analysis of 72 studies conducted on the job, researchers found that money improved performance by 23%, social recognition improved performance by 17%, and feedback improved performance by 10% (Stajkovic & Luthans, 2003). Together, the three types of reinforcers are powerful tools for changing on-the-job behavior so that employees may become more productive.
Reinforcement should be provided immediately after the desired behavior has occurred. The longer the delay between behavior and reinforcement, the less effective the reinforcement will be, because the trainee may fail to perceive the connection between the correct behavior and the reward for having behaved in that way.
In the early stages of training, reinforcement should be given every time the desired behavior is displayed. Once some learning has taken place, continuous reinforcement is no longer necessary. Then, partial reinforcement will be sufficient, for example, rewarding trainees every third or every tenth time they perform the appropriate behavior.
TYPES OF TRAINING PROGRAMS
Now that we have described the pretraining attributes of trainees and the psychological factors that affect learning, let us consider specific organizational training techniques. Each technique offers advantages and disadvantages, depending on the goals of the training program, the abilities of the employees, and the nature of the information to be learned.
On-the-Job Training
One of the oldest and most widely used training methods takes place directly on the job for which the worker is being trained. Under the guidance of an experienced operator, supervisor, or trained instructor, or following instructions on an iPod or similar device, trainees learn while working. They operate the equipment in the production facility or assist customers out on the sales floor and have the opportunity to develop proficiency while they work.
The major advantage of on-the-job training is economy; the organization does not have to establish, equip, and maintain a separate training facility. If current workers and supervisors serve as trainers, even the cost of a professional instructor is saved. A more obvious advantage is positive transfer of training. There is no concern about whether job performance in a training situation will carry over to the actual work situation because the training and job situations are the same. In terms of other psychological factors, active practice is provided from the outset. Motivation to learn should be high because the training situation is clearly relevant to the job situation. Feedback is immediate and visible. Good performance will elicit praise, and poor performance will show in a faulty product or dissatisfied customer.
On-the-job training Training that takes place directly on the job for which the person has been hired.
On-the-job training can be expensive in the long run, however. Workers and supervisors must take time from their regular jobs to train new employees. This can lead to an overall reduction in productivity. Additional costs come with the slower work pace of the trainees and any damage they cause to equipment or product because of their inexperience. On certain jobs, permitting untrained workers to operate machinery may be hazardous not only to the trainees but also to other employees. Accident rates for trainees on the job are typically higher than accident rates for experienced workers.

In an on-the-job training program, new employees practice job skills under the supervision of an experienced worker.
Use of current workers or supervisors as trainers does not ensure adequate training for new employees. Because a person performs a job competently or has been on the job for a considerable time does not mean that person has the ability to teach the job to someone else. On-the-job training is often haphazard and inadequate, amounting to no more than the supervisor’s saying to the trainees, “Go ahead and start. If you have any questions, come see me.”
On-the-job training is also used at the management level. Much managerial and executive training and development occurs through informal and unstructured on-the-job experiences. Indeed, on-the-job experiences can contribute more significantly to the development of managerial ability than any formal classroom instruction.
Vestibule Training
Because on-the-job training has the potential for disrupting the production process, many companies prefer vestibule training. They establish a simulated workspace in a separate training facility. (A vestibule is a hallway or entrance foyer between the outer door of a building and its main rooms. In the early days of American industry, vestibule schools were organized just inside the doors of industrial plants to introduce new workers to their jobs with a few weeks of specialized training. The word vestibule is used in this context to denote that the training program is like an entryway or passageway the employee must cross before getting to the job itself.) Using the same kind of equipment and operating procedures as the actual work situation, a vestibule training program relies on skilled instructors, rather than experienced workers and supervisors, to teach new workers how to perform their jobs.
Vestibule training Training that takes place in a simulated workspace.
Because the sole purpose of vestibule training is training, there is no pressure to maintain a given level of productivity. Trainees do not have to be concerned about making costly or embarrassing errors or about damaging actual production equipment. They can concentrate on learning the skills necessary to be successful on the job.
The greatest disadvantage of vestibule training is the cost. The organization must equip the facility and maintain a teaching staff. This expense is particularly burdensome when there are not enough new workers to make full-time use of the training facility. Furthermore, if the training situation does not correspond closely to the work situation, negative transfer of training will occur, and the trainees may need informal, on-the-job instruction once they start to work. This problem can be aggravated by the common business practice of using obsolete equipment, retired from the production floor, in the training facility. However, if a vestibule training program is properly designed, staffed, and equipped, it can be an effective training technique.
Apprenticeship
Perhaps the earliest recorded training method still in use today is the apprenticeship program for skilled crafts and trades in private-sector industries such as construction and manufacturing. Programs are available for plumbers, carpenters, electronics technicians, painters, and auto mechanics, among others. Conducted in the classroom and on the job, apprenticeship involves extensive background preparation in the craft as well as actual work experience under the guidance of experts.
Apprenticeship A training method for skilled crafts and trades involving classroom instruction and on-the-job experience.
Apprenticeships average 4 to 6 years. The standard procedure is for the trainees to agree to work for a company for a fixed period in return for a specified program of training and a salary, usually half that earned by skilled and licensed craftspersons. Trainees must complete their apprenticeship before they are allowed to join a union. Membership in a labor union is necessary to securing employment. Thus, apprentice programs constitute a joint effort by industry and organized labor to maintain an adequate supply of skilled workers.
In recent years, apprenticeships in the public sector have grown in popularity. A number of federal, state, and local government agencies have adopted them for skilled blue-collar jobs in civilian and military programs, such as building maintenance worker, highway maintenance worker, prison correctional officer, and firefighter. The Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, operates an apprenticeship program for carpenters, electricians, and plaster masons to build displays for its museums.
Computer-Assisted Instruction
Computer-assisted instruction (CAI), sometimes called computer-based training (CBT), is widely used by private- and public-sector organizations. In CAI, the program of instruction, usually on CD-ROM, serves as the teacher. Trainees interact with the material on computer terminals. Their responses are recorded and analyzed automatically, and the difficulty of each item presented is based on the correctness of the response to the previous item.
Computer-assisted instruction (CAI) A computer-based training method in which trainees learn material at their own pace and receive immediate feedback on their progress.
One of the most widespread uses of computer-based training is to teach computer literacy skills. With millions of workers now using computers daily on the job, the development of computer operating skills is critical. Another popular use of CAI is in training airline flight crews. The software used by airlines presents displays and touch-panel graphics to simulate the buttons, switches, dials, and signal lights in the cockpit. This type of instruction reduces the number of hours that pilots and copilots would otherwise have to spend in a more expensive flight simulator.
With CAI, trainees are actively involved in the learning process and work through material at their own pace. This means that the trainees, rather than the trainer, decide how long and how often to practice. Freedom to choose can have a downside, however, particularly for trainees who are not sufficiently motivated to work properly so as to learn the material. Research on 78 technical employees who volunteered for an online course on problem solving showed that some of them skipped practice sessions or moved too quickly through the course work to adequately understand the material. After the course, the trainees who obtained the lowest test scores were found to have completed less than 70% of the practice sessions and to have spent fewer than 6 hours working at what was scheduled as a 14-hour course. Those who spent the least time on the training also had low learning self-efficacy levels; that is, they were not sufficiently confident about their ability to learn the material (Brown, 2001).
Nevertheless, for people with the ability and motivation to succeed, computer-assisted instruction offers many advantages. Trainees receive immediate feedback on their progress and reinforcement for displaying mastery of a skill. The CAI technique offers more individualized instruction than does a traditional lecture-based training course. It is not unlike private tutoring by an excellent teacher who has a comprehensive knowledge of the subject, never becomes impatient or annoyed, and displays no prejudice or error. Because CAI keeps accurate records and maintains a current performance analysis on each trainee, the training staff is free to devote time to any unusual learning problems that arise.
In a meta-analysis of 96 studies involving more than 19,000 participants, researchers found that Web-based instruction was 19% more effective than classroom instruction in teaching declarative knowledge, that is, descriptions of facts, methods, and procedures. There were no significant differences between the two methods for teaching procedural knowledge: learning about how to actually perform those methods and procedures on the job. Also, no differences were found between Web-based instruction and classroom instruction on measures of employee satisfaction with the training program (Sitzmann, Kraiger, Stewart, & Wisher, 2006). In another study on CAI, investigators found that field workers from Hispanic ethnic groups who had little formal education or experience with computers were successful in learning safety procedures from Web-based instruction and in transferring this knowledge to on-the-job behaviors (Anger, et al., 2006).
Computer-assisted instruction can be used with even a small number of trainees, so a company does not have to make trainees wait until there are enough to fill a classroom and schedule a course. CAI can also be provided to a large number of trainees simultaneously in different locations. Studies have shown that the technique significantly decreases training time and provides positive transfer of training.
Net-Based Training
Net-based training involves the Internet and the intranet (the within-company site). The technique is a type of distance learning, and it is transforming traditional training programs by delivering up-to-the-minute programs on demand. Through net-based training, a company can provide training courses for any number of workers to access from their desks at work or at home, or from laptops and handheld computer devices while traveling. Instruction is being prepared for nearly every type of training, from certification in information technology to advanced accounting practices and course work for an MBA degree.
Net-based training offers the same advantages as computer-assisted instruction: active involvement of the trainees, the opportunity to proceed at their own pace, immediate feedback and reinforcement, and flexibility as to the time and place of training.
The cost of net-based training has been estimated to be 20% to 35% lower than the cost of traditional classroom instruction, where trainers and trainees must assemble on a prescribed schedule. The technique has become a cheaper, better, and faster way of reaching a wider range of employees.
Behavior Modification
The use of positive reinforcement to change behavior has many applications to organizational training. An assessment called a performance audit is conducted first to determine the problems or behaviors that can be modified to achieve more efficient job performance. A program of positive reinforcement is then introduced to reward employees for displaying the desired behaviors, such as reducing errors or decreasing production time per unit. Punishment or reprimands are not used because although they may temporarily eliminate an undesirable behavior, they may leave in its place anxiety, hostility, and anger. Providing positive reinforcement is much more effective in improving employee productivity and behavior.
A classic program of behavior modification was developed at Emery Air Freight, where the behavioral changes induced were directly connected to job performance. A performance audit revealed two problem areas: (1) despite the employees’ belief that they were responding within 90 minutes to 90% of customer telephone inquiries, they were actually responding to only 30% of the inquiries within that time; and (2) employees were combining packages into containers for shipment only 45% of the time, whereas management expected containers to be used 90% of the time. The goals of the behavior modification training program were to have employees respond faster to customer inquiries and to use containers for shipment whenever possible.
Behavior modification A training program of positive reinforcement to reward employees for displaying desirable job behaviors.
Newsbreak Coast-to-Coast Commuting: San Diego to Tampa?
Morgan Hezlep, 29 years old, was working for a San Diego company that designed health care software programs when she decided that she wanted to go back to college to finish her bachelor’s degree. She couldn’t quit her job to return to school full time because she needed the salary. And besides, she liked her work. Unfortunately, her company wanted to send her to Boston on a long-term assignment to work with a client establishing a new program.
Then it got more complicated. Morgan didn’t want to move to Boston so her company agreed to fly her back and forth every week. That settled the job problem, but where could she take the classes to finish her degree? In Boston she would be working all the time, and in San Diego there were no colleges where she could attend weekends only.
Then she learned about an online degree program in computer science offered by Saint Leo University, located near Tampa, Florida. Morgan could do her course work online during the hours she spent in airports and commuting cross-country by plane. That system gave her about 16 hours a week to study the lectures provided on CD-ROMs and to write the required papers. “I left San Diego every Sunday,” she said, “worked Monday through Thursday and flew back home to San Diego on Friday morning. I would get settled in [at the airport], put on my headphones, pop in a CD and begin class.”
It took 2 years to complete the program. In addition to the CD-ROMs, there were weekly online seminars and discussions with professors and other students in a virtual classroom setting. Advisers were always available through a toll-free phone number, fax, or e-mail. Textbooks arrived by mail at the beginning of every course.
Along with her degree, Morgan accumulated more than 300,000 frequent-flyer miles, some of which she applied to the airfare to Tampa for her graduation—the only time she ever saw the campus.
Her new credentials helped her decide to enter a new field. She enrolled in law school and attended actual classes in real buildings every day. Morgan says that her study habits were greatly improved by her online learning experience. “With the online classes,” she said, “I was forced to develop good study habits and time management skills. I think the experience made me a more disciplined student.”
Source: Commuter school (2003, July 20). St. Petersburg (FL) Times.
Managers were taught a number of recognitions and rewards to bestow on employees as reinforcers, ranging from a smile and a nod to specific praise for a job well done. Financial incentives to improve performance were not used. Praise and recognition were found to be sufficient reinforcers for improving job performance and for bringing about positive changes in behavior. Managers were told to reinforce desirable behaviors as soon as they occurred and gradually to shift from constant reinforcement to occasional, or intermittent, reinforcement.
Employees were required to keep a detailed record of their accomplishments so that they could compare their performance with the company standards. This record keeping provided them daily feedback on their progress.
The company estimated that the improved productivity and response time saved $3 million in 3 years, considerably more than the cost of instituting the behavior modification program initially.
Job Rotation
Job rotation is a popular management training technique. It exposes trainees to different jobs and departments to acquaint them with all facets of the organization. The technique is frequently used with new college graduates who are just beginning their working careers. Through job rotation, trainees gain perspective on various aspects of organizational life. They have the opportunity to see and be seen by higher management in different departments and to learn through direct experience where they might best apply their knowledge, abilities, and interests.
Job rotation A management training technique that assigns trainees to various jobs and departments over a period of a few years.
The rotation phase of a management career may last several years, taking employees from one department to another or from one plant or office in the United States to others throughout the world. Such changes can promote the development of the management trainees’ flexibility, adaptability, and self-efficacy as employees learn to deal successfully with new challenges. Job rotation programs are also used for skilled and semiskilled jobs. The programs allow workers to increase their skill levels in diverse occupations, and they serve to alleviate the boredom that can result from years of performing the same tasks.

Role playing gives management trainees the chance to try out various supervisory behaviors and to receive feedback from other trainees and instructors.
Disadvantages of the job rotation technique include frequent moves, which can disrupt family life and interrupt a spouse’s career. If the rotation period is too brief, there may not be sufficient time to become fully acquainted with a particular job. If top management is more interested in using management trainees as temporary office help, instead of considering them a rising group of managers in need of mentors, the trainees will not have the opportunity to acquire the necessary skills to transfer to upper-management positions. This can defeat the purpose of the program.
Case Studies
The use of case studies, a method developed by the Harvard University School of Business, is popular in executive training programs. A complex problem, or case, of the kind faced daily by managers and executives, is presented to the trainees prior to a general meeting. The trainees are expected to familiarize themselves with the information and to find additional relevant material. When they meet as a group, each member must be prepared to interpret the problem and offer a solution. Through the presentation of diverse viewpoints, the trainees come to appreciate different perspectives on a problem and, consequently, different approaches to solving it. Usually the cases have no one correct solution. The group leader does not suggest an answer. The group as a whole must reach consensus and resolve the problem.
Case studies A method of executive training in which trainees analyze a business problem and offer solutions.
A limitation of the case study method is that the solution may not be relevant to the requirements of the job. There may be a discrepancy between the theoretical solution to the case problem and the solution that is practical for the organization. Therefore, actions taken on the basis of the case study solution proposed in the training program may not transfer positively to actions that are appropriate on the job.
Business Games
Business games attempt to simulate a complex organizational situation. They are intended to develop problem-solving and decision-making skills and to provide practice in using those skills in a situation in which a management trainee’s mistake will not prove costly or embarrassing to the organization.
Business games A training method that simulates a complex organizational situation to encourage the development of problem-solving and decision-making skills.
Trainees compete in teams, each team representing a separate, hypothetical business organization. The team companies are given detailed information about the operation of their organization, including data on finances, sales, advertising, production, personnel, and inventories. Each group must organize itself and assign various tasks and responsibilities to each member. As the teams deal with corporate problems, an instructor evaluates their reasoning processes and decisions. Teams may be required to consider additional problems based on the outcomes of their initial decisions.
Because the business problems presented to the trainees are so realistic, many trainees form an emotional commitment to their virtual company. They gain experience in making decisions on real-life problems under the pressures of time and the actions taken by rival organizations. For new employees, business games may provide their first exposure to actual job tasks and stresses managers face. This type of realistic job preview persuades some trainees that they would be happier in another line of work.
In-Basket Training
The in-basket technique was discussed in chapter 3 as a method of employee selection. The same technique is used to train prospective managers. Each trainee is given a stack of letters, memos, customer complaints, employee requests, and other items that present various problems typical of those dealt with by managers on the job. The trainees must take action on each item within a specified period. After completing the tasks, the trainees meet with a trainer to discuss their decisions and receive feedback on the outcomes.
In-basket technique An assessment-center exercise that requires job applicants to process memos, letters, and directives found in a typical manager’s in-basket.
Role Playing
In role playing, management trainees pretend to act out a particular role by displaying whatever behaviors they believe are appropriate in a given situation. For example, they may be asked to imagine themselves to be a supervisor discussing a poor performance appraisal with a subordinate. They act out these situations in front of a group of trainees and instructors who offer comments on their performance. A trainee may play the role of supervisor at first, then the situation will be reversed and the same trainee will play the employee. Sessions can be videotaped for later analysis. Many people feel foolish or awkward acting out in front of a group, but once they begin, most people develop a sensitivity for the part and project their feelings onto it.
Role playing A management training technique in which trainees play the role of a supervisor, acting out various behaviors in situations with subordinates.
Role playing can be a valuable learning device. It enables trainees to understand the views of subordinates and acquaints them with the roles they will be expected to play as managers. It provides practical experience as well as feedback from other trainees and instructors. Trainees have the opportunity to practice job-related behaviors in a situation in which mistakes or inappropriate behaviors will not jeopardize interpersonal relations on the job.
Behavior Modeling
The behavior modeling approach to management training involves having trainees attempt to imitate or model their behavior on examples of exceptional job performance. It is a popular technique for teaching interpersonal and leadership skills. Behavior modeling is usually conducted with groups of 6 to 12 supervisors or managers. Sessions may last 2 to 4 hours a week for up to 4 weeks. In the intervals between training sessions, the trainees are on the job, applying what they have learned, which provides them with feedback from their subordinates.
Behavior modeling A management training technique in which trainees attempt to imitate the job behaviors of successful supervisors.
The usual procedure is for a trainer, using a prepared script, to provide a general introduction. Then the trainees watch a video of a manager who is acting out appropriate procedures and behaviors for handling a job situation with a subordinate—for example, discussing poor job performance, excessive absenteeism, or low morale.
Next, the trainees engage in behavior rehearsal; they practice the behaviors they saw the model perform. Trainees are not being asked to play a role; instead, they are imitating the actual behaviors they will use on the job, the behaviors the model has displayed. The trainer and the other trainees provide feedback by telling each trainee how closely he or she imitated the model’s behavior and where the behavior diverged. This social reinforcement helps trainees gain confidence in their ability to display appropriate behavior.
The interpersonal and leadership behaviors learned by behavior modeling will transfer directly to the job because the modeled situations between manager and subordinate are actual job situations. Thus, there is a high degree of relevance between behavior modeling as a training technique and the job requirements, a condition that increases trainees’ motivation to accept and apply the training.
Reports from organizations using behavior modeling show that the technique is effective in raising employee morale, improving communication with customers, increasing sales, decreasing absenteeism, enhancing supervisory skills, improving production quantity and quality, and reducing employee resistance to change.
Executive Coaching
Another approach to management training involves one-to-one training sessions in which a coach works with a manager to improve a particular aspect of the manager’s job performance. Can the manager give a good speech? Can the executive use the Internet? Do performance appraisals show that colleagues and subordinates think the boss has lousy human relations skills? Get a coach!
Executive coaching is designed to solve individual problems as they arise. The most frequent use of executive coaching has been as a follow-up to poor ratings on 360-degree feedback appraisals. Because feedback alone is often not sufficient motivation for a manager to alter his or her behavior, a coach will be brought in to help interpret the feedback and work with the manager to devise strategies for eliciting the desired changes in behavior. Several sessions of coaching may be required to deal with perceived deficiencies.
Executive coaching A management training technique involving personal sessions with a coach to improve a particular aspect of job performance.
One year after receiving executive coaching, 1,202 senior managers underwent a 360-degree performance evaluation. Those who had received the coaching were judged to be far more likely to set specific rather than general goals for their subordinates and to solicit ideas for improvement than were those who had received no coaching. The overall performance ratings of those who had received the coaching were also higher than those of the no-coaching control group (Smither, London, Flautt, Vargas, & Kucine, 2003). Most executives who have received coaching tend to agree with their coaches’ recommendations and to rate the process as valuable to their career development.
Diversity Training
Newsbreak Virtual Training: How Not to Crash a Multimillion Dollar Airplane
You’ve seen it in the movies. A jet fighter eases its way upward, below and behind a mammoth flying tanker loaded with aviation fuel. A long, thin tube with a funnel extends from the rear of the tanker aircraft. The fighter pilot maneuvers the jet so that its fuel tank port connects with the tiny funnel, while traveling at more than 500 miles an hour. It’s called in-flight refueling, a tricky, delicate, and dangerous operation every fighter pilot has to learn.
Lt. Charlie Howard, a newly graduated 26-year-old pilot, is trying to perform the maneuver for the first time. He has listened to the lectures, read the operating manual, and paid close attention to the video showing a pilot’s-eye view of the connection, but now he feels his fear mount as he closes in on the monster plane overhead. He never takes his eyes off the funnel. It’s only 20 feet away. He draws closer. Suddenly, his plane is buffeted by high wind gusts and his body is slammed into the seat as the fighter bounces on an updraft. Frantically, Charlie forces the control stick forward, but it is too late. The wind whips faster than he can react, and his tiny plane smashes into the side of the tanker.
“Boom,” rings a voice in his ear. “You’re dead, Charlie. And so is everybody in the tanker. OK, let’s try it again.”
Charlie Howard is flying in a virtual aircraft, a flight simulator, wearing a head-mounted virtual reality apparatus that provides lifelike computer-generated images. The only damage he suffered from the “crash” was to his ego, and now he can try the maneuver again and again until he perfects it. Only then will he be permitted to try it in a real airplane.
The U.S. military has invested millions of dollars in virtual training for pilots, air-traffic controllers, and tank commanders, so they can learn their jobs without inflicting harm on themselves and others or damaging expensive equipment. Virtual reality allows researchers to shape the training to the specific needs of the various branches of the armed forces. U.S. Air Force psychologist Wesley Regian said, “People can practice one part of a more complicated task. Or simulations can start out easy—as with removing the wind in the refueling simulation—and increase in difficulty as a student grasps the basics.”
One day Lt. Howard will practice refueling in a real plane under genuine wind conditions, but thanks to the I-O psychology research on virtual reality simulation devices, he will be well trained by then. He will have performed the required maneuvers many times already, and survived.
We described in chapter 1 how the nature of the workforce is changing to include more women and more ethnic minorities. To aid their employees in coping with an increasingly diverse workforce, many organizations have instituted diversity training programs to teach people to confront personal prejudices that could lead to discriminatory behaviors. Through lectures, videos, role-playing, and confrontational exercises, employees are learning, in a way, how it might feel to be a female worker being sexually harassed by a male boss, or a Hispanic worker receiving an unsatisfactory performance appraisal from a Black supervisor. Trainees are forced to deal with their own sexist and racist attitudes and to learn to be more sensitive to the concerns and viewpoints of others.
Diversity training Training programs to make employees aware of their personal prejudices and to teach them to be more sensitive to the concerns and views of others.
U.S. companies are spending up to $10 billion annually for diversity training. The success of diversity training depends on several factors: support from management, mandatory attendance, and the size of the organization. Large organizations with strong support from top executives, a staff of diversity specialists, and required attendance for all employees are the most likely to have successful diversity training programs. However, posttraining interviews with participants suggest that for some people these programs foster negative reactions as well as charges that the programs are offered only because it appears to be the politically correct thing to do.
An analysis of diversity training programs conducted by 830 U.S. companies over a period of 31 years found that mandatory attendance at such programs often resulted in less diversity in the workplace. Forced attendance at diversity training exercises led to a decrease of up to 7.5% in the number of women in management positions, a 10% drop in jobs for African-American women, and a 12% drop for African-American men. Similar declines were recorded for Asian and Hispanic managers; also reported was an overall backlash against the idea of artificially increasing diversity. Such training programs yielded more positive results when attendance was voluntary (Kalev, Dobbin, & Kelly, 2006; Vedantam, 2008).
In a study of 6,130 salespersons in 743 stores of a national retail chain, researchers found that differences in the number of sales per hour between Black and White employees were highest in stores that did not have a favorable climate for a diverse workforce. The differences were significantly lower in stores with a pro-diversity climate (McKay, Avery, & Morris, 2008).
CAREER DEVELOPMENT AND PLANNING
Training methods are designed to improve employees’ knowledge, job skills, and interpersonal relations. Most training programs are mandatory and are oriented toward a specific job or specific career stage, such as the entry-level worker, the employee who needs retraining, or the midcareer manager. Some organizations also offer personal development opportunities throughout an employee’s career. These career development and planning efforts, which are strictly voluntary, involve a lifelong learning approach.
Organizations as diverse as General Electric, AT&T, Merrill Lynch, TRW, and Xerox operate career development centers. These centers provide information on company career paths and opportunities and offer counseling and self-analysis programs so that employees can determine how their personal goals coincide with organizational goals. Many companies sponsor workshops to assist employees in career planning and in the development of human relations skills. Employees are encouraged to set career objectives—for example, specifying where they hope to be within the corporate hierarchy in 5 years’ time—and to review these goals periodically. Some companies offer tuition refund plans that enable employees to return to college or graduate school to upgrade job skills or to learn new skills. Employees are also encouraged to participate in in-house training courses.
One of the forces of change in the workplace today is the decline of the idea of a lifetime career with a single employer. Increasingly, employees may choose to or be forced to change careers several times during the course of their working lives and to continually enhance and upgrade their personal package of skills. This necessity for lifelong learning increases the importance of career development and planning efforts.
A 13-month study followed 800 workers in several different organizations who were involved in career development and learning activities. The researchers reached the following conclusions (Maurer, Weiss, & Barbeite, 2003).
• Prior participation in career development activities was a good predictor of present and future intentions to undertake more such learning activities.
• High self-efficacy led to more favorable attitudes toward career development opportunities, which led, in turn, to higher levels of participation.
• The more supportive organizations are of career development activities, the greater are employee beliefs that their participation will lead to positive personal benefits.
• Older workers receive less organizational support and encouragement for career development activities and feel less capable of undertaking such activities.
In addition, the researchers reported that the major reason for intending to stay with a company, instead of looking for a job with another organization, was the opportunity for career growth, development, and learning provided by the present employer.
Career Self-Management
As a result of years of corporate mergers, restructuring, downsizing, and outsourcing, many companies today are less able or less willing to provide opportunities for the career development and growth of their employees. They are urging employees to take more responsibility on their own for actively planning and managing their careers. The term career self-management refers to the degree to which a person regularly and routinely gathers information and formulates or revises plans for his or her own career through solving problems and making decisions. There has been little research, however, on the effectiveness of career self-management training.
Career self-management A lifelong approach to learning and skill enhancement initiated by the employee rather than by the organization.
Some organizations offer training to help employees assume this responsibility to upgrade their skills and learn new ones. One estimate is that approximately half of all U.S. corporations with a workforce exceeding 100 employees offers career self-management training. A typical program consists of three stages or programs presented on successive days:
1. Assessing career attitudes, values, plans, and goals
2. Analyzing how these goals have or have not been met by the current job
3. Discussing career strategies to create opportunities to meet one’s plans and goals, whether on or off the job (This stage includes upgrading skills, soliciting feedback from colleagues and supervisors, networking, and being mobile in seeking new job opportunities.)
EVALUATING ORGANIZATIONAL TRAINING PROGRAMS
Many training programs and facilities appear impressive and sophisticated, and employees like many of them. Nevertheless, the outcomes or results of training programs should be evaluated in systematic and quantitative terms. One way to measure the worth of a program is to assess the following results: (1) changes in cognitive outcomes, such as the amount of information learned, (2) changes in skill-based outcomes, such as improvements in quantity and quality of production, and (3) changes in affective outcomes, such as positive attitudes and higher motivation. Unless such evaluative research is conducted, an organization will not know if its investment of time and money is effective.
Are employees learning the skills they need for their jobs? Are productivity, safety, and efficiency rising? Have communications and leadership skills improved? Have the attitudes of majority-group employees toward minority-group employees changed? To answer these questions, comparisons must be made of trained and untrained workers performing the same jobs. Or the same workers before and after training can be compared with a control group of workers who were not exposed to the training. Only through such research can an organization determine whether its training program should be modified, extended, or eliminated.
In a meta-analysis of 397 studies on training, investigators found what the researchers described as a medium to large positive effect of organizational training (Arthur, Bennett, Edens, & Bell, 2003). A survey of 150 members of a training and development organization showed that these training professionals believed that approximately half of all training efforts resulted in an improvement in employee and organizational performance (Katz, 2002).
Even with such a substantial investment at stake, most organizations do not make a systematic effort to evaluate their training programs. Or, they may accept subjective or intuitive evidence that the trainees are actually learning something. As a result, many organizations do not have a clear idea whether the millions of dollars they spend on training is worthwhile. This failure to examine the effectiveness of training programs is increasingly expensive as more and more training is dependent on computer technology.
Newsbreak Obsolete at Midlife? Retrain, Retrain, Retrain
Gary Herman is a 55-year-old systems analyst with the data services division of GTE in Tampa, Florida. He’s concerned about his future because he’s working in a field where the technology changes so fast and so radically that a person’s skills can become obsolete in the space of only a year or two. He spends considerable time reeducating himself to stay marketable.
“People need to be retooled,” said James Harris, Herman’s boss. “If they don’t choose to do that, they could lose their jobs. Either you retrain or you don’t move along in your career. It’s that simple.”
Internet-based technological advancements pose continual challenges for people like Gary Herman. When his employer offered a 2-month course on state-of-the-art developments, he added those 8 hours per day of study time to his full-time work schedule. His boss had not told him to take the course. Herman knew it was up to him to take advantage of the opportunity to improve his skills. But he also knew that if his next performance appraisal, which included a critical skill reevaluation, did not show that he was making an effort to manage the direction of his career, he would not remain on his chosen career path with GTE and would no longer be marketable elsewhere.
“You have to adopt a pattern of lifelong learning in this field,” said John Bonanno, executive director of Boston University’s corporate education center. “A lot of what you learn today will, in two or three years, be obsolete.”
But not everyone is capable of being retrained. GTE’s training director, Rene Lutthans, found that 25% of the employees who participate in such training are unable to master the new skills. “The company tries to find a place for such people, but as projects are phased out, there are no guarantees of employment.”
If you can’t keep up, you’re out. If you don’t manage your own career, no one else will.
In addition to cost, other factors help explain the lack of assessment of the effectiveness of training programs. Many training directors do not have the skills to conduct such research. Also, they may overestimate the usefulness of programs they have initiated and designed. Some companies offer training not because management believes in it or expects it to meet specific corporate goals but merely because their competitors do it.
Some training programs are established because some new technique or management style has produced a flood of anecdotal reports in the popular media attesting to its value. One example was “time management,” supposedly a method for learning to use one’s time in the most efficient manner. Supporters claimed time management increased employee productivity and satisfaction and reduced stress. As the number of magazine articles and television reports about the success of time management grew, companies hired time-management consultants to train employees in this latest miracle cure for the ills of the workplace. The only problem was, time management did not work. No one knows how many companies initiated expensive time-management training programs and maintained them in the absence of data to support their effectiveness.
Assessing the behavioral changes that may occur after training can be difficult. If a worker operates a simple machine or assembles a part, the goal of the training program and the measurement of the outcome are relatively straightforward. The number of items produced per unit time by trained and untrained workers, or by workers trained by different techniques, can be determined objectively and compared. At this work level, training programs have been shown to be effective. When dealing with human relations, problem solving, or other management behaviors, it is far more difficult to assess the usefulness of the training.
Yet the face validity of management training remains high, despite the lack of supporting data. The programs are popular, everyone says they are necessary, and management looks good for providing them. However, the question remains: Are they truly worthwhile?
Training directors defend their programs by pointing out that management trainees are subsequently promoted to higher levels of responsibility. This is not a valid or sufficient measure of a training program’s success, because usually only the most capable and promising candidates are chosen to participate in management training initially. These trainees are the ones most likely to be promoted anyway, even without the training programs. Training directors also like to boast that employees like the programs. That’s nice, but feelings and other subjective reactions are no substitute for research to investigate whether training results in better job performance. Organizations must be willing to expend the resources necessary to evaluate their elaborate training and development programs. It makes little sense to continue to support such activities without empirical evidence of their worth.
Problems with organizational training provide many challenges for I-O psychologists:
• To identify the abilities required to perform increasingly complex jobs
• To provide job opportunities for unskilled workers
• To assist supervisors in the management of an ethnically diverse workforce
• To retrain workers displaced by changing economic, technological, and political forces
• To help organizations remain competitive in the international marketplace
• To conduct the necessary research to determine the effectiveness of training programs
Summary
Training and development take place from the first day on a job throughout a person’s career at all levels of employment: from unskilled teenagers who need remedial work in basic math and language skills to seasoned corporate vice presidents. Fair employment legislation affects training programs because decisions on placement, promotion, retention, and transfer are often based on performance during training. Therefore, training has the potential to be discriminatory.
The first step in establishing a training program is to specify the training objectives. A needs assessment based on organizational, task, and worker analyses is conducted using the techniques of job analysis, critical incidents, performance appraisal, and self-assessment. The training staff should be knowledgeable about the subject matter, be able to communicate effectively, and have the requisite interpersonal skills.
Pretraining characteristics of trainees can influence how much they will benefit from a training program. Relevant attributes include individual differences in ability, pretraining expectations, motivation, job involvement, locus of control, and self-efficacy. Psychological factors involved in learning include active practice of the material, massed or spaced practice, whole or part learning, transfer of training, feedback, and reinforcement.
In on-the-job training, trainees learn while actually working at the job. Vestibule training takes place in a simulated work area. In apprenticeship, trainees undergo classroom instruction and work experience under the guidance of skilled craftspersons. In computer-assisted instruction, trainees interact with computer software that presents the material to be learned. Net-based training offers instruction over the Internet or the company’s in-house intranet network. This makes training available both on and off the job, whenever and wherever the employees choose to log on. In behavior modification, trainees are reinforced, or rewarded, for displaying the desired behaviors.
Job rotation exposes trainees to various jobs at their level of employment. In case studies, management trainees analyze, interpret, and discuss a complex business problem. Business games require groups of trainees to interact in a simulated business situation. The in-basket technique, also a simulation, asks trainees to respond individually to letters, memos, and other office tasks. In role playing, trainees act out the problems of workers and managers. Behavior modeling has trainees pattern their behavior on that of successful managers. Executive coaching offers one-to-one training to improve a particular aspect of a manager’s job performance. It is frequently a follow-up to poor ratings on a 360-degree performance appraisal. In diversity training, employees learn to confront and deal with racist and sexist attitudes.
Career development and planning is a lifelong learning approach to enhancing job skills and abilities and fostering personal development. Through self-analysis and company counseling and training programs, employees are assisted through various career stages. Career self-management refers to lifelong learning and skill enhancement initiated by the employee rather than by the company.
Organizations rarely undertake systematic or quantitative evaluation of their training programs. Many training programs are continued because of subjective beliefs about their effectiveness rather than because of empirical evidence of actual behavior changes that result from training.
Key Terms
apprenticeship
behavior modeling
behavior modification
business games
career self-management
case studies
computer-assisted instruction (CAI)
diversity training
executive coaching
in-basket technique
job rotation
needs assessment
on-the-job training
role playing
vestibule training
Review Questions
1. What is Hamburger U.? What does it say about the nature and extent of training in the workplace?
2. What are the purposes of a needs assessment, and how is it conducted?
3. What is the most frequently used technique for determining training needs and objectives?
4. Describe how performance appraisals and job analyses can be used to provide information about a company’s training needs.
5. What factors in the pretraining environment influence employee beliefs about the value of the training program?
6. Discuss the influence on training of employees’ pretraining expectations and motivation. In what ways can a company increase trainee motivation?
7. How is trainee motivation to perform well in a training program influenced by the factors of locus of control and self-efficacy?
8. Describe the effect on learning of active practice, massed versus distributed practice, and whole versus part learning.
9. How would you establish a training program to teach people to use bulldozers? To use computers?
10. What factors can hinder positive transfer from a training program to on-the-job performance?
11. What reinforcers are used in the workplace? What is their relative importance in improving job performance?
12. Describe the relative merits of vestibule training and on-the-job training.
13. What are the advantages and disadvantages of computer-assisted instruction as compared to more traditional instructor-led training?
14. Distinguish between behavior modification and behavior modeling.
15. How are case studies, business games, and role playing used in management training?
16. How does executive coaching differ from other management training techniques? In the study of senior managers who received executive coaching, how did their behavior change a year after the coaching?
17. Under what conditions does diversity training appear to lead to a decline in the number of minority employees in management positions? How do you explain these findings?
18. What factors can influence employee attitudes toward and participation in career development and planning activities?
19. What are the reasons for pursuing career self-management activities.
20. What conclusions can you draw about the necessity, value, extent, and worth of employee training programs?
Additional Reading
Fouad, N. A. (2007). Work and vocational psychology: Theory, research, and application. Annual Review of Psychology, 58, 543–564. Reviews the factors that affect career choice, including social and economic influences as well as gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and social class.
Killburg, R. R. (2000). Executive coaching: Developing managerial wisdom in a world of chaos. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. A guide to the psychodymanics of executive behavior and job performance designed to help managers learn from mistakes and gain mastery over their organizationl roles.
Robinson, P., & Schiff, N. (2001). If I don’t do it now: Career makeovers for the working woman. New York: Pocket Books. Practical advice for retraining women who want a new career.
Rothwell, W., & Kazanas, H. (2004). Improving on-the-job training, (2nd ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Describes job training programs, key issues for managers, identifying work needs, training the trainers as well as the trainees, and evaluating results.
Salas, E., & Cannon-Bowers, J. A. (2001). The science of training. Annual Review of Psychology, 52, 471–499. Reviews training theory, need analysis, training and post-training conditions, and strategies for motivating trainees. Methods and instructional strategies discussed include distance learning, simulations, games, and team training.

CHAPTER 8 Motivation, Job Satisfaction, and Job Involvement
CHAPTER OUTLINE
CONTENT THEORIES OF MOTIVATION
Achievement Motivation Theory Needs Hierarchy Theory Motivator–Hygiene (Two-Factor) Theory Job-Characteristics Theory
PROCESS THEORIES OF MOTIVATION
Valence-Instrumentality-Expectancy (VIE) Theory Equity Theory Newsbreak: The Work Ethic: Let’s Hear It for Cal Ripken! Goal-Setting Theory
JOB SATISFACTION: THE QUALITY OF LIFE AT WORK
Measurement of Job Satisfaction Job Satisfaction Polling Data Personal Characteristics and Job Satisfaction The Impact of Unemployment Job Satisfaction and On-the-Job Behavior Newsbreak: Grades Slipping? Your Fault—Or Your Parents’?
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN JOB SATISFACTION AND PAY
Perceived Pay Equity Merit Pay Newsbreak: Unequal Pay for Women—and for Men, Too Wage-Incentive Pay Systems
JOB INVOLVEMENT AND ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT
Personal Factors Organizational Factors Types of Commitment Organizational Citizenship Behavior
SUMMARY
KEY TERMS
REVIEW QUESTIONS
ADDITIONAL READING
If you ask people why they work, you will probably get some strange looks—and no wonder! Most people don’t have a choice; they work in order to survive. Some people are fortunate enough to love what they do, and many other people get a lot more from their work than just a paycheck. But what motivates people to work well, to do the best job they are capable of doing? How do organizations get people to work more productively, enhance their feelings of satisfaction and involvement, and increase their commitment to the organization? Motivation is one of the major problems facing organizations today.
Employers have made tremendous strides in applying the findings of I-O psychology to recruit, select, and train their workers and to provide effective leadership. But none of these functions can improve the quality of the work being performed if employees are not motivated to do the best job possible.
The study of motivation is important to you for two reasons. First, as a consumer you are often the victim of dissatisfied workers who produce faulty products or who process your requests improperly. Second, you will likely spend one third to one half of your waking hours at work for 40 to 45 years. That is a long time to feel frustrated, dissatisfied, and unhappy, especially as these feelings will carry over to your family and social life and affect your physical and emotional well-being.
Psychologists have studied motivation, job satisfaction, job involvement, and organizational commitment. They have proposed various theories to explain employee motivation—why people behave as they do on the job. Some of these theories emphasize the impact of factors in the workplace. Other theories focus on personal characteristics. The theories have stimulated a great deal of research and have spawned a number of techniques to modify work behavior. Thus, they may provide options for making your work life more satisfying and fulfilling.
CONTENT THEORIES OF MOTIVATION
Content theories of motivation focus on the importance of the work itself and the challenges, growth opportunities, and responsibilities work provides for employees. These theories deal with the content of motivation, that is, with the specific needs that motivate and direct human behavior. In the next section, we will describe process theories, which do not focus directly on work but rather deal with the cognitive processes we use in making decisions and choices about work.
We describe here four content models: achievement motivation theory, needs hierarchy theory, motivator–hygiene (two-factor) theory, and job-characteristics theory.
Achievement Motivation Theory
The need for achievement, or achievement motivation, is a characteristic of successful executives. This desire to accomplish something, to do a good job, and to be the best typifies many people, not only business leaders. People who have a high degree of the need for achievement derive great satisfaction from working to accomplish some goal, and they are motivated to excel in whatever task they undertake.
Achievement motivation theory The theory of motivation that emphasizes the need to accomplish something, to do a good job, and to be the best.
Since the early 1950s, achievement motivation has been studied intensively by David McClelland and his colleagues (Atkinson & Feather, 1966; McClelland, Atkinson, Clark, & Lowell, 1953). Their research, conducted in a number of countries, shows that successful business managers consistently display a high need to achieve, regardless of the culture. For example, in Poland, which was then a Communist country, the level of concern for achievement was almost as high as in the United States. McClelland concluded that the economic growth of organizations and societies can be related to the level of the achievement need among employees and citizens (McClelland, 1961).
McClelland’s research identified three major characteristics of people who have a high need to achieve:
1. They favor a work environment in which they are able to assume responsibility for solving problems.
2. They tend to take calculated risks and to set moderate, attainable goals.

People high in the need for achievement are motivated to excel. They derive satisfaction from working hard to accomplish their goals.
3. They need continuing recognition and feedback about their progress so that they know how well they are doing.
Studies have shown a high positive correlation between the achievement motivation scores of executives and the financial success of their companies. Research also shows that managers high in the need to achieve display more respect for their subordinates. These managers are more receptive to new ideas and are more accepting of participative management programs than are managers low in the need to achieve. The need for achievement is positively related to subsequent promotions among middle- and upper-level managers. Also, entrepreneurs—both men and women—have been found to score significantly higher in the need to achieve than male and female employees who are not entrepreneurs.
In a study involving 846 employees in high-tech industries in Israel and in England, the investigator found a significant positive relationship between the need for achievement and job performance. The higher the measured achievement motivation, the higher was the employee’s job performance (Baruch, 2004).
Additional research has suggested two types of goals, mastery and performance, that can satisfy the need for achievement (Barron & Harackiewicz, 2001). Mastery refers to developing competence and self-satisfaction through acquiring knowledge and skills. Performance goals involve developing competence by performing better than other people, such as co-workers, who are in the same situation. Both types of goals can be satisfied by doing one’s job to the best of one’s abilities. A study of more than 600 college students in the Netherlands found that two thirds of them preferred mastery of knowledge and skills over the attainment of performance goals. In other words, the college students were more highly motivated to achieve for self-satisfaction than to show that they could perform better than other students (Van Yperen, 2006).
In a study of 170 employees of an energy company in the Netherlands, researchers showed that employees with a strong mastery orientation were more effective on the job than were those with a strong performance orientation. Also, those with a high mastery orientation established higher quality leader–member exchanges (LMXs) with their supervisor, which, in turn, were linked to higher job satisfaction and intrinsic motivation. In contrast, employees with a strong performance orientation established lower quality LMXs and correspondingly were lower in job satisfaction and intrinsic motivation (Janssen & Van Yperen, 2004).
A research program involving 200 information systems employees in Taiwan delineated three dimensions of achievement motivation that were important in these high-tech jobs: perseverance, competition, and level of difficulty of controlling the task. All three were instrumental in satisfying the need to achieve (Chen, 2008).
In general, achievement motivation theory provides a plausible explanation for the motivation of some employees and is considered to have widespread application in the workplace.
Needs Hierarchy Theory
Abraham Maslow developed the needs hierarchy theory of motivation in which human needs are arranged in a hierarchy of importance (Maslow, 1970). Needs hierarchy theory suggests that people always want what they do not yet have. Consequently, the needs that are already satisfied no longer provide any motivation for behavior and new needs must rise to prominence. Once people have satisfied their lower level needs, they can pay attention to higher level needs. The needs, from lowest to highest, are as follows:
• Physiological needs: The basic human needs, including food, air, water, and sleep, and the drives for sex and activity
• Safety needs: The needs for physical shelter and for psychological security and stability
• Belonging and love needs: The social needs for love, affection, friendship, and affiliation that involve interaction with and acceptance by other people
• Esteem needs: The needs for self-esteem and for esteem, admiration, and respect from other people
• Self-actualization need: The need for self-fulfillment, for achieving our full potential and realizing our capabilities
Needs hierarchy theory The theory of motivation that encompasses physiological, safety, belonging, esteem, and self-actualization needs.
These needs should be satisfied in the order presented. People who are hungry or who fear for their physical safety are too busy attempting to satisfy these needs to be concerned about self-esteem or self-fulfillment. In times of economic hardship, when jobs are scarce, most people are so intent on survival that they cannot attend to higher needs such as self-actualization. However, once people reach a sufficient level of physical and economic security, they can move on; that is, they will be motivated to satisfy the next level of needs.
The belonging needs can be important motivating forces on the job. Workers can develop a social support network and a sense of belonging through interactions with co-workers. Esteem needs can be satisfied by buying a bigger house or car, which contributes to the feeling of success, and through on-the-job rewards such as praise from the boss, a promotion, an office with a window, or a reserved parking space. To satisfy the self-actualization need, employees should be provided with opportunities for growth and responsibility so that they can exercise their abilities to the utmost. A routine and boring job will not satisfy the self-actualization need, no matter how high the salary.
Maslow’s theory has received little research support and is judged to have low scientific validity and applicability. Its complexity makes it difficult to test empirically. Nevertheless, the self-actualization concept became popular with managers and executives who accepted this high-level need as a potent motivating force.
Motivator–Hygiene (Two-Factor) Theory
The motivator–hygiene (two-factor) theory, which deals with both motivation and job satisfaction, was proposed by Frederick Herzberg. The theory has inspired a great deal of research and has led many organizations to redefine the way many jobs are performed in order to increase employee motivation (Herzberg, 1966, 1974).
Motivator–hygiene (two-factor) theory The theory of motivation that explains work motivation and job satisfaction in terms of job tasks and workplace features.
According to Herzberg, there are two sets of needs: the motivator needs, which produce job satisfaction, and the hygiene needs, which produce job dissatisfaction. The motivator needs (the higher needs) motivate employees to high job performance. Motivator needs are internal to the work itself. They include the nature of the individual job tasks and the worker’s level of responsibility, achievement, recognition, advancement, and career development and growth. Motivator needs are similar to Maslow’s self-actualization need. They can be satisfied by stimulating, challenging, and absorbing work. When these conditions are met, job satisfaction will result. However, when these conditions are not met—when work is not challenging—the result is not necessarily job dissatisfaction.
Job dissatisfaction is produced by the hygiene needs (the lower needs). The word hygiene relates to the promotion and maintenance of health. Hygiene needs are external to the tasks of a particular job and involve features of the work environment, such as company policy, supervision, interpersonal relations, working conditions, and salary and benefits. When the hygiene needs are not satisfied, the result is job dissatisfaction. However, when the hygiene needs are satisfied, the result is not necessarily job satisfaction, but merely an absence of dissatisfaction. Hygiene needs are similar to Maslow’s physiological, safety, and belonging needs. Both Maslow and Herzberg insisted that these lower needs must be satisfied before a person can be motivated by higher needs.
A survey of more than 3,200 workers in Britain showed that factors such as money and recognition (hygiene needs) were not the primary sources of motivation. In line with Herzberg’s theory, the motivator needs played a more important role in the job performance of these employees (Bassett-Jones & Lloyd, 2005).
Herzberg’s theory focused attention on the importance of internal job factors as motivating forces for employees. If the motivator needs stimulate employees to perform at their best and to develop a positive attitude toward the job, then why not redesign the job to maximize opportunities to satisfy motivator needs? This effort, called job enrichment, expands jobs to give employees a greater role in planning, performing, and evaluating their work, thus providing the chance to satisfy their motivator needs. Herzberg suggested the following ways of enriching a job:
1. Remove some management controls over employees and increase their accountability and responsibility for their work, thus increasing employee autonomy, authority, and freedom.
2. Create complete or natural work units where possible; for example, allow employees to produce a whole unit instead of one component of that unit. This policy increases the likelihood that employees will regard their work as meaningful within the total organizational process.
3. Provide regular and continuous feedback on productivity and job performance directly to employees instead of through their supervisors.
4. Encourage employees to take on new, challenging tasks and to become experts in a particular task or operation.
Job enrichment An effort to expand the scope of a job to give employees a greater role in planning, performing, and evaluating their work.
All these proposals have the same goals of increasing personal growth, fulfilling the needs for achievement and responsibility, and providing recognition. Proper job enrichment, therefore, involves more than simply giving the workers extra tasks to perform. It means expanding the level of knowledge and skills needed to perform the job.
Job-Characteristics Theory
The job enrichment movement led two psychologists to ask which specific job characteristics could be enriched. J. Richard Hackman and G. R. Oldham developed the job-characteristics theory of motivation based on their research on objective measures of job factors that correlated with employee satisfaction and attendance (Hackman & Oldham, 1976, 1980). Evidence suggested that certain characteristics influence behavior and attitudes at work, but these characteristics do not influence all employees in the same way. For example, the research documented individual differences in the need for growth. People with a high growth need were found to be more affected by changes in job characteristics than were people with a low growth need. Also, changes in these job characteristics did not seem to influence employee attitudes and behavior directly but were filtered by the employees’ cognitive processes, that is, their perceptions of the changes.
Job-characteristics theory The theory of motivation that states that specific job characteristics lead to psychological conditions that can increase motivation, performance, and satisfaction in employees who have a high growth need.
The presence of certain job characteristics causes employees to experience a positive emotional state when they perform their job well. This condition motivates them to continue to perform well, on the expectation that good performance will lead to good feelings. The strength of an employee’s motivation to perform well depends on the strength of the need to grow and develop. The stronger the need, the more the person will value the positive emotional feelings that result from good job performance. Thus, the job-characteristics theory states that specific job characteristics lead to psychological conditions that lead, in turn, to higher motivation, performance, and satisfaction—if employees have a high growth need to begin with.
The core job characteristics identified by Hackman and Oldham are as follows:
1. Skill variety: the extent to which workers use various skills and abilities on the job. The more challenging a job, the more meaningful it will be.
2. Task identity: the unity of a job—that is, whether it involves doing a whole unit of work or completing a product instead of making only part of a product on an assembly line.
3. Task significance: the importance of a job to the lives and well-being of co-workers or consumers. For example, the job of aircraft mechanic affects the lives of more people in a more significant way than does the job of postal clerk.
4. Autonomy: the amount of independence employees have in scheduling and organizing their work.
5. Feedback: the amount of information employees receive about the effectiveness and quality of their job performance.
Jobs can be redesigned to maximize these characteristics in a manner similar to that proposed earlier by Herzberg:
• Combine small, specialized tasks to form larger work units; this enhances skill variety and task identity.
• Arrange tasks in natural, meaningful work units to make the worker responsible for an identifiable unit; this enhances task identity and task significance.
• Give workers responsibility for direct contact with clients or end users; this enhances skill variety, autonomy, and feedback.
• Give workers authority, responsibility, and control over the job tasks; this increases skill variety, task identity, task significance, and autonomy.
• Arrange for workers to learn regularly how well they are performing the job; this increases feedback.
Hackman and Oldham developed the Job Diagnostic Survey (JDS) to measure three aspects of the theory: (1) employees’ perceptions of the job characteristics, (2) employees’ level of the growth need, and (3) employees’ job satisfaction. The JDS is a self-report inventory consisting of short descriptive phrases about the various job characteristics. Respondents rate how accurately each statement describes their job. A revised version, using positively worded items only, has been found to be more valid than the original version.
The job-characteristics theory continues to stimulate research. Studies on job enrichment programs based on this theory have been more supportive and have shown that adding challenge, complexity, and responsibility to some jobs results in greater employee satisfaction, self-efficacy, and motivation.
As you can see, the content theories of motivation share a common core or central concept. They focus on enlarging, enriching, or redefining jobs to provide greater employee responsibility. They note the importance of opportunities for growth, self-actualization, personal achievement, and increased motivation through increasing the amount of accountability, challenge, control, and autonomy at work. Enlarging the scope of a job can provide personal satisfaction and greater motivation to perform well. Boring and routine jobs can be stultifying and decrease satisfaction and motivation. You might keep these conclusions in mind when you apply for your next job.
PROCESS THEORIES OF MOTIVATION
Process theories focus on the cognitive processes that are part of decision making. We describe three process models: valence-instrumentality-expectancy (VIE) theory, equity theory, and goal-setting theory.
Valence-Instrumentality-Expectancy (VIE) Theory
The valence-instrumentality-expectancy (VIE) theory, originated by Victor Vroom, asserts that people make choices based on their perceived expectancy that certain rewards will follow if they behave in a certain way (Vroom, 1964). In the workplace, employees will choose to perform at the level that results in the greatest payoff or benefit. They will be motivated to work hard if they expect this effort to lead to positive outcomes such as a promotion or pay raise and if those outcomes will be instrumental in leading to other desired results.
Valence-instrumentality-expectancy (VIE) theory The theory of motivation that states that people make choices that are based on their perceived expectations that certain rewards will follow if they behave in a particular way.
The psychological value, or valence, of the reward varies with the individual. In other words, one’s personal perception of the importance of the outcome determines its strength as a motivator. A high salary and increased responsibility have a positive valence for many people. Dangerous working conditions have a negative valence for most people. An outcome may not be as satisfying as expected, but it is the level of expectancy that determines whether a person will work hard to obtain that outcome.
The three facets of the VIE theory are related as follows:
1. Employees must decide whether they expect certain job behaviors—such as coming to work on time, following safe procedures, or improving productivity—to have a high probability of leading to a particular outcome (expectancy).
2. Employees must determine whether that outcome will lead to other outcomes—for example, whether a good attendance record leads to a bonus (instrumentality).
3. Employees must decide whether those outcomes have sufficient value to motivate them to behave a certain way (valence).
Think of your experience in school. If you have decided that getting high grades in the courses you take in your major is important, then that outcome has a high valence for you. If you’re not so concerned about your grades in your other courses, then earning high grades in them has a low valence for you. If you want high grades in your major, you have probably developed the expectancy that attending classes, studying hard, and doing more than the minimum requirements will be instrumental in achieving your goal. Such calculations are not difficult for most of us to make. Indeed, we may not even be aware of them, but they motivate us and guide our behavior nonetheless.
The VIE theory has received a great deal of research support. It appears to agree with personal experience and common sense. The greater our expectation of receiving a reward, assuming it is of sufficient value, the harder we will work for it.
Equity Theory
J. Stacy Adams advanced the equity theory, the notion that motivation is influenced by our perception of how equitably or fairly we are treated at work (Adams, 1965). He proposed that in any work environment—whether office, shop, factory, or classroom—we assess our inputs (how much effort we put into the work) and our outcomes (how much reward we receive for the work). We calculate, perhaps unconsciously, the ratio of outcome to input and mentally compare it with what we believe are the ratios for our co-workers. If we think we are getting less than other people, the feeling of tension or inequity that results will motivate us to take action, to do something to bring about a state of equity. If we perceive that we are receiving the same ratio of reward-to-effort that others are receiving, then a state of equity exists.
Equity theory The theory of motivation that states that people’s motivation on the job is influenced by their perception of how fairly they are treated.
Other psychologists have extended the equity theory, suggesting three behavioral response patterns to situations of perceived equity or inequity (Huseman, Hatfield, & Miles, 1987; O’Neil & Mone, 1998). These three types are the benevolent, equity-sensitive, and entitled patterns. The level of reward received by each type affects motivation, job satisfaction, and job performance.
Benevolent people, described as altruistic, are satisfied when they are underrewarded compared with co-workers, and they feel guilty when they are equitably rewarded or overrewarded. Equity-sensitive persons (the type described by the equity theory) believe that everyone should be rewarded fairly. They feel distressed when underrewarded and guilty when overrewarded. Entitled persons believe that everything they receive is their due. They are satisfied only when they are overrewarded and are distressed when underrewarded or equitably rewarded.
Newsbreak The Work Ethic: Let’s Hear It for Cal Ripken!
On September 8, 1995, a baseball player made history. He did it by showing up for work. Cal Ripken, Jr., showed up for work 2,131 times—every time his team, the Baltimore Orioles, played a major league baseball game. And no one has beaten his record since.
The 42,000 fans in Oriole Park at Camden Yards stadium went wild the night Ripken broke the previous record, held by Lou Gehrig, for the longest streak of consecutive games played. The President of the United States witnessed the historic moment and praised Ripken’s discipline, determination, and constancy. A television reporter summed up the excitement when he described Ripken as “a paragon of the work ethic.”
The work ethic is a familiar term, and it has been a guiding rule and way of life for generations of American workers. It drives, pushes, goads, and motivates people to work hard like Cal Ripken, to do the best job they can, to be on time, and to show up for work every day. If you are curious about the great driving force of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that led to unimagined heights of industrial, agricultural, and commercial productivity and economic success, then the work ethic is where you should begin.
The work ethic wasn’t always so popular. There was a time when people were not motivated to perform a job well, or even to do it at all. To the ancient Greeks and Romans, there was nothing noble about work. It was a curse of the gods that brutalized the mind and ruined an otherwise good day. The early Hebrews agreed. Work was a punishment from God, although it was also a necessary evil, a way of improving society and atoning for sin.
The early Christians put a more positive spin on work, viewing it as a way to serve God by sharing the proceeds of one’s work with people who were less fortunate. Wealth was a means to charity. Work became holy, and idleness sinful.
But it was John Calvin, the sixteenth-century French Protestant leader, who gave us the ultimate work ethic. Work alone pleases God, he declared, but to achieve that end, work must be methodical and disciplined. “Not leisure and enjoyment but only activity serves to increase the glory of God.”
To Calvin, and others who refined what came to be called the Protestant work ethic, work was an emblem of faith. And so was wealth. It was OK to make a lot of money and not feel guilty about it, as long as you did not enjoy it. Old-fashioned, puritanical, nose-to-the-grindstone toil for its own sake became the motivation that drove millions of people to work hard all their lives and to feel virtuous for doing so. And it still drives many people each and every day to do the best job they can. And to show up for every game.
Sources: Todd, R. (1996, January). All work, no ethic. Worth Magazine, pp. 78–84; Bair, J., & Sherer, S. J. (1995, Fall). What happened to the work ethic? College Park Magazine, pp. 18–22; Robinson, 2007.
It seems intuitively correct that if we believe we are being treated fairly in comparison to others, in accordance with our expectations, then we will be motivated to maintain our level of job performance. In contrast, if we think we are being treated unfairly, then we will try to reduce that inequity by reducing our level of performance. Consider the example of major league baseball players (infielders and outfielders). If they have their salaries cut or lose at arbitration during their first year as free agents, they are likely to perform at lower levels during the following season. They may reduce their inputs (batting averages and runs batted in) if they believe that their outcomes (salaries) are too low.
Not all research supports the equity theory, but some studies have shown that employee perceptions of inequity are linked to increased levels of resentment, absenteeism and turnover, and burnout.
Goal-Setting Theory
Developed by Edwin Locke, goal-setting theory has a commonsense appeal and is clearly relevant to the workplace. Locke argued that our primary motivation in a work situation is defined in terms of our desire to achieve a particular goal (Locke, 1968; Locke & Latham, 1990). The goal represents what we intend to do at a given time in the future. For example, we may set the goal of graduating from college with honors, or achieving the highest sales record in the company, or getting a pay raise within a year so we can buy a new house.
Goal-setting theory The theory of motivation based on the idea that a person’s primary motivation on the job is defined in terms of the desire to achieve a particular goal.
Setting specific and challenging performance goals can motivate and guide behavior, spurring people to perform in more effective ways. Research has shown that having goals leads to better performance than not having goals. Specific goals are more powerful motivating forces than general goals. Goals that are difficult to attain are greater motivators than goals that are easy to attain. However, difficult goals may spur greater motivation toward attaining the goals at the expense of other behaviors, such as helping co-workers, and this type of behavior has the potential for reducing overall organizational effectiveness. In addition, goals that are too difficult, perhaps beyond a person’s capabilities, are worse than having no goals in terms of their impact on motivation and job performance.
An important aspect of the goal-setting theory is individual goal commitment, which is defined in terms of the strength of a person’s determination to reach a goal. Three types of factors influence goal commitment: external, interactive, and internal. The external factors that affect goal commitment are authority, peer influence, and external rewards. Complying with the dictates of an authority figure such as a boss has been shown to be an inducement to high goal commitment. Goal commitment increases when the authority figure is physically present, supportive, and trusted. Peer group pressure and external rewards such as pay increases also strengthen goal commitment.
The interactive factors that influence commitment to reaching goals are competition and the opportunity to participate in setting goals. These factors have been shown to be an inducement to setting higher goals and to working harder to reach them. Internal cognitive factors that facilitate goal commitment are self-administered rewards and expectation of success. Commitment to the goal is reduced when the expectation of achieving it declines.
Other personal and situational factors have been related to high goal commitment. These include the need for achievement, endurance, aggressiveness, and competitiveness (so-called Type A behavior), success in achieving difficult goals, high self-esteem, and an internal locus of control. In addition, a meta-analysis of 65 studies found that two of the Big Five personality factors are related to performance motivation, as described by the goal-setting theory. People who score high in conscientiousness and low in neuroticism display high levels of motivation induced by goal setting (Judge & Ilies, 2002).
The goal-setting theory has generated considerable supportive research. Setting goals has been found to produce substantial increases in employee output. In general, the motivating effects of setting goals are strongest for easy tasks and weakest for more complex tasks. These effects generalize across a variety of organizations, jobs, and tasks. Goal-setting theory has been shown to be one of the most practical theories of employee motivation (Latham & Locke, 2007; Latham, 2004; Locke & Latham, 2002).
The process theories are concerned with factors and processes internal to the employee. Instead of focusing on characteristics of the work itself, as with content theories, process theories deal with our thoughts and perceptions about our jobs, our calculations about what we stand to gain in return for our efforts, and the decisions we make based on those calculations. We can be motivated to perform at high levels by our expectations of getting the greatest benefit (VIE theory), or by how fairly we perceive we are rewarded relative to our co-workers (equity theory), or by setting challenging goals (goal-setting theory)—or perhaps by some combination of all three, at different times and in different situations. Process theories share the common theme that how we perceive the work situation will determine how motivated we are to perform at a high level in that situation.
Since the 1990s, interest in work motivation theories has shifted away from developing new theories and more toward extending, empirically testing, and applying proposed ideas in the workplace. The number of purely theoretical articles published in the leading behavioral science journals declined considerably, whereas the number of empirical studies increased (Steers, Mowday, & Shapiro, 2004). Does it follow that theories of work motivation are no longer a focus of I-O psychology? No. Although the theories described here have some limitations, most are useful in describing some aspect of employee motivation. The diversity of ideas derived from these theories, which are now being tested in and applied to the workplace, shows the progress being made in understanding the multiple facets of employee motivation (see Locke & Latham, 2004).

Assembly-line workers tend to have low job satisfaction. Routine, repetitive work offers little opportunity for personal growth and development.
JOB SATISFACTION: THE QUALITY OF LIFE AT WORK
Job satisfaction refers to the positive and negative feelings and attitudes employees hold about a job, and it is the most frequently studied independent variable in I-O psychology. It depends on many work-related factors, ranging from an assigned parking space to work overload to the sense of fulfillment employees get from daily tasks (see, for example, Pearson, 2008). A study of 1,114 police officers in Alabama related several factors to job satisfaction: the opportunity to make a contribution to society, good pay, adventure and excitement, autonomy on the job, respect from peers, and job security (Carlan, 2007). Personal factors can also influence job satisfaction: age, health, length of job experience, emotional stability, social status, leisure activities, and family and other social relationships. Motivations and aspirations, and how well these are satisfied by our work, also affect our attitudes toward our jobs. Also, how much or how little employees contribute to their work roles, beyond the basic requirements of the job, has been shown to affect employee attitudes (Harrison, Newman & Roth, 2006).
Job satisfaction Our positive and negative feelings and attitudes about our jobs.
Job satisfaction influences psychological well-being even after workers retire from their jobs. Surveys of more than 2,000 people in the United States, conducted over an 8-year period, found that those who reported low job satisfaction reported improved psychological health after retirement. Those who reported high satisfaction from their jobs reported positive well-being both before and after retirement (Wang, 2007).
Changing one’s job can affect attitudes toward and satisfaction with a job. A survey of 2,522 high-level managers showed that job satisfaction increased immediately after taking a new job (the so-called honeymoon effect) but declined with the first year or two (the so-called hangover effect) (Boswell, Boudreau, & Tichy, 2005).
For some employees, job satisfaction is a stable, enduring characteristic, independent of the features of the job. Changes in job status, pay, working conditions, and goals have little effect on the job satisfaction of these people. Their personal tendency toward happiness (satisfaction) or unhappiness (dissatisfaction) varies little over time and circumstances. Researchers who studied more than 5,000 workers in a customer service organization found that job performance, as measured by supervisor ratings, was highest among employees who also scored high in job satisfaction and psychological well-being (Wright, Cropanzano, & Bonett, 2007).
I-O psychologists have suggested, based on research conducted with twins, that attitudes toward work and the satisfactions expected from it may have a hereditary component. In other words, these feelings may be influenced more by genetic endowment than by features of the work environment. Nevertheless, it is clear that some people are generally more satisfied with life and, thus, with their work. People who have positive attitudes toward their work are likely to have positive feelings about their personal and family life.
So it is generally accepted that job satisfaction and life satisfaction are positively related, but which one causes the other? Or are both influenced by some third factor? Research shows a positive and reciprocal relationship between job satisfaction and life satisfaction in the short term; that is, each one influenced the other. Over time, however, the impact of life satisfaction on job satisfaction was significantly stronger, which indicates that life satisfaction may be the more influential of the two factors. However, it does not follow that attempts to improve job satisfaction are useless. Remember that the two are interrelated. Job satisfaction still has an effect on life satisfaction.
Measurement of Job Satisfaction
The approach used most often to measure employee attitudes is the anonymous questionnaire, typically distributed to employees through the company’s e-mail network. Because participation is voluntary, not all workers will complete a questionnaire. There is no way of knowing which employees responded and which did not, or how those who failed to respond differ from those who did respond. It might make a difference if more good workers than poor workers completed the questionnaires.
Two popular attitude surveys are the Job Descriptive Index (JDI) and the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (MSQ). The JDI contains scales to measure five job factors: pay, promotion, supervision, the nature of the work, and the characteristics of one’s co-workers. It can be completed in 15 minutes and has been published in several languages. The MSQ is a rating scale for various levels of satisfaction and dissatisfaction, ranging from “very satisfied” to “very dissatisfied.” It covers 20 job facets including advancement, independence, recognition, social status, and working conditions. The MSQ takes 30 minutes to complete; a 10-minute form is also available. These questionnaires have high construct validity.
Job Satisfaction Polling Data
Every year the Gallup Poll organization asks a representative sample of U.S. workers the following question: On the whole, would you say you are satisfied or dissatisfied with the work you do?
The results show consistently that only 10% to 13% of the workers questioned each year say that they are dissatisfied with their jobs. Thus, the majority of people are assumed to be satisfied with their jobs. However, when more specific questions are asked about job satisfaction, the results are different. For example, when factory workers are asked if they would like to change jobs, many say yes, even though they claim to be satisfied with their present jobs. When people say they are satisfied, they often mean that they are not dissatisfied. Therefore, when I-O psychologists consider data on job satisfaction, they must examine the kinds of questions that are asked.
Some job satisfaction studies survey a representative national sample of workers. Others deal with targeted populations, such as the workers in a particular industry, or with specific facets of job satisfaction. Job satisfaction varies with type of occupation. For example, assembly-line workers are significantly less satisfied with their jobs than are office workers. Managers in government agencies are significantly less satisfied than are managers in private industry and business.
Employees of companies on Fortune magazine’s list of 100 best companies to work for in the United States report high levels of job satisfaction that tend to remain stable over time. Research also shows a high correlation between these employees’ positive attitudes toward their companies and the companies’ financial performance. The more satisfied workers seem to be, the better is the organization’s economic health (Fulmer, Gerhart, & Scott, 2003). To find out more about the top 100 companies and to learn how the ratings were determined, go to the Web site http://www.greatplacetowork.com
TABLE 8–1 Ten Most Satisfying and Ten Least Satisfying Jobs

Most Satisfying Jobs Least Satisfying Jobs
Clergy Laborer (excluding construction)
Firefighter Clothing salesperson
Physical therapist Hand packer or packager
Author Food preparer
Special education teacher Roofer
Teacher Cashier
Educational administrator Furniture/home furnishings salesperson
Painter or sculptor Bartender
Psychologist Freight or materials handler
Power plant engineer Food server
Table 8-1 shows the 10 most satisfying and 10 least satisfying jobs in rank order, based on a nationwide U.S. survey of more than 27,000 employed adults (Bryner, 2007).
Personal Characteristics and Job Satisfaction
Many characteristics of the job and the workplace affect job satisfaction. By redesigning job and work environments, management can increase job satisfaction and productivity. Jobs can be redesigned to maximize opportunities to satisfy the needs for achievement, self-actualization, and personal growth. Jobs can be enriched to enhance the motivator needs and the core job characteristics, and to provide higher levels of responsibility. Personal characteristics linked with job satisfaction include, among others, age, gender, race, cognitive ability, job experience, use of skills, job congruence, organizational justice, personality, job control, and occupational level.
Age.
In general, job satisfaction increases with age; the lowest job satisfaction is reported by the youngest workers. This relationship holds for blue-collar and white-collar employees and for men and women. In a study of 234 accountants, researchers found that so-called Baby Boomers (born between 1946 and 1964) scored higher in job satisfaction than those born later (Generation X or Generation Y) (Westerman & Yamamora, 2007). Many young people are disappointed with their first jobs because they fail to find sufficient challenge and responsibility. Why does job satisfaction tend to increase with age when the typical reaction to a first job is often disappointment? Three possible explanations have been suggested:
1. The most strongly dissatisfied young workers may drop out of the workforce or change jobs so frequently in their search for satisfaction that they are no longer counted in surveys. This means that the older the sample of employees studied, the fewer dissatisfied people are likely to be included.
2. A sense of resignation develops in some workers as they grow older. They may give up looking for fulfillment and challenge in their work and seek these satisfactions elsewhere. Therefore, they tend to report less dissatisfaction with their jobs.
3. Many older workers have greater opportunities to find fulfillment and self-actualization on the job. Age and experience usually bring increased confidence, competence, esteem, and responsibility. In turn, these feelings lead to a greater sense of accomplishment. In other words, older workers are more likely to have better jobs than are younger workers.
Gender.
The research evidence about possible differences in job satisfaction between men and women is inconsistent and contradictory. Psychologists have found no clear pattern of differences in job satisfaction. It may not be gender, as such, that relates to job satisfaction as much as the group of factors that vary with gender. For example, women are typically paid less than men for the same work, and their opportunities for promotion are fewer. Most women believe that they have to work harder and be more outstanding on the job than men before they receive comparable rewards. Obviously, such factors can influence a person’s satisfaction.
Race.
In general, more White than non-White employees report satisfaction with their jobs. However, before a person can be concerned with job satisfaction, he or she must have a job. Although there is a large, thriving middle class among Black and ethnic minority employees, large numbers of people who want to work are unemployed, are employed irregularly, or are too discouraged to seek employment. Many who have full-time work are confined to low-level jobs that offer marginal pay and little opportunity for advancement or fulfillment. Thus, the primary concern for many workers is not satisfaction but finding a job that pays a decent wage.
Cognitive Ability.
Cognitive ability does not appear to be a significant determinant of job satisfaction, but it may be important when related to the type of work a person chooses. For many jobs, there is a range of intelligence associated with high performance and satisfaction. People who are too intelligent for their work may find insufficient challenge, which leads to boredom and dissatisfaction. People whose jobs are not sufficiently challenging for their level of intelligence report greater dissatisfaction with their work.
A factor sometimes related to intelligence is level of education. Some studies have shown that education has a slight negative relationship to job satisfaction. The higher the level of formal education, the more likely a person is to be dissatisfied with the job. One explanation is that better-educated persons have higher expectations and believe that their work should provide greater responsibility and fulfillment. Many jobs do not satisfy these expectations. Employees with college degrees are somewhat more satisfied with their jobs than employees who attended college but did not graduate. This finding may be related to the fact that many higher level positions are open only to college graduates.
Job Experience.
During the initial stage of employment, new workers tend to be satisfied with their jobs. This period involves the stimulation and challenge of developing skills and abilities, and the work may seem attractive just because it is new. Early satisfaction wanes unless employees receive feedback on their progress and tangible evidence of their achievements. After a few years on the job, discouragement is common, often being brought on by the feeling that advancement in the company is too slow.
Job satisfaction appears to increase after a number of years of experience and to improve steadily thereafter. The relationship between job satisfaction and length of work experience parallels the relationship with age. They may be the same phenomenon under different labels.
Use of Skills.
A common complaint, particularly among college graduates in engineering and science, is that their jobs do not allow them to exercise their skills or apply the knowledge acquired during their college training. Surveys of engineers show high dissatisfaction with job factors such as pay, working conditions, supervisors, and opportunities for promotion. Other studies show that people are happier at work if they have the chance to use their abilities. When working conditions or the actions of co-workers interfere with work quality, job satisfaction declines.
Job Congruence.
Job congruence refers to the match between the demands of a job and the abilities of the employee. The higher the congruence—the closer the fit between a person’s skills and attributes and the job’s requirements—the greater the job satisfaction. Conversely, a poor fit between job demands and personal skills reduces the potential for job satisfaction.
Job congruence The match between a person’s abilities and the requirements of a job.
Organizational Justice.
Organizational justice refers to how fairly employees perceive themselves to be treated by their company. When workers believe they are being treated unfairly (a perceived lack of organizational justice), their job performance, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment are likely to decline. Under these circumstances, employees also report higher levels of stress, and they are more likely to file grievances or seek other jobs. Employees who work for large organizations or for companies with an authoritarian culture are likely to have a low opinion of the level of organizational justice in their workplace. Consequently, they may retaliate against the organization by reducing their productivity and job performance (Cohen-Charash & Mueller, 2007; Cropanzano, Bowen, & Gilliland, 2007).
Considerable research has shown that participation in decision making can contribute to an increase in feelings of organizational justice, which, in turn, can lead to increased job satisfaction and commitment to the organization (Mayer, Nishii, Schneider, & Goldstein, 2007; Wiesenfeld, Swann, Brockner, & Bartel, 2007).
Personality.
Research suggests that employees who are more satisfied in their work are better adjusted and more emotionally stable. Although the relationship seems clear, the cause-and-effect sequence is not. Which comes first, emotional stability or job satisfaction? Emotional instability or job dissatisfaction? Emotional instability can cause discontent in every sphere of life, and prolonged job dissatisfaction can lead to poor emotional adjustment. A meta-analysis of studies involving thousands of employees concluded that overall happiness, or emotional satisfaction, takes precedence. Happier people rate themselves higher in job satisfaction than do those who are less happy. Happier people also show higher levels of job performance and earn higher incomes (Boehm, & Lyubomirsky, 2008).
Two personality factors related to job satisfaction are alienation and locus of control. Employees who feel less alienated and who have an internal locus of control are more likely to be high in job satisfaction, job involvement, and organizational commitment. A meta-analysis of 135 studies of job satisfaction confirmed the positive relationship between internal locus of control and job satisfaction. The study also found that high self-esteem and self-efficacy, and low neuroticism, are significantly related to high job satisfaction (Judge & Bono, 2001).
Two dimensions of the Type A personality are related to job satisfaction. Achievement striving (the extent to which people work hard and take work seriously) is positively related to job satisfaction and job performance. Impatience/irritability (intolerance, anger, hostility, and a sense of time urgency) is negatively related to job satisfaction. The higher the impatience score, the lower the job satisfaction.
Job satisfaction appears to be highest among employees with a high degree of social and institutional trust, defined as a belief that people and organizations are basically fair and helpful and can be trusted. Job satisfaction was also found to be high among employees who scored high on the factors of conscientiousness and positive affectivity (which corresponds to extraversion in the Big Five personality factor model) and low on negative affectivity (neuroticism in the Big Five model) (Brief & Weiss, 2002; Ilies & Judge, 2003; Judge, Heller, & Mount, 2002).
In an unusual research program, investigators studied the self-evaluations of 384 employed adults; the evaluations included psychological measures of self-esteem, self-efficacy, locus of control, and neuroticism. Earlier in this long-term study, investigators had assessed these factors in childhood. People who scored high in esteem and efficacy and low in neuroticism, and showed an internal locus of control, showed significantly higher job satisfaction in their middle adult years than did people who scored in the opposite direction. Thus, personality factors measured in childhood showed a direct relationship to job satisfaction measured some 30 years later (Judge, Bono, & Locke, 2000).
Job Control.
Based on the description of motivational theories in this chapter, you might predict that people who can exercise greater control over their job duties will be more highly motivated to perform well and will experience greater satisfaction. In fact, this prediction was supported in a study of 412 workers in customer service centers in England. Those who scored high on a questionnaire called the Job Control Scale were found, 1 year later, to have better mental health and higher levels of job performance and job satisfaction than did those who reported a low level of job control (Bond & Bunce, 2003).

Unemployment can lead to anxiety that may persist even after a new job has been found.
In a 9-year study of 3,125 workers in Japan, researchers found a fourfold increase in the risk of suicide among those who reported low control on the job. A study of 2,221 workers in Canada linked high job control to lower levels of stress and greater physical health (Smith, Frank, Bondy, & Mustard, 2008; Tsutsumi et al., 2007).
Occupational Level.
The higher the occupational or status level of a job, the higher the job satisfaction. Executives express more positive job attitudes and feelings than do first-line supervisors, who, in turn, are usually more satisfied than their subordinates are. The higher the job level, the greater is the opportunity for satisfying motivator needs. Also, high-level jobs offer greater autonomy, challenge, and responsibility. Satisfaction of Maslow’s esteem and self-actualization needs also increases with each level in the organizational hierarchy.
Job satisfaction varies with job category. High job satisfaction is more likely to be reported by entrepreneurs (self-employed persons) and by people in technical, professional, and managerial jobs. The least satisfied employees work in manufacturing and service industries and in wholesale and retail businesses.
The Impact of Unemployment
No job satisfaction exists without a job. I-O psychology research confirms the obvious. Losing one’s job or being laid off is stressful for employees and their families. In Japan, layoffs are considered so traumatic that they are called kubi kiri, which means “beheading.” Specific consequences of layoffs can include feelings of guilt, resentment, depression, and anxiety about the future, as well as physical complaints, alcohol abuse, drug abuse, divorce, spouse and child abuse, and thoughts of suicide.
Employees with higher level jobs appear to suffer more greatly from unemployment. Employees with lower level jobs seem to be more adaptable. Executives, managers, and professionals tend to become defensive and self-critical. Losing a job typically leads to significant changes in lifestyle, expectations, goals, and values. The psychological contract these employees believed they had with their employer has been breached. They can no longer rely on this unwritten agreement: If I work hard and show loyalty to the company, then the company will respond with job security, pay raises, and promotions. Many people who have lost their jobs feel a sense of betrayal. In a study of 756 employees who lost their jobs, investigators found that over a 2-year period the feeling of loss of personal control was especially harmful. In many cases it led to chronic physical health problems and impaired emotional functioning (Price, Choi, & Vinokur, 2002). Other researchers found that people who lost their jobs after the age of 50 had twice the risk of strokes or heart attacks than those of the same age who were still employed (Gallo et al., 2006).
Negative reactions to layoffs can be minimized if management is honest with employees about the reasons for the dismissals. Well-informed employees are more likely to view the layoffs as fair, to continue to speak positively about the company, and to express no intention of suing for wrongful termination. Finding a new position typically reverses the negative effects of losing one’s job. However, the nature of the new job relative to the old one can make a difference. A study of 100 workers found that those who were dissatisfied with their new job continued to experience most of the negative effects associated with being dismissed from their previous job (Kinicki, Prussia, & McKee-Ryan, 2000).
When large-scale layoffs occur in an organization, the employees who keep their jobs are also affected. Often they worry that they will be among the next to be dismissed. A report from the U.S. Department of Labor noted that half of the layoff survivors questioned reported increased job stress, lower morale, and reduced job commitment. Also, 60% reported greatly increased workloads because workers remaining on the job still had to meet production goals even though there were fewer workers. The layoff survivors reported a decrease in feelings of commitment to the organization since their friends and co-workers had been dismissed (Shah, 2000).
A survey of 283 employees in a company undergoing a major reorganization showed that their sense of job insecurity, from worry about being laid off, was related to a decrease in their organizational commitment and an increase in their stress levels and health problems. Employees who reported a high sense of job involvement experienced health problems and greater stress than did employees who were less involved with their jobs (Probst, 2000). Another survey, involving 1,000 employed men and women in the United States under age 60, indicated that those who felt insecure about their jobs were twice as likely to report health problems as those who felt secure. Black workers who felt insecure about their jobs showed four times the level of reported depression as White workers (Swanbrow, 2006).
In a study of 1,297 workers in Finland, investigators reported that those who were concerned about being downsized experienced decreased levels of work motivation and well-being and a high level of stress. Even rumors about the possibility of company downsizing were sufficient to cause measurable increases in stress (Kalimo, Taris, & Schaufeli, 2003). A meta-analysis of more than 28,000 employees in 50 samples reported that feelings of job insecurity correlated highly with health problems, negative attitudes toward employers, and expressed intention to seek employment elsewhere (Sverke, Hellgren, & Naswall, 2002).
Job Satisfaction and On-the-Job Behavior
Several factors influence job satisfaction. Now let us consider those aspects of our behavior at work that can be affected by the level of job satisfaction.
Productivity.
Ample research has demonstrated a strong and significant relationship between job satisfaction and job performance: The higher the reported satisfaction, the higher the level of performance (see, for example, Judge, Thoresen, Bono, & Patton, 2001). When 4,467 employees, 143 managers, and 9,903 customers of a restaurant chain were surveyed, the results showed that employee satisfaction affected not only customer satisfaction but also the restaurant’s level of profitability. When employees reported high job satisfaction, so did customers, who were then likely to spend more money at the restaurant (Koys, 2001).
Most job satisfaction research has focused on individual employees, but I-O psychologists have also considered collective measures of job satisfaction, that is, the satisfaction level of a business unit such as a work team, section, or department. A meta-analysis of 7,939 business units in 36 companies demonstrated that employee satisfaction at the collective level was positively related to customer satisfaction and loyalty, and to employee productivity and safety on the job. High collective job satisfaction was also related to a reduction in turnover rates (Harter, Schmidt, & Hayes, 2002).
Prosocial and Counterproductive Behavior.
High job satisfaction has been related to prosocial behavior, that is, to helpful behaviors directed at customers, co-workers, and supervisors to the benefit of employees and their organization. A number of studies have related prosocial behavior to high job performance and productivity (Grant, 2008).
Prosocial behavior Behaviors directed toward supervisors, co-workers, and clients that are helpful to an organization.
Does it follow that low job satisfaction is related to antisocial actions or to counterproductive behavior that may thwart organizational goals? Negative employee behavior can interfere with production and lead to faulty products, poor service, destructive rumors, theft, and sabotaged equipment. Employees may view these behaviors as a way of striking back at an organization because of real or imagined grievances.
Newsbreak Grades Slipping? Your Fault—Or Your Parents’?
How good are you at assessing your parents’ moods? Can you sense when they seem worried or upset about something, like maybe losing a job? Psychologists have learned that children from ages 10 to 17 are keenly aware when their parents experience feelings of insecurity about their work. For example, when children believe that their fathers are uneasy about their work situation, the children’s attitudes toward their schoolwork changes and their grades are likely to drop. However, this effect was found only with fathers’ jobs. When mothers experience job insecurity, children do not seem to be affected.
At Queen’s University in Canada, psychologists investigated this situation in college students, even though they were no longer living with their parents at home. Would college students pick up on their parents’ job anxiety and insecurity even though they didn’t see or talk to them every day? And if so, would their own work, their academic performance, be altered?
The subjects in this experiment were 120 undergraduates younger than 21. A questionnaire surveyed their perception of their parents’ level of job security. Parents were asked to complete a questionnaire about their perceived level of job security. It included such items as this: “I am not really sure how long my present job will last.”
The results showed that college students were sensitive to their parents’ feelings about their work, even though they no longer had daily contact with them. Like the younger children studied, the college students’ grades fell with a decline in their parents’ job security. Again, the effect was greater with fathers than with mothers.
In another study of 250 college students in Singapore, psychologists found that parents’ feelings of job insecurity influenced their college-age children. The parents’ economic concerns about losing their jobs led their children to report financial anxiety and feelings of being driven to seek financial rewards as a way of overcoming this newly acquired sense of inadequacy, which was seen as a direct reflection of their parents’ concerns.
So if you’re a parent, remember that being laid off, or even fearing a layoff, can have consequences for your children. And if you’re a college student, maybe you should think twice before calling home to ask a parent how he or she is doing at work, or to ask for money!
Sources: Barling, J., Zacharatos, A., & Hepburn, C. G. (1999). Parents’ job insecurity affects children’s academic performance through cognitive difficulties. Journal of Applied Psychology, 84, 437–444; Lim, V., & Sng, Q. (2006). Does parental job insecurity matter? Money anxiety, money motives, and work motivation. Journal of Applied Psychology, 91, 1078–1087.
Studies have shown a positive relationship between job dissatisfaction and counterproductive behavior for workers over the age of 30. This does not mean that older workers engage in more negative behaviors than do younger workers; the frequency of negative behaviors is higher for employees younger than 30. What the research indicates is that only in older workers has counterproductive behavior been related to job dissatisfaction.
Absenteeism.
Absenteeism is widespread and costly for organizations. On any given workday in the United States, up to 20% of employees do not show up for work. Absenteeism costs businesses more than $30 billion a year.
Absenteeism has plagued industry since the invention of machines. In textile mills in Wales in the 1840s, the absenteeism rate was approximately 20%. During the 2-week period following each monthly payday, absenteeism often reached 35%. Throughout the nineteenth century in England, workers typically took off Mondays—“Saint Monday,” they called it—to recover from weekend drinking bouts. Factory owners levied stiff fines and dismissed many workers, but that had no impact on attendance.
Much of industry’s absenteeism data come from self-reports. Suppose you were filling out a questionnaire dealing with your job performance. One of the questions asked how many days of work you missed during the past year. Would you answer accurately? Or would you underreport the number of times you were absent? Would you be tempted to say that you missed only 2 days when the actual number was 10? Studies with diverse groups of workers consistently demonstrate the underreporting of absences by as much as 4 days a year. Managers also tend to under-report the extent of absenteeism in their work groups. About 90% of employees claim to have above-average attendance records. Clearly, many employees are less than honest about admitting the amount of time away from work.
If self-report absenteeism data are sometimes inaccurate, then why not use a company’s personnel records to get a true indication of the absenteeism situation? That’s a good idea in theory, but it does not work well in practice. Many companies do not compile attendance data in any systematic fashion. For managers and professional employees, such as engineers and scientists, such data are rarely collected at all. So when you read a study about absenteeism and learn that the data come from self-reports, remember that the actual number of absences is likely to be higher.
Not surprisingly, the more liberal an organization’s sick-leave policy, the higher its absenteeism rate. Absenteeism is also high in companies that do not require proof of illness, such as a physician’s note. High-paying manufacturing industries have higher absenteeism rates than low-paying industries. The more money employees earn, the more likely they are to feel entitled to take time off. Workers in routine jobs often have a higher absence rate than workers in more interesting, challenging jobs.
In research on employees in Australia, investigators found that those who believed their organizations were not fulfilling their obligations in terms of job security, opportunities for promotion, and pay increases were far more likely to take days off than were those who were satisfied with organizational policies (Deery, Iverson, & Walsh, 2006).
Societal values may foster absenteeism, as is evident in variations in absentee rates for different countries. In Japan and Switzerland, where job attendance is considered to be a duty, absenteeism rates are low. In Italy, where societal attitudes toward work are more permissive, companies routinely hire 15% more workers than needed to make sure that enough people report to work each day to maintain operations.
Management often contributes to an organizational climate that appears to condone absenteeism by failing to enforce company policy. If management is believed to be lenient and unconcerned about absences, some employees will take advantage of the situation. Economic conditions can influence absenteeism rates. In general, when a company is in the process of laying off workers, absenteeism rates decline. Absenteeism increases when the overall employment rate is high, a time when workers feel more secure about their jobs. Also, younger workers are far more likely to take unauthorized time from work than are older workers.
Personal factors can also influence absenteeism. For example, a study of 362 blue-collar workers for an automobile manufacturer in Australia found that those who scored high in positive affectivity (which includes characteristics such as a high activity level, enthusiasm, sociability, and extraversion) had a significantly lower rate of absenteeism on the job than did those who scored low in positive affectivity (Iverson & Deery, 2001). Research on 323 health service workers in England showed that work-related psychological distress and depression correlated significantly with absenteeism rates. Employees who reported greater levels of distress were far more likely to have greater absenteeism than were those who reported less job-related distress (Hardy, Woods, & Wall, 2003).
Ethnic variables and physical characteristics have been related to attendance. Absenteeism was found to be higher among Black employees than among White employees when the Black employees believed their organization placed little value on workplace diversity (Avery, McKay, Wilson, & Tonidandel, 2007). And in studies of overweight workers, researchers found that obese women were more likely than non-obese women to miss workdays. Studies of obese men related weight to type of occupation: Overweight men in sales and professional jobs missed more workdays than overweight office workers and managers (Cawley, Rizzo, & Haas, 2007).
Research has also suggested that absenteeism can be reduced through a company-sponsored program of rewards and recognition for good attendance records. A garment manufacturer established a program of monthly, quarterly, and annual rewards for low absenteeism rates. For example, employees who did not miss work for a period of a month had their names posted with a gold star. Good attendance for longer periods qualified workers for gifts such as gold necklaces or penknives. Absenteeism under this program declined significantly from its former level, and employees reported a high degree of satisfaction with the incentive system (Markham, Scott, & McKee, 2002).
Turnover.
Turnover is also costly for organizations. Every time someone quits, a replacement must be recruited, selected, and trained, and permitted time on the job to gain experience. For example, a study of 262 Burger King fast-food restaurants showed clearly that high employee turnover resulted in lower sales and profits (Kacmar, Andrews, Van Rooy, Steilberg, & Cerrone, 2006). Evidence relating high turnover to high job dissatisfaction is strong. Studies have shown that both intended and actual turnover can be attributed to dissatisfaction with various aspects of the job such as low pay or poor leadership.
Organizational commitment is strongly related to turnover. The greater a person’s commitment to the job and the company, the less likely he or she is to quit. Age, however, does not seem to be a factor that affects turnover. Turnover is higher in times of low unemployment and expanding job opportunities than it is in times of high unemployment and limited opportunities. When people perceive that the economic climate is good and the economy is growing, they find it easier to consider changing jobs in the hope of increasing their job satisfaction. A meta-analysis of 86 studies found that employees who scored low on the Big Five factor of emotional stability expressed a much greater intention to quit their job than did those who scored high on this factor (Zimmerman, 2008).
Jobs that require a high level of creativity tend to be high in challenge, complexity, and autonomy and low on organizational control and supervision. A survey of 2,200 employees showed that people in highly creative and challenging jobs reported higher job satisfaction and lower turnover intentions than did people whose jobs did not offer these characteristics (Shalley, Gilson, & Blum, 2000). In a study of gender and racial differences involving employees in more than 20 large corporations, researchers found that women quit more often than men; minority women quit more often than minority men; and Black, Hispanic, and Asian workers quit more often than White workers (Hom, Roberson, & Ellis, 2008).
There is a crucial difference between absenteeism and turnover. Whereas absenteeism is almost always harmful to the organization, turnover is not necessarily so. Sometimes it is the unsatisfactory employees who leave the company. I-O psychologists distinguish between functional turnover, when poor performers quit, and dysfunctional turnover, when good performers quit.
And what about involuntary turnover, such as downsizing or a RIF (reduction in force), when a number of employees are terminated, usually as a cost-cutting measure? Such layoffs have harmful effects not only on the employees who have lost their jobs, but also on the employees who remain with the company. A study of 31 work units of a national financial services company showed that involuntary turnover events had a significant negative effect on the job performance and productivity of the remaining workers. Thus, downsizing was related to the organization’s level of productivity (McElroy, Morrow, & Rude, 2001).
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN JOB SATISFACTION AND PAY
Considerable research has demonstrated a positive relationship between pay and job satisfaction. Pay also affects job and organizational performance. For example, in a study of 333 hospitals in California, researchers found that high pay among hospital staff members, including physicians and non-physicians in all job categories, resulted in high positive patient-care outcomes and high financial performance for the hospital (Brown, Sturman, & Simmering, 2003).
Perceived Pay Equity
The perceived equity or fairness of one’s pay can be more important than the actual amount. Survey respondents who believed that people with similar qualifications earned more than they did reported dissatisfaction with their pay. They thought they were being paid less than they deserved. It is not surprising, then, that people who think their salaries are higher than those of their colleagues are likely to be more satisfied with their pay. You may recognize this as a real-world example of the equity theory of motivation, discussed earlier in this chapter.
A meta-analysis of 203 studies conducted over a 35-year period revealed a strong positive correlation between pay satisfaction and job performance. Employees who were more satisfied with their pay rated higher in job performance than did those who were less satisfied with their pay (Williams, McDaniel, & Nguyen, 2006).
Most people develop personal standards of comparison that are based on the minimum salary they consider acceptable, the pay they believe their job deserves, and on the amount they think coworkers are being paid. Thus, satisfaction with pay is determined by the discrepancy between standards and actual salary. A study of 362 employees in the United States and in Belgium found that the higher employees believed their co-workers were being paid, the less satisfied they were with their own pay (Harris, Anseel, & Lievens, 2008).
Of course, for some groups in American society there is little pay equity, either actual or perceived. In general, women are paid less than men for the same or similar work, and many ethnic minority employees are paid less than Whites. Also, you might think that a family-member CEO of a family-controlled company would have a higher salary than a CEO who is not a member of the family or a family-controlled company. A study of 253 family-owned companies over a 4-year period revealed, however, that CEOs who were family members actually received lower pay and bonuses than CEOs who were not related to the family (Gomez-Mejia, Larraza-Kintana, & Makri, 2003).
Merit Pay
Merit pay, or pay for performance, means that the better performing workers in an organization are paid more than the less productive workers. This wage system is fine in theory but it does not translate well to the realities of the workplace. I-O psychologists have studied various influences on the size of the pay raises given under merit pay plans. They have found widespread disagreement among managers about the behaviors that they consider important in making decisions about a worker’s pay increase. A worker in one department might receive a sizable raise for job behaviors that bring no recognition in another department. Supervisors who receive substantial pay raises tend to recommend larger raises for their subordinates than do supervisors who receive smaller pay raises.
Merit pay A wage system in which pay is based on level of performance.
Pay raises are also related to the degree to which managers rely on their subordinates’ expertise and support and to whether managers consider such dependence a threat. For example, a manager who is low in self-esteem may want subordinates to provide praise or positive feedback and therefore may be reluctant to give them low pay increases. The manager may fear that if subordinates do not receive a sufficient salary, they will withhold their support or reduce their productivity to make the manager look bad.
There is also evidence that not everyone who receives a merit pay increase reacts to it positively. The effects of merit pay raises were studied over an 8-month period among more than 1,700 hospital employees at all levels from housekeepers to physicians. The effect of the pay increases on employee motivation and job performance was greater among employees who scored low in positive affectivity than among employees who scored high in positive affectivity. In other words, greater pay for better performance was considered to be of greater value by employees who were more introverted and pessimistic and less energetic. Perhaps they needed the recognition and appreciation of the merit pay raise more than did those whose higher positive affectivity (greater energy and optimism) were more independent of the circumstances of their employment (Shaw, Duffy, Mitra, Lockhart, & Bowler, 2003).
Cross-cultural differences have also been cited in the effectiveness of merit pay. In a large-scale study of more than 28,000 employees in 37 countries, researchers found that merit pay was much more effective as a motivator in so-called poorer countries than in so-called richer ones (Van De Vliert, Van Yperen, & Thierry, 2008).
Newsbreak Unequal Pay for Women—and for Men, Too
Patti Landers was delighted when she got a job as an engineer with the Boeing Company in her home town of Seattle, Washington. Working at Boeing was a family tradition; her father, brother, and husband all had jobs with the aircraft manufacturer. Years before, her grandparents had worked there. It seemed like a great opportunity, and it was, until Patti compared the amount of her paycheck with what the men in her family were earning—and found a big, big difference. She felt cheated; so in the year 2000 she and 37 other women filed a sex discrimination lawsuit against the company.
Boeing denied the allegation that women were paid less than men for doing the same work. But Business Week magazine obtained more than 12,000 pages of company documents showing that Boeing had conducted several internal studies that confirmed that men were paid more than women for the same job. Yet Boeing still fought the lawsuit, even though their own documents—which they had hidden in a secure room with an electronic cipher lock—proved that they had known about the pay inequities for 10 years.
Company policies such as these are nothing new. Most businesses have typically paid women less than men for performing the same or similar jobs. What is new is a study showing that both women and men who manage work groups composed mostly of women are paid less than those who manage work groups composed mostly of men.
A study of 2,178 managers in 512 companies demonstrated that in work groups that are 40% to 50% women, managers are paid substantially less than managers with work groups that have a majority of men. As the percentage of female employees in a work group increases, the pay of their manager decreases. The researchers concluded that pay is unequal for men, too, if the group they manage is composed mostly of women.
Eight years after Patti Landers filed her sex discrimination lawsuit, Boeing agreed to pay $72.5 million to settle the case, far more money than they saved by paying women less than men for the same work in the first place.
Sources: Holmes, S. (April 26, 2004). A new black eye for Boeing: Internal documents suggest years of serious compensation gaps for women. Business Week, pp. 90–92; Ostroff, C., & Atwater, L. (2003). Does whom you work with matter? Effects of referent group gender and age composition on managers’ compensation. Journal of Applied Psychology, 88, 725–740; usatoday.com, February 26, 2008.
Wage-Incentive Pay Systems
Wage-incentive systems are the primary pay scheme for production workers. Through a time-and-motion analysis of a production job, an average or standard number of units produced in a given time can be determined. The wage-incentive system is based on this rate. In theory, the system provides an incentive for high job performance—the more units produced, the higher the wage—but it seldom works in practice. Many work groups establish their own standard for a good shift’s production. Regardless of the incentive offered they will not produce more; rather, they will spread out the work to comfortably fill the hours. Surveys show that most workers prefer a straight hourly payment system.
Wage-incentive system The primary pay system for production workers in which the more units produced, the higher is the wage.
JOB INVOLVEMENT AND ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT
Closely related to motivation and job satisfaction is job involvement, that is, the intensity of a person’s psychological identification with a job. Usually, the higher one’s identification or involvement with a job, the greater is one’s job satisfaction. Job involvement is related to several personal and organizational variables.
Personal Factors
Personal characteristics related to job involvement include age, growth needs, and belief in the traditional work ethic. Older workers are usually more involved with their jobs, perhaps because they have more responsibility and challenge and more opportunity to satisfy their growth needs. Older workers are also more likely to believe in the value of hard work. Younger workers, typically in entry-level positions, hold less stimulating and challenging jobs.
Growth needs are important in job involvement. It follows, then, that the job characteristics most relevant to job involvement are stimulation, autonomy, variety, task identity, feedback, and participation—the characteristics that allow for the satisfaction of the growth needs.
Social factors on the job can influence job involvement. Employees who work in groups or teams report stronger job involvement than employees who work alone. Participation in decision making is related to job involvement, as is the extent to which employees support organizational goals. Feelings of success and achievement on the job enhance an employee’s level of job involvement.
The relationship between job involvement and job performance is unclear. Employees with high job involvement are more satisfied with, and more successful at, their jobs. Their rates of turnover and absenteeism are lower than those of employees with low job involvement. However, psychologists cannot state with certainty that high job involvement correlates with high performance.
Another variable allied with motivation and job satisfaction is organizational commitment, that is, the degree of psychological identification with or attachment to the company for which a person works. Organizational commitment has the following components:
• Acceptance of the organization’s values and goals
• Willingness to exert effort for the organization
• Having a strong desire to remain affiliated with the organization
Organizational commitment is related to both personal and organizational factors. Older employees who have been with a company more than 2 years and who have a high need to achieve are more likely to rate high in organizational commitment. A meta-analysis of 3,630 employees in 27 separate studies showed that the longer a person had been employed by a company, the stronger was the link between organizational commitment and job performance. The researchers suggested that taking measures to increase organizational commitment early in new employees could lead to better job performance (Wright & Bonett, 2002). Scientists and engineers appear to have less organizational commitment than do employees in other occupational groups. In addition, government employees have lower organizational commitment than employees in the private sector. Government employees are also likely to be lower in job satisfaction.

Job satisfaction is related to workplace conditions. For some employees, an exercise facility at the workplace fosters a positive attitude toward the job.
Organizational Factors
Organizational factors associated with high organizational commitment include job enrichment, autonomy, opportunity to use skills, and positive attitudes toward the work group. Organizational commitment is influenced by employees’ perception of how committed the organization is to them. The greater the perceived commitment to employees, the higher the employees’ expectations that if they work to meet organizational goals, they will be equitably rewarded.
A study of 746 employees of a university showed that those who scored high in organizational commitment were more dedicated to a company-sponsored program designed to improve work quality than were those who scored low in organizational commitment (Neubert & Cady, 2001). There is also a positive relationship between perceived organizational support and organizational commitment, diligence, innovative management, job performance, and attendance. Organizational commitment is positively related to the amount of support received from supervisors and co-workers and to the degree of satisfaction with supervisors (Bishop & Scott, 2000; Liden, Wayne, & Sparrowe, 2000).
Studies have confirmed a positive relationship between organizational justice and organizational commitment. People who believe their employer treats them fairly are more likely to feel a commitment to the company than are people who believe they are being treated unfairly (Simons & Roberson, 2003).
Gender seems to be related to organizational commitment. The more women in a work group, the lower the commitment of the men. With women, however, the reaction is the opposite. The more men there are in a work group, the higher the level of organizational commitment among the women.
Types of Commitment
I-O psychologists have identified three kinds of organizational commitment: affective, or attitudinal, commitment; behavioral, or continuance, commitment; and normative commitment (Esnape & Redman, 2003; Meyer & Allen, 1991). In affective commitment, the type we have been discussing, the employee identifies with the organization, internalizes its values and attitudes, and complies with its demands. Affective commitment correlates highly with perceived organizational support, as was shown in research with 333 retail employees studied over a 2-year period and 226 employees studied over a 3-year period (Rhoades, Eisenberger, & Armeli, 2001). The results demonstrated that perceived organizational support was a primary factor in the development of affective commitment.
In a review and meta-analysis of more than 70 studies, researchers also found a strong positive link between perceived organizational support and affective commitment (Rhoades & Eisenberger, 2002). A study of 211 employee–supervisor dyads showed that supervisor support and recognition was related to perceived organizational support, which, in turn, was related to organizational commitment (Wayne, Shore, Bommer, & Tetrick, 2002). The importance of supervisor support in increasing perceived organizational support was also demonstrated in a study of 493 retail sales employees. That study also found that high perceived organizational support was strongly related to reduced turnover (Eisenberger, Stingchamber, Vandenberghe, Socharski, & Rhoades, 2002).
Other research involving 413 postal workers found a reciprocal relationship between perceived organizational support and affective commitment, which suggests that each factor strengthens the other. The more employees believe their company cares for them and supports their needs, the more strongly they identify with the company and internalize its values and attitudes; and vice versa (Eisenberger, Armeli, Rexwinkel, Lynch, & Rhoades, 2001).
Studies conducted in the United States and in France have demonstrated a high positive correlation between affective organizational commitment and an employee’s mood and job performance (Herrbach, 2006; Hunter & Thatcher, 2007; Luchak & Gellatly, 2007).
In behavioral commitment, the employee is bound to the organization only by peripheral factors such as pension plans and seniority, which would not continue if the employee quit. There is no personal identification with organizational goals and values. Research suggests that affective commitment is positively related to job performance, but behavioral commitment is negatively related to job performance.
Normative commitment involves a sense of obligation to remain with the employer, a feeling that develops when employees receive benefits such as tuition reimbursement or specific skills training.
Organizational Citizenship Behavior
Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) means putting forth extra effort, doing more for an employer than the minimum requirements of the job. It includes such behaviors as “taking on additional assignments, voluntarily assisting other people at work, keeping up with the developments in one’s field or profession, following company rules even when no one is looking, promoting and protecting the organization, and keeping a positive attitude and tolerating inconveniences at work” (Bolino & Turnley, 2003, p. 60).
Good organizational citizens are model employees whose behavior can help ensure the success of an organization. Studies in a variety of businesses—insurance agencies, paper mills, and fast-food restaurant chains—have demonstrated that employees who are high in organizational citizenship behaviors are more productive and offer better service, which is related to higher customer satisfaction and greater company profits (see, for example, Bergeron, 2007; Koys, 2001; Walz & Niehoff, 2000).
Research has related several factors to OCB. For example, studies of U.S. workers showed that high OCB correlated with the strength of friendships with co-workers, a strong sense of empathy, and high job satisfaction and affective commitment (Bowler & Brass, 2006; Joireman, Kamdar, Daniels, & Duell, 2006; Payne & Webber, 2006). A large-scale study of more than 116,000 managers and team members from 33 countries found that supportive leadership facilitated OCB in work teams (Euwema, Wendt, & Van Emmerik, 2007). Similar results were obtained from a survey of 1,000 U.S. bank employees, which showed the importance of support from supervisors in developing OCB (Dineen, Lewicki, & Tomlinson, 2006).
Other research has shown that people who display organizational citizenship behaviors score high on the factors of conscientiousness, extra-version, optimism, and altruism. They are also team-oriented. In a study of 149 nurses in Canada, investigators identified a strong cognitive component to organizational citizenship behavior. Good organizational citizens based their behaviors on deliberate, rational calculations as to how they would benefit from displaying such behaviors on the job (Lee & Allen, 2002). Essentially they seemed to be saying, “What’s in it for me if I behave this way on the job?” But is this a question people routinely ask in almost any situation—on the job, in the classroom, or in evaluating relationships with other people? What do you think?
Summary
Content theories of motivation deal with internal needs that influence behavior. Process theories focus on cognitive processes involved in making decisions. Achievement motivation theory posits the need to accomplish something and to be the best in whatever one undertakes. Needs hierarchy theory suggests five needs (physiological, safety, belonging, esteem, and self-actualization), each of which must be satisfied before the next becomes prominent. Motivator–hygiene theory proposes motivator needs (the nature of the work and its level of achievement and responsibility) and hygiene needs (aspects of the work environment such as pay and supervision). An outgrowth of motivator–hygiene theory is job enrichment, the redesign of jobs to maximize motivator factors. Job-characteristics theory, a theory based on individual differences in growth needs, suggests that employee perceptions of job characteristics influence motivation.
The valence-instrumentality-expectancy (VIE) theory describes a person’s perceived expectation of the rewards that will follow certain behaviors. Equity theory deals with the ratio of outcome to input and how equitably that ratio compares with those of co-workers. Goal-setting theory suggests that motivation is defined by a person’s intention to achieve a particular goal.
Job satisfaction, which can be measured through questionnaires and interviews, may be partly an inherited characteristic reciprocally related to overall life satisfaction. Job satisfaction increases with age, length of job experience, and occupational level. Differences by gender in reported job satisfaction are inconsistent. Job satisfaction appears unaffected by cognitive ability, assuming a job is sufficiently challenging. Other factors affecting job satisfaction include job congruence, organizational justice, use of skills, personality, and control. Losing one’s job can be damaging to self-esteem and health. Large-scale layoffs also affect the workers remaining on the job.
Research shows a significant relationship between job satisfaction and job performance. The higher the job satisfaction, the higher the performance—a relationship that holds for individuals and for business units such as work teams. Job satisfaction can result in prosocial behavior; job dissatisfaction can lead to counterproductive behavior that interferes with organizational goals. Absenteeism is higher among younger workers and in companies with liberal sick-leave policies. Absenteeism is high in low-status jobs and in high-paying jobs and can be caused by low positive affectivity and high levels of stress and depression. Turnover is allied with low job involvement, low organizational commitment, poor promotion opportunities, and dissatisfaction with pay and supervision. In functional turnover, low performers quit; in dysfunctional turnover, high performers quit.
Research has demonstrated a positive relationship between pay and job satisfaction. An important factor in pay satisfaction is its perceived equity and relationship to job performance. Both blue-collar workers on wage-incentive systems and managers on merit pay systems report pay dissatisfaction. Merit pay can lower motivation because of perceived unfairness; that is, some workers believe their true abilities are not sufficiently rewarded.
Job involvement (intensity of psychological identification with work) is related to job satisfaction. These factors affect job involvement: personal characteristics such as age, growth needs, and belief in the work ethic; and job characteristics such as level of challenge and opportunity for employee participation. Organizational commitment is also related to job satisfaction and is greater among older employees and those high in achievement motivation. In addition, other variables contribute to organizational commitment: job enrichment, autonomy, perceived organizational support, organizational justice, and a positive attitude toward the work group. Organizational commitment can be affective, behavioral, or normative.
Organizational citizenship behavior involves doing more for an employer than the job requires. Such behavior can lead to higher job performance and can be influenced by personality, supportive leadership, and self-serving decisions.
Key Terms
achievement motivation theory
equity theory
goal-setting theory
job-characteristics theory
job congruence
job enrichment
job satisfaction
merit pay
motivator–hygiene (two-factor) theory
needs hierarchy theory
prosocial behavior
valence-instrumentality-expectancy theory
wage-incentive systems
Review Questions
1. Explain the differences between content theories and process theories of motivation. What do these types of theories have in common?
2. What two types of goals can satisfy the need for achievement?
3. Describe the characteristics of people who are high in the need for achievement.
4. What are the needs in Maslow’s needs hierarchy theory? Which needs can be satisfied on the job?
5. Distinguish between motivator needs and hygiene needs and describe how each type affects job satisfaction.
6. How would you enrich the job of an automobile assembly-line worker?
7. In what ways does the motivator–hygiene theory differ from the job-characteristics theory? In what ways are they similar?
8. Give an example of how the VIE theory can be applied to your job as a student.
9. According to equity theory, what are three ways of responding to perceived equity or inequity? Which way best describes you?
10. How can goal-setting theory be applied to the workplace? Give an example of how it would work.
11. How do I-O psychologists measure job satisfaction? What personal characteristics can influence level of job satisfaction?
12. Describe some effects of being laid off from a job. How does job loss affect the company employees who were not laid off?
13. What is prosocial behavior and how does it relate to job satisfaction?
14. Discuss the relationship between job satisfaction and job performance for individual employees and for work groups.
15. Why is it difficult to conduct research on absenteeism?
16. What organizational policies may contribute to a high absenteeism rate?
17. Distinguish between functional turnover and dysfunctional turnover.
18. How does a merit pay system differ from a wage-incentive pay system? What are the problems with each of these approaches?
19. Explain the difference between job involvement and organizational commitment.
20. What personal and organizational factors can influence organizational commitment?
21. Describe three types of organizational commitment.
22. What is organizational citizenship behavior and what factors can influence it?
23. Give two examples of organizational citizenship behavior and explain what you think motivates the behavior.
Additional Reading
Ellingson, J. E., Gruys, M. L., & Sackett, P. R. (1998). Factors related to the satisfaction and performance of temporary employees. Journal of Applied Psychology, 83, 913–921. Discusses job satisfaction among temp employees (a large but rarely studied subject group) and relates it to whether the decision to undertake temporary work is voluntary or involuntary.
Hart, P. M. (1999). Predicting employee life satisfaction. Journal of Applied Psychology, 84, 564–584. Reports on personality correlates (such as neuroticism, extraversion, and job satisfaction) that relate to overall life satisfaction in a group of police officers.
Latham, G. (2007). Work motivation. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. A comprehensive review of the history, theory, research, and practical issues involved in employee motivation and job satisfaction.
Organ, D., Podsakoff, P., & Mackenzie, S. (2006). Organizational citizenship behavior. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Describes prosocial organizational behavior and relates it to variables such as conscientiousness, commitment, morale, and satisfaction with management.
Uchitelle, L. (2006). The disposable American: Layoffs and their consequences. New York: Knopf. Deals with the psychological effects of layoffs among white-collar and blue-collar employees, problems with retraining, and feelings of loyalty towards one’s organization.
Wright, T. A., & Cropanzano, R. (2000). Psychological well-being and job satisfaction as predictors of job performance. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 5(1), 84–94. Analyzes the idea that the so-called happy worker is a more productive worker. Relates happiness (psychological well-being) and job satisfaction to job performance.

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