Job satisfaction and turnover intention

Job satisfaction refers to an employee’s affective reactions to a job, based on comparing desired outcomes with actual outcomes (Cranny, Smith, and Stone, 1992).

In this study, we tend to investigate the relationship among the salespeople’s perceived quota difficulty, customer orientation, job satisfaction, and turnover intention. Due to differences in individual’s perceptions of assigned quota difficulty, salespeople’s selling behavior may vary from one to another, and result important impact on the individual’s job satisfaction and turnover intention. In order to better understand the nature of an employee’s job satisfaction and determinants of turnover intention, I will explain in detail the definitions and studies relevant to job satisfaction and turnover intention in association with the setting of salespeople’s perceived quota difficulty and customer orientation.

2.3.1 Job Satisfaction (JS)

Locke (1969) defined job satisfaction as “the pleasurable emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one’s job as achieving or facilitating the achievement of one’s job values.” Job satisfaction is generally acknowledged as a multifaceted construct that includes both intrinsic and extrinsic job elements (Howard and Frick, 1996). Job satisfaction may be both intrinsic, derived from internally mediated rewards such as the job itself and opportunities for personal growth and accomplishment, and extrinsic, resulting from externally mediated rewards such as satisfaction with pay, company policies and support, supervision, fellow workers, chances for promotion and customers (Walker et al., 1977).

Porter and Steers (1973) argued that the extent of employee job satisfaction reflected the cumulative level of met worker expectations. That is, employees expect their job to provide a mix features (such as pay, promotion, autonomy, etc.) for which each employee has certain preferential values. The range and importance of these preferences vary across individuals, but when the accumulation of unmet expectations becomes sufficiently large, these is less job satisfaction and greater probability of withdraw behavior (Pearson, 1991). In fact, some interest in job

satisfaction is focused primarily on its impact on employee commitment, absenteeism, intentions to quit, and actual turnover (Agho, Mueller, and Price, 1993).

Several studies from a variety of occupations indicate that individuals’ job satisfaction is related to their perceptions of aspects of the firm’s organizational climate (Kaczka and Kirk, 1968; Friedlander and Margulies, 1969; Schneider, 1972;

Schneider and Snyder, 1975; Pritchard and Karasick, 1973; Downey et al., 1974;

Churchill et al., 1976; Ostroff, 1993; Pierce et al., 1996; Johnson and McIntye, 1998).

For example, Research conducted by Schewepker (2001) suggested that salespeople’s perceptions of a positive ethical climate are positively associated with their job satisfaction and organizational commitment.

There are numerous investigations that have studied the relationship between organizational commitment and job satisfaction (Currivan, 1999). The nature of the causal relationship between job satisfaction and organizational commitment is an issue that has not been resolved. The predominant view is that job satisfaction is an antecedent to organizational commitment (Lincoln & Kalleberg, 1990; Mowday, Porter, & Steers, 1982; Mueller, Boyer, Price, & Iverson, 1994; Williams & Hazer, 1986). There is also some support for the reverse causal ordering, organizational commitment as an antecedent to job satisfaction (Vandenberg & Lance, 1992). A recent meta-analysis on turnover research indicates that organizational commitment predicts turnover better than job satisfaction (Griffeth et al., 2000). These findings suggest that job satisfaction may be a more distal influence upon turnover intentions than organizational commitment. Based on this finding from the meta-analysis and the dominant view in the satisfaction – commitment research, the hypothesized model proposes that job satisfaction is an antecedent to organizational commitment which is turnover intention’s antecedent.

Aspects of the work situation have been shown to be determinants of job satisfaction (Arvey, Carter, and Berkley, 1991). Often, facet measures are averaged together for an overall measure of satisfaction (Wright and Bonett, 1992). Fraser, Keck, and Kim (2002) argued that a viable theory of job satisfaction in the modern workplace must support the validity of reported employee perceptions, which spring from organizational culture. Research suggests that job satisfaction, as work-related outcome, is determined by organizational culture and structure. Kim (2002) suggested

that participative management that incorporates effective supervisory communication can increase employee’s job satisfaction. Wagner and LePine (1999) conducted a meta-analysis and revealed significant impacts of job participation and work performance on job satisfaction. Daniels and Bailey (1999) concluded that participative decision making enhances the level of job satisfaction directly, regardless of strategy development processes. Studies also found that empowerment had a significant impact on job satisfaction and performance (Eylon and Bamberger (2000).

Moreover, studies on leadership behaviors related to inspiring teamwork, challenging tradition, enabling others, setting examples, and rewarding high performance have been found to have significant effects on role clarity, self-efficacy, and job satisfaction (Gaertner, 2000). In a study of organizational culture and climate, Jonhson and McIntye (1998) found that the measures of culture most strongly related to job satisfaction were empowerment, involvement and recognition. These measures reflect clearly the learning culture advocated by theorists of the learning organization (Watkins and Marsick, 1993, 2003).

In addition, in the previous review, research has indicated that sales quota is often considered as a measure of salespeople’s job performance. The relevant studies of the relationship between job performance and job satisfaction have a controversial history. A 1985 literature review suggested that the statistical correlation between job satisfaction and performance was about 0.17 (Iaffaladano and Muchinsky, 1985).

Thus these authors concluded that the presumed relationship between job satisfaction and performance was a “management fad” and “illusory”. In addition in a more recent review of 301 studies, Judge, Thoresen, Bono, and Patton (2001) found that when the correlations are appropriately corrected, the average correlation between job satisfaction and job performance is 0.30. In addition, the relationship between job satisfaction and job performance was would to be even higher for complex (e.g., professional) jobs that for less complex job. Hence, opposite to earlier review, it appears that job satisfaction is predictive of performance, and the relationship is even stronger for professional jobs.

2.3.2 Perceived quota difficulty and job satisfaction

Conventionally, sales quotas are considered a measure of performance. While quotas are perceived as hard to achieve, poor performance will result. When goals appear to be out of reach, motivation for achieving target drops as expectations regarding goal achievement diminishes. Decreases in motivation are likely to yield lower achievement level. Tension may escalate between salesperson and managers as conflict arises concerning goals, resulted in a variety of damaging consequences such as reduced organizational commitment and job satisfaction (Good and Schwepker, 2001; Oliver and Anderson, 1994).

2.3.3 Customer orientation and job satisfaction

From studies conducted by Boles et al. (2001) indicated a positive relationship observed between a customer orientation and job performance, which in turn will lead of higher job satisfaction. Previous literature from business to business (Saxe and Wetiz, 1982) and non-store retail selling environments (Dunlap et al., 1988) indicated that customer-oriented selling approaches can result in superior performance.

Salespeople will be motivated to expend the additional effort that is required by customer-oriented selling if feeling of accomplishment can be experienced, which is a factor associated with job satisfaction (Hall, 1976). Experienced meaningfulness fosters the activity importance by making the work “count” in salesperson’s own system of values (Hackman and Oldham, 1980).

2.3.4 Turnover Intention (TI)

For the purpose of this study, turnover intension is defined as a conscious and deliberate willingness to leave the organization (Tett and Meyer, 1993). According to Trevor (2001), most major voluntary turnover models are descendents of the March and Simon (1958) model. Due to the practical implications and potential for productivity impact, employee turnover has been studied by researchers in multiple disciplines for a long period, often exploring the inverse relationship to job

satisfaction. Variables theorized to influence turnover and turnover intentions include job satisfaction, organizational commitment, role stress, ethical climate, supervisory variables, and environmental variables.(Apasu, 1986; Bluedorn, 1982; DeGeorge, 1990; Fishbein, 1967; Mathieu and Zajac, 1990; Mobley, 1982; Tett and Meyer, 1993)

Previous studies have identified numerous variables that may predict employee turnover (Griffeth, Hom, & Gaertner, 2000; Kirschenbaum & Weisberg, 2002; Price, 2001; Zeffane, 1994). These variables fall into the categories of: employee characteristics, such as age, education, gender, tenure, and family responsibilities;

nature of the current job, such as security, skill variety and autonomy, job stress, and job satisfaction; nature of the current organization, such as supervision, pay and benefits, and current performance rating; and external conditions such as the unemployment rate (Fields et al., 2005).

Human Resources Management related fields have examined turnover and turnover intention in association with job satisfaction, organizational commitment, personality, aptitude, intelligence, governmental policies and rates of unemployment (Hatcher, 1999; Sturman et al., 2003).

When a sales representative initiates its thought about leaving his/her current job, he/she is also likely to consider other opportunities and actively search for them. If the opportunities are not available or does not seem too attractive, the salesperson may choose to “withdraw’ from the organization, disengaging emotionally, and mentally, resulted increasing absenteeism and lessen enthusiasm and effort. Whether the actual resignation takes place or not, the invisible cost applied to the organization is rather significant; result of increased hiring and training costs or lost sales and poorer customer relations (Russ and McNeilly, 1995).

Doubtlessly, managers and researchers are seeking to understand the causes for turnover intention for its underlying costs as well as its immediate attitudinal predecessor to actual turnover (e.g. Sager et al., 1989). Empirical efforts to identify circumstances that will cause sales representatives and other employees to consider leaving an organization have been rather frequent.

Intention to leaving appears to be the immediate precursor to actually quitting.

It is consistent with Fishbein’s (1967) model of attitudes, intentions and behavior and its use is commonly endorsed in the literature as a predictor of turnover (Mobley, 1977, 1982). A literature review by Bluedorn (1982) cited 23 studies which reported finding significant positive relationships between leaving intentions and actual leaving behavior.

There have been several models of turnover proposed in the last two decades.

Horn and Griffeth (1995) and Maertz and Campion (1998) provide comprehensive summaries of the various theoretical frameworks. Past investigations have shown that job satisfaction and organizational commitment are antecedents to turnover intention (Arnold & Feldman, 1982; Horn and Griffeth, 1995; Mobley, 1982; Mobley et al., 1979; Porter et al., 1974; Slattery and Selvarajan, 2005). In line with these results, in the proposed model, job satisfaction and organizational commitment are depicted as antecedents to turnover intention. For this study, job satisfaction was defined as positive emotions an employee has toward his or her job (Locke, 1976);

organizational commitment as the extent to which individuals feel loyal to their organization (Price, 1997); and turnover intention as one’s propensity to leave (Lyons, 1971).

There is a substantial body of literature that has reported that job satisfaction is negatively related to turnover intention (Currivan, 1999; Griffeth, Horn, and Gaertner, 2000). Extending these findings to the current research, in the model there is a direct path between job satisfaction and turnover intention. Again, there is a substantial body of research that has found that organizational commitment is negatively related to intention to quit. (Horn & Griffith, 1995; Mathieu & Zajac, 1990;

Mowday et al., 1982).