Job Satisfaction

Job Satisfaction in Corporate America

Job satisfaction in previous decades has been an elusive myth to those who worked in corporate America for any length of time. When the average person begins to understand satisfaction, they imagine it as some dream job where everything goes well every day and no issues ever pop up that can spoil their peace and tranquility while they are at work. This, of course, could not be further from the truth. There are just a few companies in this world that pride themselves in the employee culture and overall employee satisfaction. Many companies fail at this. The question left to answer then is what is true job satisfaction and how does it contribute to the company’s overall success in the corporate world?

Surprisingly, the answers to these questions are more complicated than one might believe they originally are. First, a working definition of job satisfaction needs to be established so it is clear exactly what form job satisfaction will take in the following analysis and how it will be linked to corporate productivity. According to Cullen et al (270), job satisfaction is defined as an overall feeling of accomplishment at the end of the day by the employee once their tasks have been completed. Because jobs are so diverse, it can take employees a long period of time to find the right kind of job to where they feel that particular type of satisfaction and continue to want to come back, thinking of their position as a way to help others and positively contribute to the world. While this definition may border on grandiose, there are individuals who do everything from run Fortune 500 companies to sweep factory floors who do feel satisfaction that equates to having made a positive contribution to the world completing those tasks (Kopelman et al, 23).

One point that has to be made here is that job satisfaction does not only come from having interesting, meaningful tasks to complete. Employees also possess specific characteristics that...