Job Satisfaction

INTRODUCTION

Lincoln and Kalleberg (1990) have argued that the rewards offered by an organisation may have a powerful effect on employees’ attitudes towards heir job and the company for which they work. In this context, it is important to distinguish between intrinsic and extrinsic rewards. Intrinsic rewards are those that exist in the job itself, such as variety, challenge, and autonomy. Extrinsic rewards, on the other hand, comprise elements such as pay and fringe benefits, promotion or advancement opportunities within the organisation, the social climate, and physical working conditions.

O’Reilly and his colleagues (Caldwell et al., 1990; O’Reilly & Chatman, 1986) have suggested that intrinsic rewards will probably be more salient for affective commitment (and, we would argue, job involvement), whereas extrinsic rewards are more likely to be important in relation to continuance commitment to the organisation. Consistent with this reasoning, we anticipated that satisfaction with intrinsic rewards would be positively associated with job involvement and with affective commitment, but would have little bearing on continuance commitment. In contrast, satisfaction with extrinsic rewards was expected to be important mainly for continuance commitment, but would play a relatively small role in the prediction of job involvement and affective commitment.

IMPORTANCE OF REWARDS AND JOB SATISFACTION

For organizations to achieve well and reach their targeted goals, their employees have to perform well in their specific fields or areas of work. These employees can only perform well if they are satisfied with their jobs and it is rewards that play an important role in making sure the employees achieve a required level of job satisfaction for them to be motivated to perform well.

The importance of rewards and job satisfaction can be discussed on two different grounds. Job satisfaction and occupational success are of great importance to the employees (workers) since they...