values attitudes and job satisfaction essay

• DOI: 10.1002/HRM.20032
• Corpus ID: 6284016

Employee attitudes and job satisfaction

• L. Saari , T. Judge
• Published 1 December 2004
• Business, Psychology
• Human Resource Management

1,312 Citations

Uncovering the pre-dispositional roots of job satisfaction, study on employee pressure and its relationship with employee attitude at workplace, the effect of employee work-related attitudes on employee job performance, job satisfaction and employee performance : a theoretical review of the relationship between the two variables, knowledge of psychological work attitudes to improve employee performance, a review of research literature on job satisfaction., relationship between organizational commitment and job satisfaction among employees, enhancing employee performance through positive organizational behavior, the impact of employee stakeholder orientation on job satisfaction and perspective-taking, the impact of job satisfaction; while performing responsibilities, 72 references, employee and customer perceptions of service in banks: replication and extension., hr professionals' beliefs about effective human resource practices: correspondence between research and practice., job satisfaction: are all the parts there, the job satisfaction-job performance relationship: a qualitative and quantitative review., business-unit-level relationship between employee satisfaction, employee engagement, and business outcomes: a meta-analysis., a meta-analytic review of attitudinal and dispositional predictors of organizational citizenship behavior, stability in the midst of change: a dispositional approach to job attitudes, attitudes in and around organizations, individual differences in the nature of the relationship between job and life satisfaction, job satisfaction as a reflection of disposition: a multiple source causal analysis, related papers.

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Organizational Behavior: Attitudes and Job Satisfaction, Essay Example

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Leaders are defined as professionals who are considered to have mastered their given field and use their experience to motivate and delegate responsibilities to others. In addition, effective leaders improve the work experience of the individuals they manage by allowing them to learn more and therefore provide a greater contribution to their organization. While there are many different leadership styles, the most important characteristics of leaders are their abilities to communicate effectively with their team and to gain an understanding of problems in a manner that helps accomplish a resolution (Johnson & Hackman 2003). Some leaders are able to motivate their employees more effectively than others. Generally, it has been observed that leaders with positive and engaging attitudes that implement leadership styles that are reflective of these qualities contribute to a greater degree of job satisfaction (Kouzes et al. n.d.). Thus, it is valuable to understand how managers can act in order to ensure that they are able to optimize workplace efficiency as a byproduct of employee job satisfaction.

Overall, an individual’s understanding of leadership has the ability to contribute to employee perception of attitude. Since the individual manager has the potential to influence organizational behavior overall, it is valuable for these individuals to carefully consider how he or she will interact with employees and determine how to arrange the organizational structure in a manner that is conducive to positive interactions. When people are able to implement effective leadership skills and the appropriate leadership style for their teams, it becomes easier a person to influence others (Bateman & Snell 2014). This is a beneficial practice because when a leader has an attitude that allows him or her to naturally exert an influence on others, it becomes easier for this individual to lead workers in a positive manner. Since every manager or supervisor is different, it is important to consider that different people can have different personality traits that will allow a leader to accomplish influence among the employees. As a consequence, it is helpful for these individuals to determine which leadership style would be likely to contribute to job satisfaction in addition to general success in the organization.

Different types of leaders are needed in different situations, as the type of work that each individual motivates his or her employees to produce is unique in its results. To understand the styles of leadership that can be implemented on opposite sides of the spectrum, it is important to consider that leaders can either exhibit a totalitarian or democratic style (Bernard 2000). Totalitarian leaders command their teams with complete authority, allowing no room for commentary or questions. On the other hand, democratic leaders work closely with the members of their team, listening to their opinions, and ultimately allowing the team to make the decision. According to the literature, a majority of researchers believe that transactional and transformational leaders are the most effective. These leadership styles are sufficient intermediaries between totalitarian and democratic styles, and allow for the individual employee to work closely with the manager in order to achieve sufficient growth (Woods 2010). This growth will contribute to the development of job satisfaction because the caring attitude exhibited by transactional and transformational leaders makes employees feel that their employers are more invested in them. Therefore, they are more likely to feel that they are achieving personal growth, which will contribute to the likelihood that they will stay with this employer. On the other hand, employees that are in positions that lead the, to believe that their growth is student will have the opposite effect; employee turnover will be high in situations of low motivation.

Ultimately, the fact that employees are more satisfied when their leaders are motivation and willing to contribute to their personal professional development demonstrates that it is ideal for a leader to demonstrate power while allowing members of the team to contribute to the organization in a meaningful way. Transactional leadership focuses on the overall performance of a team while providing them with punishments for poor work or rewards for work well done (Bass 2008). Professionals believe that this method is ideal in emergency situations or should be enacted when it is essential for a project to follow a specific protocol closely. In a majority of situations however, researchers believe that transformational leadership is the most effective leadership style. Transformational leadership aims to motivate employees and allow them to increase their contribution to the team by strengthening the connection of each individual to the project. In this style of leadership, managers make their employees feel that the work they do contributes directly to the success or failure of the project, which drives their want to see positive results. Although the primary goal of the leader in this situation is to be the inspiration for the project, he or she offers the team helpful feedback and helps them fill gaps in knowledge if needed (Lowe et al. 1996).

The idea of principle-centered leadership dictated by Stephen Covey reflects the belief that transformational leadership is the most efficient leadership style (Covey 1991). Ultimately, it appears that individuals that fall into this category truly care about their work and strive to ensure that members of their team share this opinion and will be provided the resources necessary to be successful. As such, transformational leaders are synonymous with principle-centered leaders in a sense and are a complete opposite of totalitarian and laissez-faire leaders (Foster 2002). These are individuals who put an effort in ensuring the voices of their team are heard and actively participate in the project to ensure that goals are accomplished.

The most important characteristic of principle-centered leadership and transformational leadership is that these individuals tend to engage in lifelong learning. The ideal leader is aware that if he or she wishes to motivate a team and provide them with a greater conceptual understanding of a project, it is necessary to become immersed in knowledge. This ultimately allows the leader to determine why gaps in knowledge have arisen amongst members of the team and to provide them with information as necessary. Doing so may include the need to instruct these individuals how information could be obtained on their own. The best leaders are masters of their chosen field, and this needs to reflect in practice for the leader to adequately motivate the team. If the team members trust the expertise of their leaders, they are more likely to believe in their mission, and this belief will be reflected in their work.

An additional important similarity between principle-centered leadership and transformational leadership is that both of these individuals need to connect with their team and value their opinions. These individuals are aware that a project is best accomplished by combining the ideas an experiences of a series of individuals, rather than trusting the opinion of one. As a consequence, collaboration is an important value to be held in leadership. In this sense, totalitarian leaders aren’t really leaders at all, because they simply command rather than integrating the beliefs of their team members. Therefore, these individuals are not able to achieve unique and often the most effective results. Principle-centered leaders and transformational leaders are certainly focused on the goal at hand, but recognize that they should not rush a result if completing the project slowly in a collaborative manner is more likely to achieve an answer that is more valuable.

Another aspect that many principle-centered leaders and transformational leaders have in common is that many of them believe that their work is their life’s mission. As a consequence, the personal interests of these individuals are their work goals and vice versa. It is likely therefore, that these leaders spend a lot of their free time researching information about their field because this is what they enjoy doing. As a result, they are able to motivate their team well because their love and joy for their work projects onto them, often making their workers feel the same way. Totalitarian leaders fail to accomplish this because they are too concerned with the outcome, worrying little about the steps that are needed to get there. Because of this, their employees often feel rushed and that they are not significantly contributing to the organization. Furthermore, totalitarian leaders have little time to be enthusiastic about their work because they are only result driven (Woods 2010). As a consequence, many employees of totalitarian leaders have low morale and do not work effectively. Therefore, principle-centered leadership and transformational leadership is a natural solution to this problem and the individuals that employ these leadership styles from the beginning do not need to worry about a lack of employee motivation.

It is important to consider that any leader can be effective if they employee Covey’s eight characteristics of a principle-centered leader (Covey 1991). However, this leadership style is more likely to be attractive for individuals that already follow certain styles of leadership, such as transformational leadership mentioned above. Ultimately, the leaders that are interested in gaining more participating from their team in the decision making process are likely to benefit from this leadership style. For example, individuals that fall into the several different categories of participative leadership would be likely to adopt this style because they already believe that it is important to consider the opinions of employees. On the other hand, totalitarian leaders are unlikely to try to apply these leadership characteristics at all. However, it is important for managers to understand that if their goal is to ensure that their employees are able to work productively and effectively, it is imperative to begin to incorporate these characteristics into their leadership style.

While different leaders take advantage of different leadership styles in a manner that best suits their personality and personal beliefs, good leaders know that it may be necessary to change their leadership styles to ensure efficacy. As a consequence, the best leaders are truly those that can adapt to new situations and are interested in gaining an understanding of the options that are available to them (Joyce & Judge 2004). Therefore, these individuals are constantly aware of new leadership techniques and are willing to utilize them to determine if it allows their team to generate better results. A good leader then, is not born as an individual who is able to motivate others. Rather, a good individual is born with passion for their work and an ability to learn.

To fully provide a comprehensive understanding of organizational behavior, it is useful to generate an understanding of the differences between leadership styles with regards to their tendency to encourage an individual to engage in ethical actions. For example, the comparison between principle-centered and those with similar leadership characteristics therefore provides a stark contrast with individuals that exhibit authoritarian-like leadership styles. The major difference is clearly that the prior believes that it is the workers who allow the organization to thrive, while authoritarian leaders assume this responsibility for themselves (Day & Hamblin 1964). Therefore, principle-centered leaders believe that it is important to invest in the development of workers in order to produce better results, while authoritarian leaders see workers simply as a tool that can be used to accomplish their own means. As a consequence, it is clear that personality and definition of ethics plays a clear role in the selection and enacting of a particular leadership style. For authoritarian leaders, the ethical decision is the one that benefits the company, which is an opinion that contrasts the majority of the public.

In order to ensure that organization attitudes are able to continue to have a positive impact on employees and contribute to their perception of job satisfaction, it is also important for these individuals to engage in workplace ethics to ensure that employees are being treated fairly and appropriately. It is important to emphasize ethics in leadership styles because the ability to behave morally reinforces the trust and motivation of employees. Ultimately, workers that know that their leader is constantly working in their best interest will work harder and have more positive feelings about their job and their work. As a result, this will enhance employee retention and save the organization money. In addition, it will help increase the quality of the work produced in addition to the drive for employees to learn new things that will help their ability to perform in future projects. Ethics is therefore closely tied into the concept of success in the workforce. Employees who do not believe that their leader is behaving ethically will not be content with the organizational culture of their workplace and become more likely to resign, work slowly, and produce undesirable results.

Interestingly, studies have also revealed that positive attitudes are more discernable on female leaders. While it is certainly unreasonable to alter the gender of leaders in order to ensure that their attitude is more conducive to employee motivation and job satisfaction, it is reasonable to male employees to determine what characteristics about the female personality make them more likeable to their employees. The authors of “Transformational, Transactional, and Laissez-Faire Leadership Styles: A Meta-Analysis Comparing Women and Men” argue that more female supervisors enact transformational leadership compared to males (Eagly et al. 2003). Therefore, it is important to consider what contributes to this cause. In general, women are more likely to provide awards to workers for excellent work. In order to reinforce positive worker behavior, these rewards could range from simple praises to job promotions. While women are more likely to provide this type of feedback to workers, men leaders could easily adopt this principle by distributing relevant incentives to employees to encourage their improvement. This type of method improves worker motivation and therefore contributes to the development of work quality, so it is important for all leaders to take advantage of this understanding. Furthermore, this aspect of the female personality in addition to these female associated actions are more likely to contribute to the development of employee motivation. It is therefore reasonable for men who wish to adopt these traits to consider implementing transformational leadership into their practice.

A research study was conducted to confirm whether people would be able to participate in a program that would help them learn the skills of transformational leadership and apply them directly into practice. The experimental group in this experiment were individuals who received transformational leadership training and were asked to apply what they learned in their organizational setting. The control population did not receive this type of training. Overall, this was a beneficial study because it utilized a large sample size, indicating that the results generated in this experiment can be reasonably considered externally valid. Because this style of leadership was found to have a meaningful effect on employee performance, it is important for organizations to consider the value of transformational leaders in the workplace. Even though transformational leadership is considered to be a specific leadership style, it is important to consider that based on the information retrieved from this experiment, it is possible to train employees to implement this leadership method. Therefore, higher level managers can influence the efficacy of lower level managers by requiring them to follow this leadership method. Furthermore, the ability to learn and implement new leadership styles can be reasonably assessed by the human resources department when hiring new employees, which will allow organizations to hire only the individuals that are able to comply with these requirements. It is expected that workplace practices will become more meaningful if this type of transformative organizational culture is put in place. This understanding is also beneficial to individuals because it indicates that even if a different training program is used, it is possible to learn these skills in order to help apply transformational leadership skills in management practice (Dvir et al., 2002). It would be plausible for organizations that wish to improve their practice and implement a structure to encourage employee motivation to participate in such a program to ensure that managers are able to effectively transform their practices to benefit the organization.

Overall, it is important for supervisors to understand the different leadership styles in addition to what their implementation might mean for their businesses. While an authoritative style may work temporarily in some instances, it generally creates a sense of dissent among employees who feel that their knowledge and experience is not being respected. Transformative leadership is a close opposite to this method because it ensures that employees feel that they are able to grow within an organization, contributing to its success. In order for employees to work effectively, they must be made to feel that their work has meaning (Martindale 2011). Because transformational leaders are the best at ensuring this will be the case, it is important for supervisors to understand when elements of this method should be implemented in the workplace. Transformational leaders are more likely to implement employee training programs and other supports to help employees gain more advanced skills that they need to succeed at their jobs. Even a leader that was primarily authoritative can gain an understanding of how to adopt transformational behaviors and apply them to the workplace. However, it is likely that each individual implements these leadership styles according to his or her own preferences in addition to interpreting them in a manner that could most reasonably benefit their organization.

Abraham Maslow was an American psychologist who was well known for developing a principle known as “Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs”, which humans should use to balance their physiological, safety, love, esteem, and self-actualization needs (Wahbah et al. 1976). Modern organizational professionals can use an understanding of this motivation theory in order to more effectively help leaders understand how to reach their employees. For employees to reach self-actualization, they must first have other needs met. For example, job satisfaction and motivation is likely to be the highest when an employee’s physiological needs are met (according to their ability to purchase food, clothing, and shelter), when they feel safe in their work environment (safety), when they feel appreciated (love), and finally when they feel that they are accomplished in their work (esteem). Thus, managers have the ability to become directly involved in the ability for their employees to achieve self-actualization.

In conclusion, transformational leaders tend to be the best motivators because they understand how to motivate employees, whether this is in terms of abstract or physical reward. Furthermore, transformation managers are able to create workplace efficiency as a byproduct of employee job satisfaction. Overall, the motivation that leaders provide to their employees contribute to the efficacy of their work practices, which in turn contribute to profitability of the organization. Under this leadership model, therefore, when the company benefits, the employees benefit as well. This is an important understanding because it allows employees to constantly strive to achieve greater results and it allows leaders to constantly strive to improve their attitudes in order to increase employee motivation and job satisfaction.

Bibliography

Bateman T, Snell S 2014, Management , McGraw-Hill Education.

Bass, B 2008, Bass & Stogdill’s Handbook of Leadership: Theory, Research & Managerial Applications (4th ed.), The Free Press, New York.

Bernard, M 2000, ‘The Future of Leadership in Learning Organizations’, Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies , vol. 7, no. 3, pp. 19-31.

Covey, SR 1991, Principle-centered leadership , Simon & Schuster, New York.

Day, RC & Hamblin RL 1964, ‘Some effects of close and punitive styles of supervision’. American Journal of Sociology , vol. 69, pp. 499-510.

Dvir T, Eden D, Avolio BJ, Shamir B 2002, ‘Impact of Transformational Leadership on Follower Development and Performance: A Field Experiment’, Academy of Management Journal , vol. 45, no. 4, pp. 735-744.

Eagly, AH 2003, ‘Transformational, Transactional, and Laissez-Faire Leadership Styles:

A Meta-Analysis Comparing Women and Men’, Psychological Bulletin , vol. 129, no. 4, pp. 569-591.

Foster, DE 2002, ‘A Method of Comparing Follower Satisfaction with the Authoritarian, Democratic, and Laissez-faire Styles of Leadership’, Communication Teacher, vol. 16, no. 2, pp. 4–6.

Johnson, CE & Hackman, MZ 2003, Leadership, a communication perspective (4 ed.) , Waveland Press.

Joyce E., Judge TA 2004. ‘Personality and transformational and transactional leadership: a meta-analysis’, Journal of Applied Psychology , vol. 89, no. 5, pp. 901-910.

Kouzes J, Posner B n.d. The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership® Mode L. Available from: <http://www.leadershipchallenge.com/about-section-our- approach.aspx>. [2 December 2015].

Lowe, KB, Kroeck G, Sivasubramaniam, N 1996. ‘Effectiveness Correlates of Transformational and Transactional Leadership: A Meta-analytic Review of the Mlq Literature’, The Leadership Quarterly , vol. 7, no. 3, pp. 385-425.

Martindale, N 2011, ‘Leadership Styles: How to handle the different personas’, Strategic Communication Management , vol. 15, no. 8, pp. 32–35.

Wahba, MA & Bridwell, LG 1976, ‘Maslow Reconsidered: A Review of Research on the Need Hierarchy Theory’, Organizational Behavior and Human Performance , vol. 15, pp. 212- 240.

Woods, AP 2010, ‘Democratic leadership: drawing distinctions with distributed leadership’, International Journal of Leadership in Education, vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 3–36.

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Employees’ Attitudes and Job Satisfaction

Introduction, links between job satisfaction and motivation, impacts on organisational behaviour, reference list.

There are a plethora of various companies in the entire world today. Every organisation has multiple competitors that try to attract the best employees in a certain professional sphere to their businesses because their output is dependent on their workers’ performance. In turn, there is almost no chance to succeed if employees are not satisfied with their positions or professional roles. There are several factors that influence a person’s overall impression of his or her job, and the same standards cannot be applied to every company. The following paper is intended to critically analyse and evaluate employees’ attitudes and job satisfaction, as well as their link to employee motivation and overall organisational behaviours, to understand the most efficient methods in organising the best working environment.

Zheng et al. (2014) define job satisfaction “a subjective cognitive and affective judgment” regarding multiple facets of including “pay, promotion opportunities, supervision, and coworkers” (p. 428). Job satisfaction and other work-related attitudes are considered to be the major contributors to employee motivation and, consequently, enhanced performance and productivity (Dobre, 2013). To understand the correlation between them, it is essential to evaluate the major factors defining job satisfaction. An essential factor that has to be considered when identifying whether a person is satisfied with their job or not is his or her feedback, as well as overall relations and communication with colleagues and supervisors (Peng et al., 2014; Srivastava, 2013). Efficient and open communication helps colleagues understand one another and plan their professional collaboration accordingly. It is worth noticing that although organisational support is important in small companies, people pay less attention to the given aspect once their firm expands and becomes global (Zopiatis et al., 2014). At this point, the majority of workers usually adhere to various rules set by their employers beforehand. It would be proper to state that people who work for small companies usually feel happier than their peers from transnational corporations (Widmann et al., 2016). Local firms have more to accomplish and achieve in the future. Therefore, these organisations’ workers are more motivated to promote their working places and become successful.

Monetary compensation and reward is also an essential factor for job satisfaction (Zameer et al., 2014). When the labour of every employee is valued and based on the number of specific tasks accomplished by this person, he or she will be satisfied with this important aspect of one’s job (Cullen et al., 2013). However, it is necessary to remember that not all people deserve to receive high payments as their responsibilities may not be as complicated as those of their colleagues. Moreover, if a worker does not make any effort to show that his or her presence is important for the company one is employed by, this individual must be penalised for using the organisations’ resources and not bringing any benefits to it and its clients (Han, 2014). Every kind of labour must be evaluated according to what it brings to the society and what role does it play in gaining profit for the entire corporation.

The mentioned factors defining job satisfaction, i.e., rewards, relationships with colleagues, work autonomy, etc. are mainly related to the overall corporate environment, as well as work structure. However, when speaking about motivation, the role of internal, subjective, and psychological factors cannot be underestimated. Employee motivation as such is defined as “the inner force” driving a person to achieve formulated goals (Conrad et al ., 2015, p. 93). So how do both external and internal factors interact to direct employees and increase their persistence in endeavours to achieve organisational objectives? Herzberg’s two-factor theory may answer this question.

In his theory, Herzberg suggests that employees’ behaviours are driven by intrinsic factors/motivators, such as achievement and recognition, and extrinsic/hygienic factors defined by physical and psycho-social conditions at the workplace, such as rewards and job security (Damij et al ., 2015). The theorist considered that intrinsic factors could motivate employees much better than the external ones, yet the workplace hygiene can affect organisational behaviours by influencing job satisfaction. The findings by Lau and Roopnarain (2014), and Chermack et al. ( 2015) support Herzberg’s position: they state that when people are motivated to achieve some heights or reach new horizons in their primary responsibilities, they are thought to have more desire and passion for what they do. Loi et al. ( 2013) also note that it is also necessary to give workers a chance to be engaged in other professional activities they might be interested in, which will have a positive impact on their development and desire to improve their working environment and conditions.

Nevertheless, Stelzner and Schutte (2016) observe that many employees can regard external, financial factors as essential to motivation and job satisfaction as good and fair payment entails the sense of security and personal reward, and provides opportunities for advancement. The differences in researchers’ findings may indicate that it is necessary to understand employees’ preferences and needs well in order to develop an appropriate motivation strategy. For instance, Osborne and Hammoud (2017) state that while Millennials usually do not want to make personal sacrifices for career and tend to value monetary compensation, Baby Boomers are more oriented towards processes within companies and long-term partnerships with their organisations. Therefore, the assessment of demographic characteristics and personal values of workers can support the development of knowledge about the factors that promote positive organisational behaviours in them.

It is important to note that intrinsic motivators do not drive employee performance in many cases and some workers are likely to wait upon motivation from their superiors. Sometimes, people may have perception biases affecting their job satisfaction and desire to perform high-quality work, e.g., depression (Peters and Waterman, 1982). Therefore, managers should seek to identify the biases of these people and address them to prevent unproductive professional activities in future. Pascale and Athos (1981) claim that if employees are not satisfied with their jobs, it is essential to reshape their duties and help people change their personal lives. Also, it is important to analyse people’s skills and give them missions accordingly.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs provides a distinct perspective on the issue of job satisfaction and motivation. Maslow claims that employees have five levels of needs: physiological, security, social, ego, and self-actualising, while every higher step in the pyramid cannot be achieved if lower levels are not accomplished (Olafsen et al., 2015). In general words, it is implied that to motivate employees to self-actualisation through achievements and professional development, managers should first provide them with sufficient financial resources so that they could meet their physiological and security needs. However, similarly to the case with Herzberg’s two-factor model, it is possible to say that in order to implement the given theory in practice, managers should understand which organisational factors can help address different-level needs of diverse employees, as the theory fails to link the elements mentioned in the pyramid to particular managerial practices or environmental factors. Another difficulty arises when managers need to understand whether a subordinate has passed a particular stage in the pyramid or not (Miner, 2015). As such, there is not sufficient research evidence to support the idea of the hierarchical progression of motivations and satisfaction. It is also worth noticing that Maslow’s theory will not be efficient if employees prefer to develop regardless of their personal needs and other people’s expectations. Nowadays, many workers set their goals and try to reach them without any other considerations about their social statuses or human needs (Kane and Patapan, 2014). Therefore, Maslow’s model is generalized and cannot be applied similarly to all population groups.

Another set of theories similar to Maslow’s is the set of X and Y theories developed by McGregor, which are motivational models that aim at fulfilling the needs of the higher stages described above. It would be proper to mention that the X theory obliges managers to use penalties and other punishments to motivate their subordinates towards better performance (Gürbüz et al., 2014). In contrast, the Y theory leads to job satisfaction and is, in essence, more positive than the first approach. However, the method of penalising employees for an unsatisfactory work is somewhat awkward in the modern world because people are taught to analyse their deeds properly today and prevent the same failures in the future to gain credit among their colleagues, superiors, and clients (Jaros, 2016). Moreover, the imposition of penalties can be regarded as a demotivating practice as it increases the level of job-related distress. According to Hall et al ., (2013), when the workplace is associated with numerous psychological hazards, such as the risk of penalising, employees tend to develop adverse psychological mindsets that contribute to dissatisfaction and poor performance. Thus, the analysis of X and Y theories clearly shows that a positive work environment is related to better job satisfaction and can lead to the activation of employee motivation.

According to the psychological theory of cognitive dissonance developed by Leon Festinger, all people strive to reduce various gaps, referred to as dissonances in the given study (Nelson and Quick, 2013). This encompasses any incompatibilities between one’s behaviour and attitudes. There are three factors that determine the strategies for coping with this issue: the importance of different elements that might lead to cognitive dissonances among managers and their employees (Judge et al., 2017), influencing people’s beliefs as to the factors that lead to these dissonances, and rewards that might have a significant impact on the development of multiple dissonances in one society (Yousef, 2016). Although the theory proposed by Leon Festinger is sound, it does not explain the main factors that might influence cognitive dissonances. Usually, this problem is known as a personal conflict in psychology, whereas the scholar proves that the issue can emerge among various people (Hambleton, 2014). Individuals experience cognitive dissonances when perceptions of a certain object or work by their brains and bodies contradict each other and cannot be synchronised.

The theory of A-B relationship is another important subject to consider. In this scheme, the letter A stands for attitudes, and the letter B is used for determining behaviours that might be caused by those attitudes (Goleman et al., 2016). However, such a theory might be considered only with the fact of moderating the presence of such variables as social pressures on employees, direct experience with a specific attitude (Wagner and Hollenbeck, 2015), accessibility of the attitude, the importance of the attitude (Dhar, 2015), the specificity of the attitude. In social communities, the factor of behaviour must be considered by every their member. It is necessary to mention that people behave themselves differently among a variety of fellowship circles (Braun et al., 2013). Therefore, the theory given above does not identify any new perspective on situations where colleagues disrespect one another and try to look better in the eyes of superiors for their peers’ deeds and accomplishments.

Lastly, according to McKinsey’s 7S framework of motivation, which comprises such elements as shared values, staff, systems, style, skills, strategy, and structure, professional managers must draw on every element of this theory to develop and take wise decisions regarding the improvement of job satisfaction in employees (Singh, 2013, p. 44). Such an approach is beneficial for detecting and identifying different changes in certain situations or a company in general. McKinsey’s theory has been practised by many beginner firms, where it did not turn out to be successful (Daft, 2014). It is claimed to be interruptive regarding the primary working process. This theory requires paying much attention to it, whereas the main goals in job satisfaction can be hardly achieved with its help (Lee et al., 2015). However, some elements given above are beneficial for the general development of employees and their working environment in general.

The evaluated theories reveal that workplace-related factors defining job satisfaction substantially determine the degree of employee motivation. In general, the theories indicate that highly satisfied employees usually become more motivated, while those workers whose preferred job-related needs are not satisfied are associated with lower work engagement. The theoretical premises are supported by research evidence. For instance, Zheng et al. (2014) state that a person’s attitudes towards work-related factors affect his/her self-regulation behaviours, namely, the ability to modify behaviours in response to challenges and environmental changes, which, in their turn, are directly linked to motivation. Such factors as job insecurity mediated by the lack of manager-employee communication, poorly defined responsibilities and objectives, etc., are associated with low levels of self-regulation among employees. Additionally, Fisher (2010) observes that emotional experiences during work and emotional evaluations of job features affect the level of one’s organisational commitment and job engagement, directly influencing the overall employee performance and behaviours.

The organisational commitment remains a critical part of job attitudes and employees’ work satisfaction, playing a tremendous role in people’s understanding of personal significance and importance (Hülsheger et al., 2013). In general, it can be identified as a worker’s desire to contribute to the professional activity of any business. Thus, it is associated with employee motivation and positive organisational behaviour. Three major dimensions of organisational commitment can be identified. Affective commitment is a desire to remain a part of one’s organisation on a regular basis and believe in its further prosperity. Continuance commitment is a comparison of values and benefits that might be obtained at other workplaces in contrast to those in the present occupation (Daft, 2014). As a result, people see more advantages in being employed by their firms, regardless of their positions in the market. Normative commitment is the individual’s will to maintain his or her professional activity in a certain company under any circumstances due to specific values, goals, and moral norms.

Successful companies are more likely to develop commitment in their workers, make them satisfied with their jobs and other things related to their positions as they understand that such an approach to the entire working process makes the atmosphere among colleagues less stressful and nervous (Hülsheger et al., 2013). Apple is an example of a successful enterprise that acknowledges the significance of job satisfaction. As one of the biggest and most successful corporations in the world, it uses a comprehensive motivation strategy that addressed all steps identified within Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to promote positive behaviours in workers. To ensure that the company’s employees do not have any unsatisfied physiological needs, Apple pays managers one hundred and ten thousand dollars in annual salary (Barnett, 2015). Moreover, the human resources department of this electronics company provides all necessary insurance benefits and covers employees’ medical expenses as needed. Also, Apple offices are equipped with various security applications and devices to maintain workplace safety (Haslam et al., 2014). The plans of the corporation include the improvement of relationships between workers and supervisors to address the belonging needs of employees. To fulfil people’s self-esteem needs, the organisation’s managers decided to give from three to five percent recognition bonuses. In the end, Apple’s best employees are given a chance to contribute to educational processes and various development programmes that are aimed at teaching students who might specialise the sphere of electronic gadgets in the future.

Discussed motivational theories can be implemented in practice in many ways depending on the context and overall features of the employee population. According to Ho and Nesbit (2014), there are several Chinese companies that developed their own approaches based on job satisfaction theories. Perhaps the approach discussed below is somewhat uncommon for Europeans or Americans as people of Asian cultural background have other values and goals in life. The managers of the companies discussed in the research by Ho and Nesbit (2014) let their employees practise self-leadership to satisfy their professional needs. “Self-leadership consists of three distinct but complementary categories of strategies—behaviour-focused, natural reward, and constructive thought pattern strategies—through which people control their own actions and thinking to reach personal and organisational goals” (Ho and Nesbit, 2014, p. 342). It means that when individuals are given the freedom to do something, their minds become concentrated on provided tasks as they treat these activities as their own projects or creations.

It would be proper to examine the attitudes and job satisfaction hypotheses used by nine modern Chinese businesses with the help of the anthropological method. At the very beginning, Asian corporations thought that self-leadership influences workers’ satisfaction as they are allowed to decide how to perform their daily duties (Cha et al., 2015). As the time passed by and local managers gained some experience in the given question, they arrived at the point of view that autonomic job also improves behaviours of people at work and their general performance rate (Caldwell and Hasan, 2016). Nowadays, these businesses stick to the hypothesis, which supports the idea of allocating various tasks and responsibilities among workers and let them control their time and resources required for its completion (Jaques, 2017). Usually, employees show decent results and manage to save more time and corporate financial means.

The research findings indicate that managers should understand which factors can contribute to better job satisfaction in their employees and which job-related features they can value most, for instance, work autonomy, recognition of achievements through rewards, and so on. By emphasising and actualising those factors at the workplace, managers can mediate the subjective emotional and psychological perception of the work environment, job, and organisation as a whole. Consequently, a positive attitude will translate into individuals who desire to perform better and thrive within the organisation. Overall, to achieve such positive behavioural outcomes, managers must perfectly align the elements of the work environment, personal attitudes/values/objectives, and organisational goals.

Every worker must be motivated to perform his or her work accurately and professionally. One’s attitude and job satisfaction are connected to employees’ productivity and readiness to engage in their working processes with extra effort and strong desires to develop in a particular sphere. The factors mentioned above are considered to play a major role in people’s personal lives, and their success at work might also have significant impacts on their mood and relationships with relatives. There are many theories developed by various scholars to resolve the problem of people’s job dissatisfaction and behaviour at working places. Nevertheless, none of the models presented in the paper can be claimed unique or original. All of them have particular drawbacks and positive effects on relationships among employees. To make the best of the learned information, it would be proper to use several theories at the same time to make the working process balanced. As long as one theory is efficient for colleagues’ communication and desire to work together, another one can be responsible for their mood and attitudes towards their duties.

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• Published: 14 May 2011

Relationship between Organizational Culture, Leadership Behavior and Job Satisfaction

• Yafang Tsai 1 , 2  

BMC Health Services Research volume  11 , Article number:  98 ( 2011 ) Cite this article

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Organizational culture refers to the beliefs and values that have existed in an organization for a long time, and to the beliefs of the staff and the foreseen value of their work that will influence their attitudes and behavior. Administrators usually adjust their leadership behavior to accomplish the mission of the organization, and this could influence the employees' job satisfaction. It is therefore essential to understand the relationship between organizational culture, leadership behavior and job satisfaction of employees.

A cross-sectional study was undertaken that focused on hospital nurses in Taiwan. Data was collected using a structured questionnaire; 300 questionnaires were distributed and 200 valid questionnaires were returned. To test the reliability of the data, they were analyzed by Cronbach's α and confirmatory factors. Correlation analysis was used on the relationships between organizational cultures, leadership behavior and job satisfaction.

Organizational cultures were significantly (positively) correlated with leadership behavior and job satisfaction, and leadership behavior was significantly (positively) correlated with job satisfaction.

Conclusions

The culture within an organization is very important, playing a large role in whether it is a happy and healthy environment in which to work. In communicating and promoting the organizational ethos to employees, their acknowledgement and acceptance of it can influence their work behavior and attitudes. When the interaction between the leadership and employees is good, the latter will make a greater contribution to team communication and collaboration, and will also be encouraged to accomplish the mission and objectives assigned by the organization, thereby enhancing job satisfaction.

Peer Review reports

Organizational culture is described by Robbins & Coulter [ 1 ] as the shared values, beliefs, or perceptions held by employees within an organization or organizational unit. Because organizational culture reflects the values, beliefs and behavioral norms that are used by employees in an organization to give meaning to the situations that they encounter, it can influence the attitudes and behavior of the staff [ 2 ]. Understanding the organization's core values can prevent possible internal conflict [ 3 ], which is the main reason for our research into these cultural issues.

In other management fields, empirical research of organizational culture has involved the functionalist perspective, providing impressive evidence of the role of organizational culture in improving performance [ 4 ]. The pervasiveness of an organizational culture requires that management recognize its underpinning dimensions and its impact on employee-related variables, such as job satisfaction [ 5 ], organizational commitment [ 6 ], and performance [ 7 ]. Lund [ 5 ] believed that less research was done on the relationship between organizational culture and job satisfaction within the research topic of organizational culture and outcome. The organization consists of the staff, with the behavior of its individual members affecting outcomes. Since cultural research within the nursing field is not common [ 8 ], it is necessary to explore the way the culture influences the behavior of the nursing staff, and in turn how the behavior of the staff influences the organizational outcome.

A two-dimensional model of leadership that focuses on the concern for people and production has been used for many years in organizational research [ 9 ]. In the late 1970s, leadership research started focusing on behavior within organizational change and development [ 10 ]. Leadership implies authority in the broadest sense of the word and not simply the power to wield the stick [ 11 ]. It is based on objective factors, such as managerial ability, and more subjective characteristics that include personal qualities of the leaders. The factors are of even greater importance given the current emerging culture of the nurse who has a clear and assertive vision about the nature of clinical practice [ 12 ].

Currently, there is a shortage of nurses in clinical care, and good leaders can help any attrition. Furthermore, the leadership skills of nurse administrators can contribute to the success of their organization [ 13 ]. Leadership is of increasing importance in clinical nursing [ 14 ]. Although leadership and organizational culture constructs have been well studied, the relationship between them has not been established in the field of nursing [ 6 ]. This study explores the relationship between organizational culture and leadership behavior.

Berson & Linton [ 15 ] discovered that within the research & development (R&D) and administrative environments, leadership behavior of a manager is closely related to work satisfaction of the employees. Nielsen et al. [ 16 ] have stated that leadership behavior and job satisfaction will depend on the organizational context; therefore another objective of this research was to understand how the leadership behavior of the administrator in different organizational cultures affects job satisfaction. Casida & Pinto-Zipp [ 17 ] explored how nurses felt about the relationship between leadership and organizational culture, and found them to be correlated. Although the data indicated that the development of an organizational culture is related to the behavior of its leaders, the results failed conclude whether this affected their attitudes or behavior as employees. From the nursing administration perspective, the normal course of action taken to influence employee behavior and achieve the objectives set by the administrators comes through administrative management. Therefore, as well as discussing the relationship between leadership behavior and organizational culture, this research will investigate the effect of leader behavior and organizational culture towards employee job satisfaction. The findings clearly show that hospital administrators should be concerned about the effects of leadership behavior and organizational culture on the attitude towards work of their employees. This should help administrators alter their behavior in order to maintain a good mutual relationship with their subordinates, improving their working attitude and, more importantly, reducing potential conflicts.

Relationship between organizational culture and leadership behavior

Culture is socially learned and transmitted by members; it provides the rules for behavior within organizations [ 18 ]. The definition of organizational culture is of the belief that can guide staff in knowing what to do and what not to do, including practices, values, and assumptions about their work [ 19 ]. The core values of an organization begin with its leadership, which will then evolve to a leadership style. Subordinates will be led by these values and the behavior of leaders, such that the behavior of both parties should become increasingly in line. When strong unified behavior, values and beliefs have been developed, a strong organizational culture emerges. Leaders have to appreciate their function in maintaining an organization's culture. This would in return ensure consistent behavior between members of the organization, reducing conflicts and creating a healthy working environment for employees [ 20 ].

Hypothesis 1- Organizational culture is positively correlated with leadership behavior .

Relationship between leadership behavior and job satisfaction

Job satisfaction has been associated with nurses who perceive their managers as supportive and caring. A supportive manager shares values, believes in a balance of power, and provides opportunities for open dialogue with nurses [ 21 ], which in turn reduces the chances of internal conflicts. This type of leader is successful in his or her role and is supportive and responsive to clinical nurses, thereby preserving power and status within the hospital system. Such leaders are valued throughout the organization and have executive power to do what they see as necessary to create a positive environment for nursing [ 22 ]. Accordingly, they have a measurable effect on the morale and job satisfaction of nurses [ 23 ].

Hypothesis 2 - Leadership behavior is positively correlated with job satisfaction .

Relationship between organizational culture and job satisfaction

Organizational culture expresses shared assumptions, values and beliefs, and is the social glue holding an organization together [ 24 ]. A strong culture is a system of rules that spells out how people should behave [ 25 ]. An organization with a strong culture has common values and codes of conduct for its employees, which should help them accomplish their missions and goals. Work recognition and job satisfaction can be achieved when employees can complete the tasks assigned to them by the organization.

Hypothesis 3 -.Organizational culture is positively correlated with job satisfaction .

The measurement of organizational culture, leadership behavior and job satisfaction

A structured questionnaire was compiled based on similar studies published in international journals [ 26 , 27 ]. Twenty-three factors regarding organizational culture were taken from Tsui et al. [ 26 ], a study based on two groups of MBA students from two universities in Beijing, China. Our research was focused on clinical nurses in hospitals; therefore, refinements were made to the questionnaire designed by Tsui et al. [ 26 ] to cater for our particular research objective. The study invited three directors or supervisors from the medical center to validate the questionnaire. Lastly, there were 22 questions in the organizational culture section.

Thirty items regarding leadership behavior were taken from Strange & Mumford [ 27 ], and the questions structured using this literature. However, the proposed test was not empirically studied. Nurses from hospital A were used as a pilot study sample. Four question items were deleted to improve the validity of the questionnaire: "People will have an extreme reaction to the leader"; "Followers will sacrifice themselves for the leader and/or the leader's vision"; "The leader is motivated by the accomplishment of his vision"; and "The leader will take into account the needs of the organization in his decision making."

Vroom [ 28 ] classified job satisfaction into 7 dimensions: organizational, promotion, job content, superior, reward, working environment and working partners. We took into consideration that nurses' salary increases are based on promotion. Furthermore, a large number of variables in organization culture and leadership behavior were covered by this research. To prevent too few number nurses from responding to the questionnaires, we asked only 4 job satisfaction dimensions out of a total of 12 items: job recognition, reward and welfare, superior and working partners.

Study Design

A cross-sectional study was conducted in two hospitals in Central Taiwan.

Data Source and Analysis

We employed self-administered questionnaires to collect research data. Data was collected between October 1 and November 30, 2008. We selected 2 hospitals as our sample target and appointed a designated person at each to issue questionnaires to employees. The number of questionnaires issued depended on the designated person. The questionnaires were completed voluntarily by all respondents. During the research period, there were 325 nurses in hospital A; 100 questionnaires were distributed, and 57 valid questionnaires were returned. In hospital B there were a total of 572 nurses; 200 questionnaires were distributed, and 143 valid questionnaires were returned (total return rate 66.7%).

Of the subjects, 99.5% were female, 83.5% single or never married, 35.5% had a tenure at the hospital of 1-2 years, and 45.0% had had a college-level education. The majority of employees at the hospitals were general nurses (89.5%), and the average age was between 21 and 30 years (82.5%)(see Table 1 ).

All data were analyzed using the SPSS 17.0 software package. Cronbach's α coefficient was used to assessed the internal consistency reliability of scales. To explore the factor construct of scale, a series of exploratory factor analysis (EFA) were employed. Correlation analysis was used to test for the relationships among subscales of organizational culture, leadership behavior and job satisfaction scale. Finally, a series of regression analysis were used to identify the proposed hypotheses. For H1 and H3, two sets of simple linear regression were used to assess the association between independent variable and dependent variable. For H2, hierarchical regression analysis was used to assess the independent association between leadership behavior and job satisfaction after controlling for the effect of organizational culture. Partial R 2 (Δ R 2 ), F test and standardized regression coefficient ( β ) and their test statistics ( t value) were reported in all regression analysis.

Measurement

Given the latent character of the variables considered in the study, we used multi-item, 5-point Likert-type scales (1='strongly disagree' and 5='strongly agree'). After reliability analysis, the Cronbach's α of the organizational culture scale was 0.958 (22 items). The Cronbach's α of the leadership behavior scale was 0.966 (26 items), and for job satisfaction 0.855 (12 items).

The questionnaires used exploratory factor analysis. We extracted 4 factors from the organizational culture via principal component analysis, used the Varimax of the rotation method, and named them: employee orientation, customer focus, emphasizing responsibility, and emphasizing cooperation. We extracted 4 factors from leadership behavior and named them: leader's encouragement and supportiveness to subordinates, leader giving subordinates a clear vision and trust, leader's behavior is consistent with organization's vision, and leader is persuasive in convincing subordinates to acknowledge the vision. We extracted factors for job satisfaction and called them: working partners, rewards and welfare, superior and job recognition.

Descriptive statistics

The average score for organizational culture was between 3.73 and 3.19, but the highest score was 3.73: "satisfying the need of customers at the largest scale." The second highest score was 3.68: "the profit of the customer is emphasized extremely." The lowest score was 3.19: "concern for the individual development of employees" (see Table 2 ).

The average score for leadership behavior was between 3.77 and 3.42, where 2 items scored the highest score at 3.77: "the leader will act accordingly with a certain 'vision' that specifies a better future state", and "the leader will behaviorally role model the values implied by the vision by personal example". The second highest score was 3.69: "the leader will use positive rewards and reinforcement with his followers." The lowest score was 3.42: "the leader will try to persuade those who disagree with his vision to agree with it" (see Table 2 ).

The average score for job satisfaction was between 3.84 and 2.56, where the highest score was 3.84: "to certain people my work is extremely important." The second highest score was "I am satisfied with how colleagues communicate with each other in the office." The lowest score was 2.56: "I am satisfied with my salary as I have less workload compared to other employees in other divisions" (see Table 2 ).

Inferential statistical analysis

In relation to the 4 dimensions of organizational culture (employee orientation, customer focus, emphasizing responsibility, and emphasizing cooperation), the 4 dimensions of leadership behavior (leader's encouragement and support to subordinates, leader giving subordinates her/his clear vision, leader's behavior is consistent with the her/his vision and leader is persuasive in convincing subordinates to acknowledge the her/his vision), and the 4 dimensions of job satisfaction (working partners, rewards and welfare, superior and job recognition), variable analysis was carried out. The results of the analysis showed that only 2 dimensions from "leader giving subordinates her/his clear vision" and "behavior consistent with her/his vision" and "reward and welfare" under the job satisfaction were not significantly correlated, whereas the other dimensions showed significant correlation. The results also showed that organizational culture, leadership behavior and job satisfaction were positively associated with hypotheses one to three, which were supported (see Table 3 ).

Table 4 presents the results of several regression analyses. H1 was supported, as organizational culture was positively associated with leadership behavior ( β = .55, p < .001). H3 was also supported as organizational culture was positively related to job satisfaction ( β = .66, p < .001). Finally, H2 was supported as the partial regression coefficient of leadership behavior reached statistically significant ( β = .33, p < .001) after controlling the effect of organizational culture. The unique variance explained attributable to leadership behavior was 8% (Δ F = 30.58, p <.001) independent of organizational culture (see Table 4 ). The association among there three main variables was illustrated as Figure 1 .

The association between organizational culture, leadership behavior and job satisfaction . (The values shown were standardized regression coefficient and value in parenthesis was partially standardized regression coefficient)

Casida & Pinto-Zipp [ 17 ] studied nurses in determining the relationship between different leadership styles and organizational cultures, and showed a correlation between leadership and organizational culture, consistent with the findings of our research. However, by adopting regression analysis, we also found that leadership behavior impacts on organizational culture.

Laschinger et al. [ 29 ] proposed that the variables strongly correlated with job satisfaction included role conflict, head nurse leadership, supervisory relationships, autonomy, and stress. Mayo [ 30 ] argued that the key determinant of job satisfaction was group interaction, and highlighted the importance of good leadership and satisfying personal relations in the workplace. Management and leadership behavior at the hospital affected nurses' job satisfaction [ 31 ]. The research also discovered that leadership behavior will also influence employee job satisfaction. As well as the above-described individual factors, the research also showed that factors at the organization level, such as the organizational culture, also have an effect on job satisfaction. This result is consistent with the results of Gifford et al. [ 32 ]. It is recommended that it is also important for hospital administrators to establish a good organizational infrastructure in addition to improving the working environment in order to increase employee job satisfaction.

Decisions about patient care are often made by a team, rather than by a single individual [ 33 ]. To maintain open communication and better coordination, as well as avoiding possible conflicts, one must rely on the role of leaders to motivate the team to achieve the organization goal. It was found that encouragement and support by leaders, their trust and clear vision, their consistent behavior in this regard and their ability to convince subordinates to acknowledge their vision, can all influence employee job satisfaction. On the other hand, we found that the factors in achieving job satisfaction were not limited to the employee's working environment, but also included interactions between working partners. Good health care requires good team behavior, so it is also recommended that hospital administrators not only establish relationships within the health care teams, but also work to improve these relationships to increase employee job satisfaction.

Academics who study organizational culture as their research topic feel that organizational culture is complex. It will influence different employee attitudes and behavior [ 34 ]; for example Jacobs & Roodt [ 35 ] discovered a correlation between employee turnover intentions, knowledge sharing organizational commitment, organizational citizenship behavior, job satisfaction and organizational culture. Other academics have found that organizational culture is also related to organization or employee efficiency. Good examples are an organization's innovative ability [ 36 ], employee effectiveness (e.g. higher levels of goal orientation, self control) [ 37 ]. Kane-Urrabazo [ 20 ] believed that a satisfactory work environment can be created by the employees when an organisation possesses a healthy culture and thus has a positive attitude towards employee work. Therefore the relationship between organisational culture and employee behaviour/attitude has been emphasised by different academics from various fields [ 26 ]. Jacobs & Roodt [ 35 ] showed a positive correlation between organisational culture and employee job satisfaction that is consistent with the findings of our research.

Research limitations and future research

Since a wide range of variables were included in our study, only a limited number of clinical nurses were interested in participating. Furthermore, only 2 hospitals were involved in this research; therefore, it is proposed that in view of the response rate, future research should consider adjusting the research variables.

Organizations face challenges in the external environment and changing internal context, and leaders will alter their behavior to adapt to these environment changes. Therefore it is proposed that longitudinal research methods can be adopted in future investigations into how changes in organizational context impact on leadership behavior. Will these changes create a brand new organization culture? And how will these changes in leadership behavior influence employee behavior and their contribution to the organization?

Administrators usually adjust their leadership behavior in order to reach the organizational goal. It is proposed that future research can explore the type of leadership behavior that will shape a particular culture within an organization. Thus, administrators can achieve the objective of shaping a new organization culture by adopting different leadership behavior training programs.

Culture within an organization is very important, playing a large role in whether or not the organization is a happy and healthy place to work [ 20 ]. Through communicating and promoting the organizational vision to subordinates, and in getting their acknowledgement of the vision, it is possible to influence their work behavior and attitudes. When there is good interaction between the leader and subordinates, there will be contributions to team communication and collaboration, and encouragement of subordinates to accomplish the mission and objectives assigned by the organization, which in turn enhances job satisfaction.

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Role of Personal and Organizational Values in Job Satisfaction Expository Essay

Introduction, south-west airlines organizational behaviour.

Various studies have been carried out to determine the importance of an organizational behaviour. Organizational Behaviour is an analysis that caters for various business applications including investigation of business acquaintance to determine how personal and organizational values affect employees’ job satisfaction.

The relationship between organizations and individuals takes various approaches, for instance behaviours of an individual, a group, the organization or a simple social system. The main aim of such an analysis is to build longer relationships by catering for individual demands, organizational and social objectives.

The analysis often fails to cater for individual values, but majority of today’s leaders acknowledge that considering the individual values is important for personal, professional and social satisfaction of the employees.

Values are unique abstractions that determine the desired behavioural aspects such as freedom of participation, equality, as well as respect for traditional practices, believing in individual as well as group loyalty, respect for friendship and openness.

Personal values characterize an individual but also describe a group, a work unit and the entire organization, due to the self-driven properties and other results. The values form part of personal concept of defining performance procedures and therefore describe the person’s attitude towards performance.

For this reason, the organizations and personal values of performance form a strong basis for determining employee’s job satisfaction. According to Buerki and Louis, “personal values determine individual’s attitude, personal norms, preferences/choice as well as behaviour (7)”.

At an organization’s level, the personal values determine the organization’s culture, which is a key factor in determining the employee’s job satisfaction. Various organizations have strict and competitively task-oriented cultures while others are flexible enough to cater for its loyalty to customers as well as employees and make provision for employee’s personal development.

The personal and organization’s values are thus important factors or determining behavioural norms and employee’s expectations, management prospects and formation of social identity. The values are generally the psychological aspects of determining formation of a work environment.

This study will focus on the social and organizational values of South-West Airlines, with a particular interest on the connection between employee’s values such as desires and other work-related experiences. The relationship between the organizational and personal values is often referred to as the value congruence that generates various organizational values and individual predilections to understand how well the individual match to the organization as an employee.

Company background

One of the main missions of South-Western Airlines is to provide a form of rewarding and enforce mutual understanding among the employees. This is strategy for enhancing growth of its client base. The airlines also provide a guarantee for employees’ safety through harmonizing operations.

The main reason the firm is in a position to offer competitive rages to its potential competitors is the capacity to ensure motivation of employees. The airline also ensures high ethical and professional standards for all the corporate activities by ensuring the staffs offers the best quality services through enthusiastic participation.

Considering the employees’ personal values during performance also ensures their participation in decision-making procedures (South-west Airlines, 1).

Decentralized form of governance assists in enhancement of employees’ performance since they contribute and participate in governance depending on their departments or work environments. The employees are also able to meet goals and set personal standards since empowerment promotes sharing and creates a sense of ownership.

Organization Chart

Definition of terms

Personal/Organizational values – Psychological aspects of determining formation of a Work Environment

Organizational Behaviour – Analysis of various business applications such as Personal and organizational values affecting employees’ job satisfaction.

Moral Parameters – Values that determine leadership styles, group dynamics and Communication

Autocracy – Dictatorship

Collegial – Partnership between the employees and management

Identification of Technical Facts

Evidently, there are various ethical implications at South-west Airlines that connect to employees’ moral dilemmas and satisfaction. Various accusations from employees and filed cases against the firm is a clear indication that personal values and consequently their level of satisfaction often compromise the reputation of the firm and cause mistrust among potential investors.

An indistinguishable organizational culture and lack of respect for individual values can cause apprehension among employees and thus ruins the reputation of a company. For instance, do companies act ethically when they fail to reveal all-important information such as employment or promotional terms and conditions?

Moral parameters

The performance of the firm depends solely on managerial decisions to implement certain guidance values. The values determine the organizations’ culture that is made of various formal, informal and social situations. The cultural values are therefore moral parameters that assist in determining the leadership styles, group dynamics and communication within the firm.

The workers therefore base their personal values on the organizational culture as long as it presents a form of quality that determines the employee’s degree of motivation. The final products of motivated or satisfied employees include better performance at personal professional level of growth and general development of the firm.

The combination is a model or organizational framework that is capable of modelling a good framework for operations of the firm. In relation to Buerki and Vottero (12), on identification of viable business ethical values and moral parameters, it is important to follow personal values and the reputation they cause to the firm. The analysis of values also depends on the extent at which the employees’ worth is affected.

Legal constrains

According to Buerki and Vottero, “another ethical issue represented in South-west Airlines’ study involves invoking the conscience clause in relation to the law (12)”. Good organizational values must provide employees and investors with appropriate information other than implement some scrupulous ways of capturing clients’ attention, such as influencing them of enhances sales. Employees often have different values than those of the organization, thus the common conflicts of interests.

Autocracy Model of Performance

South-west Airlines operates in under the framework that, since it has a powerful form of administrative orientation that aims in orienting employees into obedient and dependable business assets (South-west Airlines, 1). It is a way of conforming to employees’ demands with subsistence, through following a predetermined form of professional code of values or a well-known organizational culture.

Proper treatment of the employees is an assured measure of maximizing profits due to performance increase that often results from employees’ job satisfaction. Organization culture is often made of some in-house bureaucratic rules or directives that are meant for internal business gains and firm’s efficiency over its good relationship with the employees.

There are various ethical values that indirectly constrain employees, such as implementation of a constitution that assist in generation of higher profits for the firm, but exploits third parties. The basic employees’ needs might be met, but performance results are minimal.

Custodial Model of Performance

The firm bases its performance analysis on economic resources or ability to generate more profits. The managers are oriented to money, while the employees base their performance on security and such benefits that make them depend on the organization (South-west Airlines, 1). If the company meets the security needs, the performance results from passive cooperation due to lack of better options as opposed to job satisfaction.

Supportive Model of Performance

The leaders in this model do not base their administrative needs on monetary terms but rather maintain a managerial point of reference based on employees’ support. The employees are thus more motivated and oriented towards performance and greater participation in decision-making and profit progression plans.

The status and recognition of the employees is of grate benefit to the firm, due to performance result that depends on resolutions that awakens motivation.

Collegial Model of Performance

Collegial model is based on the partnership between the employees and management. The management is oriented towards team performance through enhanced group/team work activities. Such a managerial style depends extremely on liable performance measures and self-discipline.

Such a managerial style is able to meet employee’s self-actualization and enhance moderate enthusiasm. Enthusiastic employees are able to deliver better performance results. Although all these models of performance are different, the firm cannot use them separately since they are not separate but inclusive, thus the difficulties of exclusive operations.

Neither of the models is more predominant and thus overlaps the other rules. The current need for industrial growth at South-west Airlines is a clear indication that they need the autocratic model of performance.

This is an indication that there is no better management model since they depend with reason for implementation and the need to implement a new model. An ethical dilemma that most South-west Airlines managers faces before making their final decision is based on their need to find a better and ethical marketing strategy, which cannot compromise the moral principles particularly the business ethical values.

Social-Cultural Systems

The relationship among business managers and employees is a complex matter since the interaction is diverse. The social-cultural system is equally complex with people having differences of opinions within and outside the work setting. The cultural values of one member especially a person who is on a managerial level can have direct or indirect impact on other employees.

The social-cultural system lacks boundaries due to exchange of services or merchandise, interaction between culturally different ideas and environments.

Cultural differences between individuals and the employer determine the behavioural aspects such as performance since personal values emerges from these different practices, knowledge, customs, thoughts and believes.

Employees’ performance therefore depends on the cultural differences that offer personal understanding, stability, self-precautions and ability to face a given situation. People often fear change due to possible alteration of the cultural differences and thus adjustments of personal values.

Change of these personal values can easily cause instability, loss of security and failure to come to terms with the introduced system. Personal values can also cause individualism since the employees are in a position to push for change in the firm successfully and thus change the existing organizational culture.

The Common Effects of Personal Values

The diagram above indicates that isolation within a firm occurs due to low individualization and less socialization. Contrary, when social interaction is too low but people are very individualistic (have wide differences on personal values), the interaction often causes rebelliousness and disagreements.

High social interaction and low individualization causes employees’ conformity, while high individualization and socialization causes formation of a competitive environment. Employees who feel the responsibility to grow in a competitive market are always making the right decision.

Individualistic values favour rights of individuals since they break the tie of social networks to form admiration for personal values. On the other hand, social-cultural systems reward careers due to group harmony. The values in this case are meant to challenge the firms’ values through questioning and experimenting, but retain the cultural values that maintain social unity (Lycette and Herniman, 25).

Assessment of Current Job Satisfaction Techniques

South-west Airlines combines various techniques such as the need to assure inventive strategies and embrace dynamics of technology to enhance motivation. This is a long-term strategy that promotes employees’ job satisfaction and thus customer satisfaction due to positive and warm advice or services they receive from the staffs.

According to the company’s prospectors, South-west Airlines has unique strategies of enforcing collaboration with other leading airline and hospitality companies and thus are able to increase value for growth among its employees (1). The firm’s employees collaborate as chief information officers, each acting on personal capacity as the company’s ambassador.

Strategy to make obligatory measures that employees must act as per personal values towards growth of the industry empowers the employees who eventually perform better due to the motivation. Job satisfaction depends on personal ability to involve employees in various executive positions and capacities to oversee the firm’s performance.

When they are able to find ways of complying with various international stands besides basing decisions on personal values, the employees are able to satisfactory perform up to standards.

Job Motivational Strategies for South-west Airlines

South-West Airlines implements diverse strategies of motivating employees especially those at the customer-service levels. The firm empowers them through assignment of tasks that require personal creativity and full involvement such as restructuring and marketing of the firm’s deals or finding as well as attracting the potential clientele.

To motive the employees, the company involves them in various retraining courses especially those set by international standards. (Lycette and Herniman, 28). The training procedure creates a building block for guidance and promotion of personal values through diversification of activities.

The employees also enjoy various benefits during such programs such as allowances, more diversified learning and paid time-offs. Engaging employees in various managerial roles through a quality preliminary training program motivates them especially when they engage some critical analysis of these work-related form of learning (Maio and Haddock, 212),

South-West Airlines implements various employees’ motivation approaches such as constant improvement or changeover of personnel at its customer care department. The changes depend on the empowerment of the employees, performance analysis and the organization culture.

The positive culture of the firm depends on employees’ ability to interact and exchange ideas through enhanced rapport and incentive programs. The organization culture also has a basis on role the employees play in ensuring they follow values that put clients first.

Well-nurtured personnel are the main determinant of the form of nurturing the customer receives. According to the prospectus, South-West Airlines utilizes the job satisfaction assurance as a unique and outrageous strategy for enforcing better performance levels (1).

South-west Airlines Managerial Views

Fostered performance culture.

South-West Airlines lays-down the company’s objectives in accordance with ability to meet employees’ expectation. The positive culture encouraged among the employees ensures respect for personal values, thus promoting individuals’ job satisfaction.

The South-West Airlines’ procedure for redesigning jobs provides a sense of value among employees who face diverse challenges. A performance culture provides them capacity to recognize achievements. The steady motivating procedures depend on differences of daily activities due to the dynamism and the ability to perfect performances.

The liberal aspects of behavioural changes assist in finding the difference between personal values and organization’s procedures that are culturally right and able to foster economic growth such as maximal delivery of services.

Redesigning of company values provides some unique styles of leadership that enhances employee motivation and freedom of forming better relationships among employees due to communication improvements with the top-level management.

Personal values of employees empower them to negotiate for better working strategies thus enhancing commitment for effective and proficient customer services. In line with Maio and Haddock, “Locke’s Theory of setting goals indicates that employees are more comfortable when they work in companies where they can enjoy and feel right (218).”

South-west Airlines Performance Evaluation

How does the company implement and utilize the decision-making policies.

Issues that relate to performance of the employees often encourage a performance culture. There are various methodologies utilized by the company to promote personal values, ability to question and debate on needs to change come from the organization’s guidance.

The departmental grouping and human resources have the mandate to question and change key decisions. This is a healthy means of correcting mistakes and avoiding possible business conflicts particularly between employees and the employer.

What are the elements of determining employees’ satisfaction and consequently performance?

Management styles depend mainly on the discipline of the employees and the administration. The employees’ satisfaction and performance evaluation are determined by leadership skills or strategies and the discipline of the leaders.

There are various systematic procedures that assisting to find employee’s duties and guidelines that determine performance. The employees have different thoughts, values, feelings and actions that require critical management.

This performance culture is guided through official processes perplexed or stymie by some bureaucratic processes and eventually conflict. “In accordance to Reactance Theory, people perform negatively in accordance with personal values, only as a protest against threats or compromises presented by the organization culture,” (Maio and Haddock, 218).

How does employees’ evaluation procedure promote their values?

During the decision-making procedures, employees are answerable to various performance expectations. This discipline requires commitment and a proactive measure to cater for possible work-related obstructions.

The firm’s strategy of rewarding employees depending on performance merit ensures that employees chose the best performance strategy depending on the personal and organizational values. The airlines redesign the performance procedures to cater for enhanced and clearly defined work boundaries, which put into effect performance flexibility.

Good interrelationship among employees translates to satisfaction for both the clients and management. Evaluation of employees’ performance is thus equitable to invention values that promote labour, intensity and satisfaction.

South-west Airlines Employees Rewarding system

South-west Airlines caters for employees’ differences especially the opinions they present. The human capital is the key asset and thus heavy investment on performance indicators such as bonuses and benefits offers are essential.

The customer care sector is the key standard for supporting business services. Employees are more satisfied when the remuneration packages are good enough. Extra remunerations such as profit sharing boost their morale to work more and implement better values to achieve the set goals.

Rewarding does not necessarily mean offering the monetary incentives; the firm can also utilize certificates of performance, trophies and general recognition through publicizing good performance. Ability to understand the intensity in the labour markets depends on products of worked hours and employment shares within the group.

Provision of flexible work schedules is also an excellent rewarding mechanism since it provides some freedom for gaining better satisfaction at relatively low managerial efforts.

Service department employees often require time-offs for better performance and enhanced trust among themselves. Satisfied employees have strong relationship with customers. Catering for employees’ unique needs and values is thus a rewarding mechanism as well and it works as a good motivation among the workers by offering them the required freedom to choose aspects that boost workplace morale.

The efforts to achieve various aspects depend on rewards for both good efforts as well as achievements. Employees’ minds and values often present good ideas, which eventually cause best business thoughts.

South-west Airlines utilizes various models in enhancing its performances especially on aspects concerning the core values that influence the employees’ motivation and thus fostering job satisfaction. Autocracy is a powerful form of administration that fosters employees’ conformity to traditional values, professional code of values or a well-known organizational culture.

Custodial measures ensure that the firm bases its performance analysis on economic resources or its ability to generate extra profits. The social cultural system ensures that there exists a strong interrelationship between employees and employer.

The managers therefore ensures support for employees without basing their administrative needs on monetary gains, but rather maintain a managerial point of reference based on employees’ support. Collegial managerial style ensures existence of partnership between the employees and management of South-west Airlines.

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Lycette, Bill, and Herniman John. New Goal – Setting Theory . Journal of Industrial Management, 50(5), 25-30. Sep 2008.

Maio, Gregory, and Haddock Geoffrey. The Psychology of Attitudes and Attitude Change . London: SAGE Publishers. 2010. Print.

South-west Airlines. “Company Prospectus”. South-west Airlines . 2010. Web.

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Values, Attitudes, Job Satisfaction and Achievements

Summary of the articles

Conclusion and reflection.

This paper presents a review of journals on organisational behaviour. It focuses on values, attitudes, and job satisfaction. These are elements of organisational behaviours, which relate to and influence organisational achievements. Employee attitudes, work values, and job satisfaction have overall impacts on job performance. Job satisfaction improves with supportive organisational behaviours. The core value that creates an organisation is leadership. Leadership develops to leadership styles, which define management styles. Supportive organisational behaviours are positively related to leadership behaviours, work attitudes, values, and job satisfaction.

HR managers must understand the factors that influence employee attitudes and job satisfaction, including dispositional ones. Given the increasing focus on HR managers, they need to identify gaps in HR practices and the effects of such gaps on employee attitudes, work values, and job satisfaction. This process requires HR managers to develop appropriate tools for evaluating work values, job satisfaction, and attitudes as components of organisational behaviours.

In a journal article, Work values, work attitude and job performance of green energy industry employees in Taiwan , Liao, Lu, Huang, and Chiang (2012) noted that work values and job attitude were correlated, and they accounted for job involvement and organisational commitment among employees. Consequently, work attitudes and job involvement had significant impacts on work values and performance. At the same time, leadership styles also influenced work values and attitudes, including job participation and commitment to an organisation.

Liao et al. (2012) noted that service-based organisations depended on job attitudes and employee professionalism to influence customers’ evaluation of an organisation. These factors could either make or ruin the reputation of a firm.

Work values had a profound influence on work behaviours, individual goals, and work hours. Thus, in any industry, employee values were critical because they could affect customers’ perception of a company’s products and services. It was imperative for service-oriented organisations to relate employee work values and work attitudes with organisational values in order to internalise and establish a high emotional commitment to a company among employees.

At the same time, such strategies could help employees to identify themselves with an organisation. Thus, alignment of work values and attitudes with organisational behaviour could enhance employees’ dedication to an organisation. In this regard, organisations should allow employees to align their values and organisational values in order to enhance organisational commitment, job performance, and job satisfaction.

Therefore, organisations should measure and evaluate employees’ job performance for effective allocation of human resources, development of new training programmes and employee promotion. Moreover, job performance tests organisational abilities to reward its employees fairly based on performance. This would improve employees’ job satisfaction, morale, and future performance. Overall, job performance could show employees’ attitude and satisfaction with their jobs.

In their study, Employee Attitudes and Job Satisfaction , Saari and Judge (2004) identified three critical shortcomings between “HR practice and the scientific research in the area of employee attitudes in general and the most focal employee attitude in particular—job satisfaction” (p. 395). Their investigation entailed factors that were responsible for “employee attitudes, outcomes of negative or positive job satisfaction, and how organisations could measure and influence employee attitudes” (Saari and Judge 2004, p. 395).

They concluded that organisations had to close the gaps in knowledge when assessing the implemented practices. Moreover, the authors noted that future studies should concentrate on comprehending personal characteristics of employees like emotions when reviewing job satisfaction, and the effects of employees’ attitudes on organisational performance.

Saari and Judge (2004) observed that employee attitudes resulted from several factors. Thus, it was imperative for HR practitioners to understand attitudes and HR practices that could influence them.

Saari and Judge (2004) concluded that HR managers could close the gap between research and practice through conducting research for making informed decisions (p. 403). They also noted that HR managers faced growing demands from other business units with regard to human resource management. Organisations need the HR department to provide tactical elements needed for performance improvement.

Thus, an informed action plan is an effective tool for overcoming such challenges. In addition, HR managers must know how to create employee evaluation tools that can measure attitudes, behaviours, performance, value, and satisfaction, among others. HR managers can use results and insights from studies to improve employee attitudes and job performance.

The reviewed articles identify the relationship between work values, attitudes, and job satisfaction as aspects of organisational behaviours. Job satisfaction, work values, and attitudes have a positive correlation with job performance. Therefore, organisations should align work values, attitudes, and job satisfaction with organisational to enhance job performance.

Liao et al. (2012) observed that organisations relied on the quality of their leadership. The authors noted that leadership influenced all aspects of community activities and group involvement. Moreover, leadership also affected behaviours and relationships among employees. This explains the importance of leadership in any organisation. As a result, effective management was a fundamental component of any given company. Leadership styles affect organisational achievements. That is, leadership behaviours had significant impacts on employees’ roles and organisational performance because it could reinforce employees’ behaviours and roles. In this regard, leaders can use their ideas and beliefs to influence employees’ values and thoughts.

One must not ignore the role of leadership in shaping organisational behaviours. Therefore, leadership styles influence work values, employee attitudes, work involvement, commitment, job satisfaction, and organisational performance. Organisational leadership style should be highly considerate to enhance employee commitment, work values, attitudes, job satisfaction, performance, and organisational behaviours.

HR managers need to understand the gap between HR practices and organisational behaviours. HR managers need to collect and analyse data to get insights from employees. This is a method of closing the gap between HR practices and organisational behaviours.

Therefore, HR managers must develop appropriate tools for evaluating work values, attitudes, job satisfaction, and performance among employees. Individual factors should also be a part of organisational behaviours during evaluation. Data will provide insights for improving HR practices that focus on employee attitudes, work values, job satisfaction, and job performance.

Some scholars have shown that dispositional influences could affect job satisfaction. Consequently, many studies have concentrated on dispositional factors that could affect job satisfaction.

Cultural influences also affect employee attitudes and job satisfaction. Many HR practitioners have linked cultural influences to the rising globalisation. Hence, available studies could help HR departments to develop practices, which aid in aligning cultural factors with organisational practices.

Work situation influences relate to the nature of the work. However, other factors are also imperative in this aspect. They include pay, promotion, supervision, colleagues, and other factors that defined work environments.

Saari and Judge (2004) focused on positive and negative job satisfaction. The authors noted that positive or negative job satisfaction depended on employee attitudes. In other words, employee attitudes affected organisational outcomes. Organisational commitment also reflected the same correlations with job performance and job satisfaction.

It is imperative for organisations to comprehend the work values of their workforce to allow them to improve dedication and commitment to their firms.

Employee motivation also influences their work values and commitment to an organisation. In turn, it affects job involvement and job performance.

Job performance influences other factors, such as promotion, demotion, rewards, transfer, salary, and benefits, among others in an organisation. It also allows employees to account for their contributions to an organisation. Thus, job performance is an imperative element for understanding employees’ behaviours and job satisfaction. One must understand employees’ actions in order to account for job performance, contributions, and job satisfaction.

Job satisfaction and job performance have strong relationships when considered broadly. That is, HR managers should define job performance metrics, which account for organisational behaviours. In most cases, job performance appraisals do not account for organisational behaviours, which improve job satisfaction.

Job satisfaction and life satisfaction also interacted and influenced performances. However, organisations had greater control over job satisfaction than life satisfaction (Saari and Judge, 2004). ‘Spill over’ of life satisfaction led to job satisfaction.

It is imperative for HR departments to focus on improving low job satisfaction among employees. This would result in organisational effectiveness and create ‘spill over’ to employees, which may enhance employee life satisfaction and overall well-being.

There were also withdrawal behaviours noted among employees and their influences on job satisfaction. Employees who were not contented with their work were more likely to resign, leave, or be absent than satisfied employees. Job satisfaction influences employee attrition and absenteeism. In addition, job dissatisfaction also indicates some common withdrawal tendencies, such as lateness, retirement, substance abuse, unionisation, and conflicts among employees. HR practitioners should measure and determine financial implications related to job dissatisfaction and other withdrawal behaviours and attitudes among employees. This is a powerful technique of predicting possible outcomes of low job satisfaction, as well as the overall impact of enhanced employee attitudes.

HR managers should also understand the techniques involved in measuring and influencing employee attitudes. However, there is serious knowledge gap among HR managers on how they can measure and influence their employee attitudes. HR managers can apply different methods to measure and understand employee attitudes by using interviews, focus groups, and surveys.

Liao, C-W., Lu, C-Y, Huang, C-K., and Chiang, T-L. (2012). Work values, work attitude and job performance of green energy industry employees in Taiwan. African Journal of Business Management, 6 (15), 5299-5318. Web.

Saari, L., and Judge, T. (2004). Employee Attitudes and Job Satisfaction. Human Resource Management, 43 (4), 395–407. Web.

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Job Satisfaction: Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices Analysis in a Well-Educated Population

Paolo montuori.

1 Department of Public Health, University “Federico II”, Via Sergio Pansini N° 5, 80131 Naples, Italy

Michele Sorrentino

Pasquale sarnacchiaro.

2 Department of Law and Economics, University “Federico II”, 80131 Naples, Italy

Fabiana Di Duca

Alfonso nardo, bartolomeo ferrante, daniela d’angelo, salvatore di sarno, francesca pennino, armando masucci, maria triassi, antonio nardone, associated data.

The data that support the findings of this study are available upon reasonable request from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available due to privacy or ethical restrictions.

Job satisfaction has a huge impact on overall life quality involving social relationships, family connection and perceived health status, affecting job performances, work absenteeism and job turnover. Over the past decades, the attention towards it has grown constantly. The aim of this study is to analyze simultaneously knowledge, attitudes, and practices toward job satisfaction in a general population in a large metropolitan area. The data acquired from 1043 questionnaires—administered to subjects with an average age of 35.24 years—revealed that only 30% is satisfied by his job. Moreover, among all the tested sample, 12% receive, or often receive intimidation by their superior, and 23% wake up unhappy to go to work. Marital status and having children seem to be an important factor that negatively influences job satisfaction through worst behaviours. The multiple linear regression analysis shows how knowledge is negatively correlated to practices; although this correlation is not present in a simple linear regression showing a mediation role of attitudes in forming practices. On the contrary, attitudes, correlated both to knowledge and practices, greatly affect perceived satisfaction, leading us to target our proposed intervention toward mindfulness and to improve welfare regulation towards couples with children.

1. Introduction

Job satisfaction has been defined as a “pleasurable or positive emotional state, resulting from the appraisal of one’s job experiences” [ 1 ]. Job satisfaction reflects on overall life quality involving social relationships, family connection and perceived health status, affecting job performances, work absenteeism and job turnover, leading, in some cases, to serious psychological condition such as burnout [ 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 ].

The recent Gallup statistics on job satisfaction indicated that a very large portion of the world’s 1 billion full-time workers is disengaged, more precisely, only 15% of workers are happy and production in the workplace, the remaining 47% of workers are “not engaged,” psychologically unattached to their work and company [ 7 ]. In the EU, approximately one in five residents (16.9%) currently in employment expressed low levels of satisfaction with their job, on the other hand approximately one in four (24.6%) expressed high levels of satisfaction, the remaining residents (58.5%) declared medium levels of satisfaction with their job [ 8 ]. Characteristics such as age, sex, education, occupation, commuting time and difficulty as inadequate income, seems to be related to job satisfaction as they tent to influence expectation and preferences of individuals’ reflection on their perceived working condition [ 9 , 10 ]; however, as assessed in Eurofound, European Working Conditions Surveys [ 11 ] the relation between age and job satisfaction is very weak, although a slight increase in low satisfaction prevalence was found in elder population, it does not increase significantly with age even though expectations change during lifetime; educational attainment and income seem to play a significant role in job satisfaction as they grow in parallel, leading to better positions and a higher wages, along with power and more decisional autonomy. Sex is a factor as women seems to be overall more satisfied by their job in despite of the worst general conditions [ 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 ]. Job satisfaction also relates to marital status as single subjects’ results as the most satisfied by their work in some European Countries [ 15 ]. In Italy, the overall perceived job satisfaction seems to be similar to other regions in EU, and social relations as well as family composition appear to play a relevant role [ 16 ].

Job satisfaction has been studied mostly over a specific category of workers [ 17 , 18 ], as some types of works seems to be more related to pathological conditions such as burnout [ 19 , 20 ] and job-related stress [ 21 , 22 , 23 ]; however, as reported by those authors, this kind of selection method could lead to selection biases. According to van Saane [ 24 ], although many studies were carried as since Job Satisfaction broke out in the last 70’s as a central topic of interest, nor a mathematical instrument as reliable as desired nor a comparative method were found, usually those studies were based on single components of job satisfaction, taken out from extra working environment, and without analysing the consequences on behaviours in day life [ 25 , 26 , 27 ]. The literature research demonstrated that practices are the results of knowledge, attitudes, or their interaction. The KAP Survey Questionnaire [ 28 ] can be applied to highlight the main features of knowledge, attitude, and practice of a person, and to assess that person’s views on the matter. The purpose, when using the KAP Survey Model, is to measure a phenomenon through the quantitative collection method of a large amount of data through the administration of questionnaires and then statistically process the information obtained. Through a questionnaire, however, seems to be easier to quantify job satisfaction. In addition to that, studying broader populations’ consent to explore different components, both personal and environmental, which concur to influence it [ 29 , 30 ].

In the recent literature, a KAP model was used only once to analyse behaviours toward job satisfaction. In his work, Alavi [ 31 ] conducted a survey based cross-sectional study on 530 Iranian radiation workers; although it comprehends simultaneously knowledge, attitude, and practices, it was conducted on a specific category of workers and on a narrower population. Therefore, since to the best of our knowledge none of the studies presented in the literature are carried out on a broader population relating both knowledge and attitudes to behaviours on job satisfaction, the aim of this study is to analyse simultaneously knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours toward job satisfaction in a large metropolitan area. It is important to investigate this phenomenon to evaluate the condition and develop health education programs and community-based intervention to increase job satisfaction and knowledge and positively orienting attitudes.

2. Material and Methods

2.1. participants and procedure.

This cross-sectional study was conducted from November 2021 to February 2022 in the large metropolitan area of Naples, southern Italy, among working places, universities, and community centres. No specific category of participants was selected. In the questionnaire, respondents indicated their occupation by choosing from the following options: lawyer, architect, engineer, doctor, accountant, entrepreneur, teacher, law enforcement, trader, student, employee, worker, unemployed, other. Table 1 shows the categories indicated by the participants. The criteria for inclusion in the study required that respondents of a general population were over 18 years old, belonging to one of the categories of employment listed in Table 1 , and resided in the metropolitan area of Naples. Every participant directly received a questionnaire (available upon request from the corresponding author) and at the time of filling out the questionnaire, the aim of the study and the anonymity and privacy of the data collecting method being used was explained, both in written form, as an introduction part of the questionnaire, and verbally to each of the participants. The questionnaire consisted of basic information about participants (age, gender, children, civil state, education level, profession, smoke habits) and three pools of questions divided in knowledge, attitudes and behaviours concerning their job satisfaction for a total number of 37 questions. The construction of the questionnaire was carried out as recommended by the KAP Model [ 28 ], briefly was divided into four phases: (1) Constructing the survey protocol; (2) Preparing the survey; (3) Course of the KAP survey in field; (4) Data analysis and presentation of the survey report. To develop the questionnaire, research questions based on the “Objectives of the study” were first carried out to develop the research questions, according to KAP Survey Model [ 28 ], the knowledge was considered as a set of understandings, knowledge, and “science” while Attitude as a way of being, a position. After, the research questions were reduced in number by removing those questions that require unnecessary information. When the above step is also done, the difficult questions have been changed/removed (closed questions have been used because one of the most important things that will increase the relevance of the questions is that the questions must be closed questions). Knowledge and attitudes were assessed on a three-point Likert scale with options for “agree”, “uncertain”, and “disagree”, while inquiries regarding behaviours were in a four-answer format of “never”, “sometimes”, “often”, and “yes/always”. A pilot study was also carried out to test the questionnaire and to verify the reliability of questions. Finally, all the collected questionnaires were digitalized submitting the codified answers in an Excel worksheet (MS Office).

Study population characteristics.

2.2. Statistical Analysis

Data reported by the study were analysed using IBM SPSS (vers. 27) statistical software program. The analysis was carried out in two stages. In the first stage, a descriptive statistic was used to summarize the basic information of the statistical units. In the second stage, a Multiple Linear Regression Analysis (MLRA) was used to model the linear relationship between the independent variables and dependent variable.

The dependent variables (Knowledge, Attitudes and Behaviours) had been obtained by adding the scores obtained in the corresponding questions (questions with inverse answers have been coded inversely). The independent variables were included in all models: sex (1 = male, 2 = female); age, in years; education level (1 = primary school, 2 = middle school, 3 = high school, 4 = university degree); civil state (1 = Single; 2 = In a relationship; 3 = Married; 4 = Separated/Divorced; 5 = Widowed).

The main results from a MLRA contains the statistical significance of the regression model as well as the estimation and the statistical significance of the beta coefficients ( p -value < 0.05) and the coefficient of determination (R-squared and adjusted R-squared), used to measure how much of the variation in outcome can be explained by the variation in the independent variables. Three MLRA were developed:

• (1) Knowledge about job satisfaction (Model 1);
• (2) Attitudes toward resilience and mindfulness (Model 2);
• (3) Actual behaviours regarding Job and Job-related life (Model 3).

In Model 2, we added Knowledge to the independent variables, and in Model 3, we added Knowledge and Attitudes to the independent variables. In the analysis, we considered Attitudes and Knowledge as indexes rather than a scale, which means that each observed variable (A1, …, A13 and K1, …, K12) is assumed to cause the latent variables associated (Attitude and Knowledge). In other terms, the relationship between observed variables and latent variables is formative. Therefore, inter-observed variables correlations are not required. On the contrary, the relationship between the observed variables (B1, …, B14) and latent variable Behaviour could be considered reflective (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.825). All statistical tests were two-tailed, and the results were statistically significant if the p -values were less than or equal to 0.05.

3. Results and Discussion

Out of the 1057 participants, 1043 anonymous self-report surveys were returned, resulting in a response rate of 98.7%. Table 1 shows the characteristics of the study population: the mean age of the study population is 35.24 years; in 18–70 age range, the main group of distribution was 18–30 representing 44.6% of the sample; sex distribution shows that: 427 are men, 616 are woman. A large majority (73.5%) does not have children, while 26.5% of the sample has them. Most of the participants have a post graduate degree, while 29.1% are high school graduates. Among them, 22.2% are physicians, 15.1% teachers and 14.0% students ( Table 1 ).

Respondent’s knowledge about job satisfaction is presented in Table 2 . While a large majority of the sample population (91.7%) has a well-defined knowledge about job satisfaction main characteristics such as mains definitions, both of work-related stress and mobbing, most of them does not know or are not aware which risks are specifically related as only 31.4% knows that job related stress and mobbing are a threat to their cardiovascular health. Only 28.7% of the population knows that “Only 15% of worker, globally, are satisfied by their work” demonstrating that while knowledge regarding job related stress is well spread, the sample does not know how diffused it is and what kind of risks it involves, and that state provide a compensation for job related stress.

Knowledge of respondents toward job satisfaction.

* INAIL: Istituto Nazionale Assicurazione Infortuni sul Lavoro (National Institute for Occupational Accident Insurance).

In Table 3 are described attitudes toward job satisfaction. Most of the participants think that working out is relaxing and spending time is regenerating, showing a good attitude to copy with work related stress. According to 93.4% of the sample, workload plays a key role in job satisfaction, as well as adequate wages and a clear task schedule. Several studies have enlightened that when workers lack a clear definition of the tasks which are necessary to fulfil a specific role, their levels of job satisfaction are likely to be negatively affected [ 32 , 33 , 34 ]. Interestingly, most of the population sees challenges as a motivation to do better (80.2%) and are motivated by career opportunities (90.7%); however, 50.5% of the population has a negative attitude about changes. In confirmation of that, when asked if “Changes lead to stress”, only a small fraction of the sample (14.6%) disagreed. This allowed us to assume that, although most of the population sees problems as an opportunity to learn, improve and progress in their work, they are aware of the difficulties connected to changing scenarios. About 27.2% of the sample does not have a positive attitude toward sharing their feeling about problems at work talking out loud. Bad interpersonal relationships with co-workers are another reason for job dissatisfaction. Poor or unsupportive relationships and conflicts with colleagues and/or supervisors lead to negative psychological intensions, resulting in job dissatisfaction [ 35 , 36 ].

Attitude of respondents toward job satisfaction.

Behaviours of respondents are listed in Table 4 : A consistent part of the sample responded positively to the group of question toward behaviours regarding their coping level of stressful situation (B2, B4, B8, B9, B10) showing a reported good resilience. Commuting seems to be a problem for at least a third of the sample, also in a metropolitan area served by 2 subways, full bus service, car sharing services and a speedway. Job satisfaction is associated negatively with constraints such as commuting time. This dead time, mostly unpaid, is mandatory for workers to reach workplace. Although this is not considered as working time, and only a specific class is refunded, from the employers’ perspective, it is time dedicated to work and a strong determinant for low satisfaction levels. EU workers were much more likely to be highly (37.9%) or moderately satisfied (41.7%) with their commuting time compared to their job satisfaction. Most of the sample responded to not having experienced mobbing; although even a “low” result, such as a cumulative, summing both “yes/always” and “often”, of 11.8% is alarming and pushes us to study more about this phenomenon. Interestingly, 30.9% of respondents are satisfied about their work, reaching a total of 59.5%. In addition, with a “often” response showing a large appreciation of their jobs, 22.9% of the respondents “wake up unhappy to go to work”, and feel “stuck in a job with no career opportunities” (27.7%). The sample has no problems managing their work and social life (48.3%); however, only a complex of 35% of the sample usually spend their time with colleagues outside the office.

Behaviour of respondents toward job satisfaction.

Table 5 illustrates results of linear multiple regression in three models: in Model I Knowledge, as dependent variable, correlate, with a p -value < 0.001; with “sex”, interestingly, woman seem to have a higher overall score of knowledge in disagreement with Gulavani [ 37 ] whose study was conducted among a sample of nurses and found no significant relation between sex and knowledge on job satisfaction. Al-Haroon [ 38 ] evidenced that among health workers, men had a better overall level of knowledge. These results, however, were collected over specific categories of employees, in a narrower sample; whereas our study was represented by a general population of a metropolitan area. No statistically significant correlation between knowledge and age, civil status, children, and education levels was encountered.

Results of the linear multiple regression.

Previous research asses that attitude plays a key a role in job satisfaction, as some attitudinal characteristics of the subject influence perspective, coping skills and stressful situation management [ 39 , 40 , 41 ]. In Model II ( Table 5 ) we correlated, through MLRA, attitudes with age, sex, civil state, having children, education, and overall knowledge score. With a p -value < 0.001, two correlations were found with education and overall knowledge score, both positively. Those results reflect, in accordance with Alavi [ 31 ], who found that higher level of education was among 3 factors that predicted job satisfaction and attaining a higher university degree compared to lower degrees contributes to a feeling of coherence, success at work, personal growth and self-respect, self-realization and intrinsic motivation, that education level and therefore a higher level of knowledge contributes to generating a sense of job satisfaction. In the questionnaire we tried to collect all those propension and as a result: in agreement with Hermanwan [ 42 ], Andrews [ 43 ] and Choi [ 44 ], subjects with better knowledge and high levels of education tent to have better attitudes.

In Model III, behaviours taken as a dependent variable are correlated to age, sex, civil state, children, education, knowledge, and attitudes. The results of linear multiple regression in this model assess that behaviours are negatively correlated to civil state, sons, and knowledge, and positively correlated to attitudes. Our findings show that there is a positive correlation between behaviours and attitudes, in agreement with previous literature [ 45 , 46 , 47 ], demonstrating that people with better attitudes tent to have a better overall behaviour. Surprisingly, in Model III, knowledge also has a statistically significant correlation to behaviours but in a negative way. This correlation, however, is not present when we correlate those variables alone in a Pearson’s correlation between knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours ( Table 6 ). This evidence, therefore, suggests that attitude mediates the effect of knowledge on behaviours, assessing an important relation between those two determinants. People with a better overall score in behaviours tend to have a higher score in knowledge and attitude. In this sample, those who have a lower score in knowledge also has a higher behaviour score in accordance with a part of the previous literature [ 48 , 49 ]. This enlightens the importance of high levels of knowledge in order to form better attitudes in the pursuit of job satisfaction. Civil state and having children seem to play a key role in performing a better behaviour about job satisfaction; which is also evident in one specific question about behaviour: Question “B14” enlightens the social practices of subjects with colleagues outside the work environment, and the statistical analysis on this topic shows that subject with a more stable sentimental situation or with child tend to hang out with their colleagues less, likely worsening their relationships at work and getting a worse overall behaviour score and worse attitude toward the topic in agreement with Sousa-Poza [ 50 ] and Armstrong [ 51 ]. Job satisfaction has a strong correlation to family characteristics: Subjectst who have families with children have less positive behaviours towards their job satisfaction, directly affecting their overall behaviour score; this evidence is in contrast with Alavi [ 31 ], who states that job satisfaction is positively affected by family, assessing that “married employees have opportunities to receive support or advice from their family to mediate job conflicts,” Although he admits that in the literature, this result is controversial as some authors, such as Clark [ 52 ], found that “married employees experienced a higher level of job satisfaction than their unmarried co-workers”, and Booth and Van Ours’ [ 53 ], study did not find a statistically relevant correlation with the presence of children. Those results, therefore, suggest creating targeted educational programs, community-based intervention, and legal regulation, to improve self-awareness and resilience among workers, and a more practical intervention could be directed to families with child.

Pearson’s correlation between knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours.

4. Conclusions

This study shows that the metropolitan population has general good knowledge about job satisfaction as well as a positive attitude. Job satisfaction, however, is reflected accordingly only with attitudes. While it has a negative relation to civil state and having children, this means that the experimental results of this study may be used to create targeted educational programs, community-based intervention, and legal regulation, to improve self-awareness and resilience among workers. A more direct intervention could be directed to families with children. Social networking with colleagues has an important impact on job satisfaction, as the part of the sample who responded positively to the specific question, had an overall better behaviour. Although, in this case, having children seems to be, as they negative correlate, a huge limitation to this practice. Considering that, as previously stated, the impact of job satisfaction on the population has a strong impact in terms of life balance, health, and economics, and it is well known that only a small fraction of workers are fully satisfied. It might be important to promote welfare regulation to allow a larger part of the population to conciliate work and family. Results of this paper could be an indicator of how to establish an educational program more efficiently. It is mandatory to strengthen specific knowledge about job satisfaction through the general population toward the importance of job satisfaction and the benefits related to a correct approach to work-life. The impact of a public health intervention could be even more effective by integrating another program to orient and define attitudes, which in turn will influence people to practice a mindfulness mental setting toward job satisfaction. In conclusion, a training program based on fundamental practices of job satisfaction should be improved in the young population, in early stage of family life, or before they have children, in order to achieve a double objective: “training family and spreading the practice to a future generation”.

Funding Statement

This research received no external funding.

Author Contributions

Data curation: P.M., M.S., P.S., F.D.D., A.N. (Alfonso Nardo), B.F., D.D., S.D.S., F.P., A.M. and M.T.; Formal analysis: M.S., F.D.D., A.N. (Alfonso Nardo), B.F., D.D., S.D.S. and F.P.; Resources: P.M. and M.T.; Software: P.S.; Supervision, P.M., M.T. and A.N. (Antonio Nardone); Writing—original draft: M.S., F.D.D., A.N. (Alfonso Nardo), B.F., D.D. and S.D.S.; Writing—review and editing: P.M., M.S., P.S., F.P., A.M., M.T. and A.N. (Antonio Nardone). All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Institutional Review Board Statement

Not applicable.

Informed Consent Statement

Data availability statement, conflicts of interest.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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• Published: 14 October 2024

Explaining organizational commitment and job satisfaction: the role of leadership and seniority

• Catarina Morais 1 ,
• Francisca Queirós 2 ,
• Sara Couto 2 ,
• A. Rui Gomes   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-6390-9866 3 &
• Clara Simães   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-9856-2295 4 , 5  

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume  11 , Article number:  1363 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

Metrics details

• Business and management

Effective leaders increase organizational success. The Leadership Efficacy Model suggests that leaders’ efficacy increases when leaders are perceived as congruent; that is, when employees perceive the leader to do (practical cycle of leadership) what s/he says will (conceptual cycle of leadership) and there is a close match between what employees expect from leaders and what leaders display. This recent theoretical framework also acknowledges that a number of factors can interfere with the relationship between leadership cycle congruence and leadership efficacy. Such antecedent factors include group members’ characteristics (e.g., organizational seniority). This study aimed to test the assumption that leadership cycles congruence positively predicts leadership efficacy (measured by organizational commitment and job satisfaction, and that this relationship is moderated by employees’ seniority. 318 employees (55% male, with an average seniority of 8 years) completed a questionnaire assessing leadership cycles, organizational commitment, and job satisfaction. Path analysis results showed that the higher leadership cycles congruence, the higher employees’ organizational commitment and job satisfaction. Furthermore, the relationship between leadership cycle congruence and organizational commitment was stronger for more senior members of the organization (but not for job satisfaction). The results highlight the importance of leaders act in a congruent manner with their ideas and of meeting employees’ needs. Moreover, it shows that senior members of the organization are particularly sensitive to leadership congruency.

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Leadership is key for organizational efficacy and success (Hogan and Kaiser, 2005 ; Kaiser et al., 2008 ) and has been consensually defined as the process that aims to influence employees to achieve organizational goals (Voon et al., 2010 ). From a strategic and effective point of view, leadership enables organizations to increase their productivity, profit and, subsequently, achieve a competitive advantage (Yahaya and Ebrahim, 2016 ). Leaders are primarily responsible for the organizations they represent, and their role involves conveying to employees the need to work towards a common goal (Hogan and Kaiser, 2005 ). Thus, leadership efficacy can be conceptualized as the collective efficacy that results from the process of leading; in other words, that results from the dyad of leaders and followers’ behaviors, and can be operationalized by a wide range of individual, group and organizational level outcomes (cf. Hannah et al., 2008 for a review). For example, previous studies point out that leaders facilitate increased employee organizational commitment (e.g., Sedrine et al., 2020 ; Yahaya and Ebrahim, 2016 ) and job satisfaction (e.g., Kelloway and Gilbert, 2017 ; Yukl, 2008 ), and influence employees toward achieving organizational goals (Chaturvedi et al., 2019 ).

These data from the literature suggests that leadership efficacy can be translated through the impact of the leader’s actions on employees’ behaviors (e.g., Kaiser et al., 2008 ). However, employees’ expectations about their leader, which may arise for different reasons (e.g., previous work experience), may have an impact on leadership efficacy (Fu and Cheng, 2014 ; McDermott et al., 2013 ). For example, Baccili ( 2001 ) in a qualitative study found that employees expect congruency between what the leader says and what the leader does, and when employees perceive lack of congruence they manifest lower work engagement (Jabeen et al., 2015 ). Therefore, to comprehensively understand the leadership process and its impact on employees, it is important to consider the congruence between the leader’s words and actions, and between the leader’s actions and what the employee wants. This assumption is precisely the rationale of the Leadership Efficacy Model (Gomes, 2014 , 2020 ), which suggests that the closer the relationship between what the leader think to do (conceptual cycle of leadership) and what the leader does (practical cycle of leadership), from both the subjective perspectives of leaders and employees, the greater the leadership efficacy (Gomes, 2014 ). Moreover, the model assumes that a number of factors related to behaviors assumed by leaders (leadership styles) and characteristics of leaders, members and context influence (antecedent factors of leadership) moderate the relationship between leadership cycles congruence and leadership efficacy. In other words, leaders can increase efficacy if they assume congruent cycles of leadership and if they use positive behaviors to implement the leadership cycles and if they consider the antecedent factors of leadership.

So far, and to the extent of our knowledge, only two studies have empirically tested the Leadership Efficacy Model (cf. Alves et al., 2021 ; Gomes et al., 2022 ). Both studies were conducted in a sports setting and showed that leadership cycle congruence positively predicts leadership efficacy. Moreover, Gomes and colleagues ( 2022 ) was the first study to also test the role of specific leadership styles (leadership behaviors) and antecedent factors of leadership as facilitators of leadership efficacy. However, this study did not separate the role of leaders, members and context characteristics of antecedent factors of leadership, but computed an overall favorability index, which does not allow to understand the specific role of each variable. Thus, in the present study we aim to expand previous literature by (1) considering the application of the Leadership Efficacy Model in an organizational context and whether leadership cycles congruence is a predictor of important outcomes for organizations, as is the case of commitment and job satisfaction; and (2) by testing the moderating role of group members’ characteristics which, to the extent of our knowledge, is yet to be done. This is important because the moderating role of such factors is a key assumption of the model. In this study, the group members’ (employees) characteristics included was their seniority within the organization. Employees’ seniority was chosen as the member characteristic to be analyzed (i.e., antecedent factor) because previous literature (e.g., English et al., 2010 ; Lee et al., 2018 ; Zeng et al., 2020 ) has shown that employees’ perceptions, evaluations and beliefs about the organization (e.g., organizational commitment and job satisfaction) are shaped by how long they have been in the organization.

Leadership efficacy model

The Leadership Efficacy Model (Gomes, 2014 , 2020 ) was developed as a comprehensive framework that defines different sets of factors that influence leadership efficacy. In a nutshell, this theoretical approach states that leadership efficacy increases if leaders establish linear relations between how they intend to exert leadership (conceptual cycle of leadership) and how they really implement the leadership (practical cycle of leadership), i.e., if there is leadership congruence. Moreover, the model combines Trait, Behavioral and Contingency Leadership Theories to argue that this relationship between leadership congruence and efficacy will be either facilitated or debilitated (i.e., moderated) by the leadership styles adopted and by the antecedent factors (namely leader characteristics, member characteristics, and context characteristics). In this study, the main aim was to test the relationship between leadership congruence and leadership efficacy (measured by organizational commitment and job satisfaction), and the moderating effect of members’ characteristics (measured by employees’ seniority).

The main innovation of the Leadership Efficacy Model is its focus on the congruence of the leadership cycles and leadership efficacy, advocating that the leader’s activity has a dynamic nature, i.e., an influence process that is built over time and not a static phenomenon (Gomes, 2014 , 2020 ). In this sense, it is suggested that leading without a congruence of leadership cycles should be the basis for the leader’s activity; thus, acting by trial and error is less effective and productive for all the involved in the leadership phenomenon (Gomes, 2014 ). Therefore, the Leadership Efficacy Model emphasizes the importance of leaders establishing linear relationship between what is important to them (leadership philosophy), the behaviors they assume to achieve the objectives (leadership practice) and the definition of strategies to evaluate the achievement of their ideas and objectives with the group members (leadership criteria) (Gomes, 2014 , 2020 ). These linear relationships occur in two interdependent leadership cycles, the conceptual and the practical. The conceptual cycle includes the beliefs of leaders and employees about how leadership should be organized in terms of philosophy, practice, and criteria. The practical cycle incudes the beliefs of leaders and employees about how leadership occurs in real contexts, in terms of philosophy, practice, and criteria. Thus, this model advocates that the closer the cycles are to each other, the greater the leadership efficacy will be (Gomes, 2020 ).

The conceptual cycle of leadership occurs through three distinct domains: leadership philosophy, leadership practice, and leadership criteria (Gomes, 2020 ). Leadership philosophy refers to the values, beliefs, assumptions, attitudes, principles, and priorities about what leadership is and how leadership should be assumed (Gomes, 2014 ). In other words, the leadership philosophy can be seen as the beliefs that the leader has about the influence on group members, reflected in a set of mental representations of how to exert the role of the leader. The leadership practice is characterized by the behaviors and actions that the leader considers most appropriate to implement the philosophy of leadership, such as, for example, assuming maximum effort in performing the tasks or represents a role model for the group members. Finally, leadership criteria correspond to the leader’s mental representations of the indicators which can be used to evaluate if the leadership philosophy and the practice are producing the desired effects. For example, leaders can use criteria as the number of goals achieved or number of tasks performed with maximum quality as indicators of success produced by the philosophy and practice of leadership.

On the other hand, the practical cycle consists of the application of the conceptual cycle in daily life, both by the leader and the group members (Gomes, 2020 ). This cycle is characterized by the mental representations of the leader and the group members about what the leader is really doing in each specific situation, and also includes the same three domains: leadership philosophy, leadership in practice and leadership criteria. The processes start when the leaders transmit their ideas and principles (leadership philosophy), how to achieve the leadership philosophy (leadership in practice), and how to evaluate it (leadership criteria). This sharing may take place in a more formal way (e.g., work meetings) or in an informal way (e.g., daily contact between the leader and the group members) (Gomes, 2020 ). Since this cycle is the operationalization of the conceptual cycle, it means that it begins when both the leader and the group members assume the behaviors to achieve the principles defined by the leader and accepted by the members (Gomes, 2020 ). To this extent, leadership cycles congruence also implies that leaders’ activity matches employees’ expectations and needs (i.e., how they think leaders should exert leadership).

According to the model, the characteristics of the leader, of the group members, and of the situation assume a status of moderating variable between the congruency of the two cycles and leadership efficacy, being named antecedent factors of leadership (Gomes, 2020 ). This means that the leader should take these antecedent factors of leadership into account when establishing the leadership cycles, since they can maximize or inhibit their actions. For example, regarding the characteristics of the group members, leaders should consider a wide number of factors, as is the case of professional (e.g., objectives, hierarchical level), demographic (e.g., seniority), and psychological (e.g., self-confidence) variables, because the closer they act according to these characteristics, the more likely their action will be effective (Gomes and Resende, 2015 ).

In sum, the Leadership Efficacy Model proposes that higher levels of congruency between the practical and conceptual cycles of leadership augments the leadership efficacy. Moreover, the model proposes that characteristics of the group members influence the relationship between leadership cycles and leadership efficacy. In our study, we selected organizational commitment and job satisfaction as indicators of leadership efficacy and seniority as moderator of the influence produced by leadership congruency in organizational commitment and job satisfaction.

H1 and H2. Leadership efficacy: organizational commitment and job satisfaction

Leadership efficacy can be understood as the multiple impacts produced by the leader on others, as is the case of employee satisfaction, motivation, and organizational outcomes (Kaiser et al., 2008 ; Malik, 2013 ; Voon et al., 2010 ). Therefore, it can be measured in a variety of ways (e.g., Andrews et al., 2006 ; Kaiser et al., 2008 ; Kanji, 2008 ). A diversity of evaluation measures is important to overcome possible biases, as a single organizational outcome (e.g., productivity measure, financial performance, turnover) does not provide a complete overview (Kaiser et al., 2008 ; Scullen et al., 2000 ). As an influence process, leaders’ behaviors affect employees’ attitudes towards work, such as the organizational commitment, work engagement, and job satisfaction (Rehman et al., 2020 ; Saleem, 2015 ; Voon et al., 2010 ). Specifically, organizational commitment and job satisfaction are relevant variables to the organizational context, as they have been associated with lower absenteeism and turnover, higher motivation, leadership satisfaction, and increases in organizational citizenship behaviors (e.g., Gatling et al., 2016 ; Hanaysha, 2016 ; Joo and Park, 2010 ; Malik, 2013 ). For these reasons, we selected organizational commitment and job satisfaction as indicators of leadership efficacy, as they represent key variables in organizational contexts and because they can represent different constructs of human experience at work, one more related to how the individual feel about the work activity (job satisfaction) and another more related to how the individual feel about the organization (organizational commitment).

Organizational commitment is defined as a force that stimulates the individual’s involvement and identification with an organization, the willingness to put effort and dedication in achieving organizational goals, as well as the desire to remain in the organization (Porter et al., 1974 ). Therefore, it is seen as a significant factor in determining employee behavior (Meyer et al., 2002 ; Yahaya and Ebrahim, 2016 ). Specifically, organizational commitment is perceived as an emotional attachment of the employee to the organization (Ćulibrk et al., 2018 ; Meyer et al., 2004 ), where individuals identify with the values and mission and enjoy being part of the organization (Hanaysha, 2016 ; Meyer and Allen, 1991 ; Pradhan and Pradhan, 2015 ). Employees who report high levels of commitment exhibit aspirations to contribute meaningfully to the organization and a greater willingness to make sacrifices for it and, at the same time, report fewer intentions to leave or resign and tend to feel more satisfied with their work and have higher intrinsic motivation (cf. Ćulibrk et al., 2018 ; Hanaysha, 2016 ).

Mathieu and colleagues ( 2016 ) state that the popular adage “Employees don’t quit their companies, they quit their boss” has been empirically proven, enhancing the importance and influence of the leader’s role in the willingness of employees to remain in the organization. In this sense, there are several studies exploring the relationship between employees’ perceptions of the leaders’ actions on their organizational commitment (Gatling et al., 2016 ; Sedrine et al., 2020 ; Yahaya and Ebrahim, 2016 ). For example, Pradhan and Pradhan ( 2015 ) reported that leaders who demonstrate attentiveness to employees’ personal and professional development, positively influence employee commitment because this demonstration leads to an emotional attachment to the leader and the organization. Additionally, Sedrine and colleagues ( 2020 ), concluded that leaders who seek to involve employees in decision making inspire greater trust and job satisfaction and have a positive impact on organizational commitment. On the other hand, these authors reported that supervision by the leader has an adverse effect on employees’ attitude, reducing their commitment to the organization. This effect is justified by the control of autonomy, feeling of lack of trust and disrespect felt by employees, translated by a low level of commitment (Sedrine et al., 2020 ). Overall, these different findings support the idea that the behaviors adopted by the leader are significantly related to employees’ organizational commitment (cf. Yiing and Ahmad, 2009 ). Similarly, we argue that leadership cycles congruence (i.e., leaders’ words and actions are aligned) feeds a positive relationship between leader and employees. By being congruent in their words and actions, leaders display trustworthiness and assure employees they can trust them and, therefore, increase their commitment with the organization.

H1: Perceived leadership cycles congruence positively predicts employees’ organizational commitment. The higher the perceived congruence, the higher the organizational commitment .

One of the major challenges for leaders is to ensure the job satisfaction of their employees (Asghar and Oino, 2018 ), making it pertinent to understand this construct. Job satisfaction is defined as “the attitudes and feelings people have about their work”, and the more satisfied employees are, the more positive their attitudes will be (Armstrong, 2006 , p. 474). Satisfaction levels can be affected intrinsically, depending for example, on the self-esteem of the group members, or extrinsically, considering, for example, the context or the quantity and quality of the leader’s supervision (Armstrong, 2006 ; Malik, 2013 ).

The existence of a relationship between employees’ job satisfaction and satisfaction with their leaders is described in the literature (Elshout et al., 2013 ; Tsai, 2011 ). In fact, job satisfaction has been associated with leaders who manifest behaviors of inspiration, motivation, concern, and respect for employees (Judge and Kammeyer-Mueller, 2012 ; Saleem, 2015 ). Furthermore, it is suggested that the leader’s behaviors of encouraging and supporting employees, as well as their confidence and clear vision can relate to employee job satisfaction (Tsai, 2011 ). These behaviors, mostly associated with transformational and transactional styles of leadership, are a reflection of how leaders (practical cycle of leadership) act or, in other words, how leaders can exert their influence and increase the congruence between cycles of leadership. Moreover, Alves and colleagues ( 2021 ), who conducted a study based on the Leadership Efficacy Model in a sport context, also found that leadership cycles congruence is associated with satisfaction with leaders. Overall, how employees perceive their leaders is a decisive factor in their overall satisfaction (Hogan and Kaiser, 2005 ). We argue that by perceiving the leader as being congruent with their words (conceptual cycle of leadership) and daily actions (practical cycle of leadership), employees develop a positive image and relationship with the leader which, in turn, leaders to higher job satisfaction. Therefore, we expect that:

H2: Perceived leadership cycles congruence positively predicts employees’ job satisfaction. The higher the perceived congruence of the leader’s cycles, the higher the job satisfaction .

H3. Antecedent factors of leadership: the moderating role of seniority

The actions of leaders do not occur in isolation, depending on some factors that can help to understand the multiple impacts produced by leadership. According to the Leadership Efficacy Model there are three antecedent factors of leadership that can influence the impacts of leadership cycles congruence in leadership efficacy: the personal and professional characteristics of the leader, the personal and professional characteristics of team members, and the specific conditions provided by the organization under which the leader is working (Gomes, 2020 ). These factors influence the relationship between leadership cycles (e.g., how leaders intend to assume leadership and how leaders assume leadership) and leadership efficacy. Seniority is an example of these factors since employees’ perceptions and evaluations change depending on how long they have been with the organization (English et al., 2010 ; Wright and Bonett, 2002 ). The literature highlights the relationship between seniority and commitment (Akinyemi, 2014 ; Hong et al., 2016 ; Lee et al., 2018 ) and seniority and job satisfaction (Lian and Ling, 2018 ; Zeng et al., 2020 ), but there is less knowledge about the moderating effect of seniority on the relationship between how leadership is exerted (e.g., leadership cycles congruence) and leadership efficacy.

Previous research has established that employees’ beliefs regarding the organization vary according to the length of service in the organization (e.g., Low et al., 2016 ), which is also reflected on the psychological contract they hold regarding the organization (cf. Bal et al., 2013 ). Specifically, Bal and colleagues ( 2013 ) found a relationship between the fulfillment of the psychological contract and greater involvement at work by the employee but only for employees with less seniority. According to these authors, this is because employees with less seniority value the norms of reciprocity more highly. On the other hand, employees’ seniority also has implications on the impact of the violation of the psychological contract, as employees respond differently to employers’ non-fulfillment of obligations (cf. Sharif et al., 2017 ; Priesemuth and Taylor, 2016 ). Specifically, more recent employees have higher expectations about the employers when they first join the organization and, the longer they stay, the more they adjust these expectation—therefore, the higher their seniority, the lower employees’ perceptions of employer’s obligations (Payne et al., 2015 ).

In sum, the beliefs and expectations that employees hold about the organizations and their leaders influence the aspects they pay attention to, that they value, their interpretations, and reactions (Rousseau, 2001 , Rousseau et al., 2018 ). According to the aforementioned literature review, employees with lower seniority are more tend to value more the reciprocity between themselves and the organization and to hold higher expectations of the organization. Additionally, the non-fulfilment of expectations has a greater influence on their behaviors and attitudes, compared to employees with greater seniority. For that reason, we argue that employees with lower seniority are more aware and sensitive of their leader’s behaviors. Therefore, and based on the Leadership Efficacy Model (Gomes, 2014 , 2020 ), we expect that if leaders display low congruency, this would affect more negatively employees with lower seniority. Thus, we established the third hypothesis for this study:

H3: Seniority has a moderating effect on the relationship between leadership cycles congruence and leadership efficacy (measured by organizational commitment and job satisfaction). Specifically, it is expected that less seniority amplifies the positive relationship of leadership cycles congruence with (H3a) organizational commitment and (H3b) job satisfaction .

Data collection procedure

As aforementioned, the main aim of this study was to test the relationship between leadership congruence and leadership efficacy (i.e., organizational commitment and job satisfaction), as well as the moderating role of members’ characteristics (i.e., seniority). In order to test this conceptual model, a correlational study was conducted with employees from different organizations who evaluated their leaders. The first step consisted of obtaining approval from the Ethics Committee from the fourth authors’ University. Once approval was obtained [cf. Ethical Statement], the research team created the questionnaire on Qualtrics® platform and a link for dissemination was generated using the same software. A multiple-source approach was used to recruit participants: specifically, the questionnaire was disseminated on online platforms (LinkedIn, Facebook; 38%) and through six organizations from different sectors which were part of the research teams’ network (public administration: 25%, technology: 18%, automotive: 9%, catering: 5%, healthcare: 5%) and who agreed to distribute the study among their employees.

When participants accessed to the questionnaire, a first page with the informed consent, and explaining the study goals and procedure was displayed. Once they agreed to participate in the study, an initial screening question was used to exclude any participants who did not directly report to a leader. If they met this inclusion criteria (having a leader in their organization to whom they report directly), several demographic questions were asked and then they completed the measures regarding leadership congruency, organizational commitment, and job satisfaction. The order of the items and measures was randomized. Completing the whole research protocol took them, on average, about 25 min. The data was collected between February and April 2021.

Participants

A sample of 318 employees (55% male) was considered in the study. Their aged ranged from 21 to 72 years-old ( M  = 35.78, SD = 10.54). Most participants held a bachelor’s degree (38%) or a master’s degree or higher (30%), and 27% completed high school.

Participants worked in a wide range of sectors: service industry (22%), health and social care (17%), public administration and defense (17%), manufacturing (8%), administrative activities (7%), education (5%), retail (5%), IT and communication (3%), finance (2%), hospitality (2%), among others (12%). The majority of participants were full-time employees (97%) with permanent employment contract (60%). Regarding participants’ seniority within the organization, it ranged from 1month to 42 years ( M  = 8 years, SD = 9.5 years).

Leadership congruency

The Leadership Efficacy Questionnaire (LEQ; Gomes et al., 2022 ) was used to assess the congruency of leadership cycles (conceptual and practical cycles). This measure evaluates three different dimensions: (1) leadership philosophy (5 items, e.g., “My leader tells us the ideas s/he values the most”, α conceptual  = 0.87, α practical  = 0.91), (2) leadership practice (5 items, e.g., “My leader acts in accordance with the ideas valued”, α conceptual  = 0.89, α practical  = 0.92), and leadership criteria (5 items, e.g., “My leader evaluates if what is done is in accordance with what we wanted to achieve”, α conceptual  = 0.89, α practical  = 0.93). A score for each dimension was calculated by averaging participants’ responses (1 = never; 5 = always). For each of the 15 statements, employees answered twice: once regarding their leader’s preferred behaviors (leadership philosophy, practice, and criteria at the conceptual cycle), and another referring to their leader’s current behaviors (leadership philosophy, practice, and criteria at the practical cycle). A final score of leadership congruency was calculated by subtracting participants’ responses in the conceptual cycle from the practical cycle, and negative numbers were mirrored, so the final variable would only include positive numbers. Therefore, values closer to 0 indicate higher congruency between current and preferred leadership behaviors, creating a new variable named the Leadership Cycles Congruence Index (LCCI).

Organizational commitment

Participants’ organizational commitment was assessed using the Organizational Commitment Scale (Conley and Woosley, 2000 ; Mowday et al., 1982 ; Portuguese translation by Gomes, 2007 ). Using a likert scale (1 = completely disagree; 5 = completely agree), participants rated their agreement with nine statements (e.g., “I am proud to tell other people that I am part of this organization”, α  = 0.91). A score of organizational commitment was computed by averaging participants’ responses.

Job satisfaction

Employees’ perceptions regarding their job satisfaction were evaluated using the Portuguese version of the Job Satisfaction Questionnaire (Meliá and Peiró, 1989 ; Pocinho and Garcia, 2008 ). Participants were asked to rate their satisfaction (1 = not satisfied at all, 7 = extremely satisfied) to 23 different aspects of their work (e.g., “I am happy about my career progression opportunities”, α  = 0.96). Their responses were averaged to create a job satisfaction score.

Data analyses procedure

An a-priori sample size calculator was used to determine the minimum sample required. For a medium effect size of 0.20 and a desired power level of 0.80 (at a probability level of 0.05), a minimum of 223 participants were recommended (cf. Soper, 2022 ). The study sample met this requirement.

Then, the first step consisted of verifying the statistical assumptions of normality and multicollinearity for the four variables of the study: perceptions of leadership congruency, organizational commitment, and job satisfaction, as well as participants’ seniority within their organizations. The normality assumption was tested using Kline’s ( 2015 ) criteria of skewness ≤|3| and kurtosis ≤ |10|. The multicollinearity assumption was checked based on the correlations among variables (which should be <0.80) and VIF (which should be <5) (cf. Marôco, 2014 ).

Path analysis using AMOS Software ® was conducted so the full model could be tested simultaneously. Therefore, perceptions of leadership congruency were included as a predictor, and organizational commitment and job satisfaction as outcomes (H1 and H2). To test the moderating role of seniority (H3a and H3b), the interaction between perceptions of leadership congruency and seniority was calculated and inserted in the model as a predictor. All predictor variables (leadership congruency, seniority, interaction leadership congruency x seniority) were first standardized using z -scores, as they used different unity measures.

The quality of the theoretical model was evaluated using the following criteria: (a) chi-square statistics ( χ 2 ); (b) Root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA; Steiger, 1990 ), so that adequate fit concluded for values between 0.05 and 0.08, and good fit when below 0.05 (cf. Arbuckle, 2008 ); (c) Standardized root mean square residual (SRMR), considering a good fit was achieved when below 0.10 (cf. Kline, 2015 ); (d) Goodness of Fit (GFI) and Comparative fit index (CFI), for which values above 0.95 indicated a good fit (cf. Bentler, 1990 ; 2007 ; Marôco, 2014 ).

Descriptive statistics and preliminary analysis

Regarding normality assumptions, Using Kline’s ( 2015 ) criteria of skewness ≤|3| and kurtosis ≤|10 | , there were no severe deviations from normality found in the data (−0.65 >  sk  < 1.39; 0.26 >  ku  < 1.30). Thus, parametric tests were conducted to test the study hypotheses (cf. Kline, 2015 ).

Table 1 summarizes the descriptive statistics of the study variables (participants’ seniority and perceptions of leadership congruency, organizational commitment and job satisfaction), as well as the two-tailed correlations among them. The higher the participants’ seniority, the less leadership congruency (numbers closer to 0) and the lower the job satisfaction (and vice-versa) they tend to perceive. On the other hand, the more congruency they perceive, the higher the organizational commitment and job satisfaction. The latter variables are also highly correlated. No correlations were above 0.80 and all VIF coefficients ranged from 1.02 to 1.99—therefore, the non-multicollinearity assumption was met.

Path analysis (H1, H2, H3)

The proposed model (cf. Fig. 1 ) was tested using path analysis. The results show that it is a good fit to the data: χ 2 (1) = 5.96, χ 2 /df = 5.96, RMSEA = 0.125, 95% CI [0.044, 0.230], p RMSEA  = 0.061, SRMR = 0.039, GFI = 0.993, CFI = 0.980. A summary of the parameter estimates can be found in Table 2 . It can be concluded that higher perceptions of leadership congruency predict higher organizational commitment and job satisfaction, thus confirming H1 and H2. On the other hand, the longer participants are enrolled in a particular organization (seniority), the lower their job satisfaction, but not their organizational commitment. The leadership congruency x seniority interaction is a predictor of organizational commitment but not job satisfaction (therefore, H3b was not supported). The overall model explained 22% of the variance of participants’ job satisfaction and 10% of the variance of their organizational commitment.

Note : * p  < 0.05; ** p  < 0.01, *** p  < 0.001. Dash arrows represent non-significant paths.

A closer look at this latter interaction was conducted by splitting the sample into high vs. low seniority and conducting separate regression analyses. The criteria used to compute the two groups was based on previous literature that used 60 months (5 years) as a cut-off point to decide whether an employee would be considered to have a stable tenure with the organization or not (cf. Bal et al., 2013 ; Boswell et al., 2005 ). Thus, following the same criteria, participants were split into high seniority (≥60 months; n  = 150) and low seniority (<60 months; n  = 168). The results indicated that leadership congruency predicts organizational commitment for more senior members of the organization [ F (1,147) = 30.85, p  < 0.001, R 2  = 0.174, b = −0.42, β  = −0.42, t  = −5.55, p  < 0.001] but not for younger members of the staff [ F (1,167) = 2.56, p  = 0.111]. Even though the interaction for organizational commitment was significant, its direction does not support H3a.

This study aimed to test the relationship between leadership cycle congruence and leadership efficacy in an organizational setting, considering the analysis of the moderating influence of seniority. This analysis was done by assuming the predictions of the Leadership Efficacy Model (Gomes, 2014 , 2020 ). The results supported the main proposition of the model that congruence between leadership cycles explains higher levels of organizational commitment and job satisfaction. Equally important, our study tested if antecedent factors of leadership can either exacerbate or minimize the influence of leadership cycle congruence on leadership efficacy. The results showed that leadership cycle congruency is a positive predictor of organizational commitment for more senior members of the organization. However, seniority did not moderate the relationship between leadership cycle congruency and job satisfaction.

As aforementioned, the Leadership Efficacy Model (Gomes 2014 , 2020 ) states that higher leadership cycle congruency predicts leadership efficacy. This assumption was corroborated by the study. As expected, when employees perceived higher congruency between conceptual and practical cycles of leadership, they displayed stronger organizational commitment (H1) and job satisfaction (H2). These results support the main theoretical assumption of the Leadership Efficacy Model and are consistent with previous literature that tested this theoretical framework in a sports context, showing that higher congruency in leadership cycles predicted higher satisfaction with leader and perceptions of team performance (Alves et al., 2021 ; Gomes et al., 2022 ). Thus, the results support the idea that when leaders’ daily actions (practical cycle of leadership) are congruent with employees’ desires/needs (conceptual cycle of leadership), it increases leadership efficacy—in our case, it increases employees’ commitment towards the organization and their job satisfaction.

The third hypothesis of the study predicted that seniority would moderate the relationship between the congruence of leadership cycles congruence and leadership efficacy. Specifically, it was expected that less seniority would amplify the positive relationship leadership between efficacy and organizational commitment and job satisfaction. Previous literature (e.g., English et al., 2010 ; Low et al., 2016 ; Phungsoonthorn and Charoensukmongkol, 2018 ) has already established that employees’ perceptions and evaluations regarding the organization change over time. Specifically, research suggests that employees with lower seniority attribute more value to the norms of reciprocity between themselves and the organization and, therefore, the fulfillment or not of the established expectations and their involvement in the work is particularly important to these employees (cf. Bal et al., 2013 ). This idea was supported by Payne and colleagues ( 2015 ), who argued that when someone first joins the organization, they have higher expectations, which are adjusted and, therefore, decrease, over time. Moreover, based on previous research that showed that staff with lower seniority is more aware of leaders’ behaviors (e.g., Rousseau et al., 2018 ), seniority was expected to moderate the relationship between leadership cycles congruence and efficacy in such a way that it would be amplified for less senior members of staff.

However, even though the results show a significant interaction of Leadership Cycles Congruence x Seniority on employees’ organizational commitment, the relationship between the predictor and the outcome is only significant for senior members of the staff. In other words, the results showed that leadership congruency only predicts organizational commitment for senior members of the organization, but not for younger members of the staff, contradicting H3a. No interaction was found for job satisfaction, and, therefore, H3b was also not supported. According to Payne and colleagues ( 2015 ), employees’ expectations adjust over time, with employees’ perceptions of employer obligations significantly decreasing over the years in the organization. Taking this into consideration, one possible justification is that if the non-fulfillment of expectations has a lower influence on more senior members of the organization (cf. Rousseau et al., 2018 ), when a leader fulfills their needs, and shows stronger congruence between their statements (conceptual cycle) and actions (practical cycle) it exceeds their expectations and, therefore, has a more positive impact. An alternative explanation is related to the fact that data was collected during the COVID19 pandemic, which was a time in which leaders were particularly important (cf. Eichenauer et al., 2022 ) in keeping stability and facilitating employees’ work-life balance, which are important features for more senior employees and what they value in the relationship they established with the organization (cf. Low et al., 2016 ).

Limitations and future research

Considering the particular circumstances in which data for this study was collected, future research should aim to test whether these results are stable once the pandemic is over, assuring its replicability. It is also important to note that, even though appropriate to the aims of this particular study, cross-sectional designs encompass a number of limitations. One of those limitations, especially when testing relationships between variables, refers to the common method variance, which is drawn from the fact that the same participants answered both predictor and outcome variables at the same moment. However, this issue was addressed during data collection: an online platform was used to collect data, and the order of items and measures was randomized (cf. Chang et al., 2010 ). An alternative methodological approach would be to partner with an organization to conduct a longitudinal study. This approach would allow (1) to infer the duration of the impact of leadership cycles congruence on efficacy; and (2) the use of objective efficacy measures (e.g., turnover rate, absenteeism), which are important to provide a more comprehensive understanding of leadership efficacy (cf. Gomes, 2014 ; Gomes and Resende, 2015 ). Moreover, even though the present study tested the main assumption of Leadership Efficacy Model (regarding leadership congruence) and tested the moderating role of an antecedent factors of leadership, other variables included in the theoretical model should be included in future research (namely, the leadership styles, and antecedent factors of leadership regarding the leader’s and the situation’s characteristics).

Conclusion and practical implications

Overall, the study results provide support for the Leadership Efficacy Model, showing that leadership cycles congruence increases leadership efficacy (in this case, job satisfaction and organizational commitment), and that antecedent factors of leadership such as group members’ characteristics (namely seniority) can act as moderators of this relationship. Thus, this study results provide empirical support to two key assumptions of this theoretical framework and is, to the extent of our knowledge, the first study to test the Leadership Efficacy Model in an organizational setting. Taken together, the results have important implications for practice, specifically in organizational contexts. First, they show that in order to maximize the efficacy of their leadership, leaders must make clear to employees their conceptual cycle. In other words, leaders need to state what they want and value in their teams (leadership philosophy), how they want those values to be implemented (leadership practice), and which indicators should be used to assess its implementation (leadership criteria). At the same time, leaders need to ensure that this is in line with what they do on a daily basis (practical cycle of leadership); that is, that the leadership they exert is close to what they conceptualize and that it considers the preferences and needs of their teams.

A second important implication refers to the role of the employee’s seniority in perceiving the leader’s actions. How employees perceive and assess the leader depends on how long they are at the organization, which is consistent with the idea that employees look for different things in the organization and, consequently, in their leaders over time. Therefore, the influence of leadership cycle congruence on the relationship employees establish in the organization varies according to seniority. In this study, it showed that the influence of leadership cycles congruence on employees’ organizational commitment was stronger for employees with a longer tenure, when compared to newer members of staff. Thus, the study highlights the importance of leaders being sensitive to the characteristics of their members and to their needs in order to adjust their actions to remain effective.

Data availability

The dataset generated and analyzed during the current study is available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the contribution of Ágata Faria and João Monteiro in data collection. The authors would also like to acknowledge that the study was conducted at two different research centres supported by the Foundation for Science and Technology: Research Centre for Human Development, Faculty of Education and Psychology, Universidade Católica Portuguesa (ref. UIDB/04872/2020) and the Psychology Research Centre (CIPsi/UM), School of Psychology, University of Minho (ref. UIDB/01662/2020).

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CM was co-responsible for conceptualization, methodology, and responsible for formal analysis and supervision. FQ and SC assisted in methodology, and were responsible for data curation and collection and for writing—original draft preparation. RG was instrumental in conceptualization and methodology, as well as writing—review and editing. CS assisted in conceptualization, formal data analysis and writing—review and editing.

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Morais, C., Queirós, F., Couto, S. et al. Explaining organizational commitment and job satisfaction: the role of leadership and seniority. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 11 , 1363 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-03855-z

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-03855-z

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