Question 2 Example Answer

The law firm of Dewey, Cheatham and Howe has recently experienced a spate of resignations among the firm's partners. The exit interviews revealed that there was low job satisfaction among the workers. The firm has narrowed the explanation for low job satisfaction to three possible theories. They are, need satisfaction, social information processing, and dispositionalism.

The theory of need satisfaction, designed by Maslow, is most useful when it is assumed that people have needs and when the job fulfills those needs then the worker will experience job satisfaction. There are five needs that people have to be fulfilled. They are, physiological or basic body needs, safety needs, social, esteem, and self actualization needs. They are fulfilled in a hierarchical order so that the basic body and safety needs come first, and the social, esteem, and self actualization needs are fulfilled after. If an individual does not experience a threat to health on the job, then the safety needs are being met. If they develop meaningful relationships with others on the work force, social needs are met. Esteem and self actualization needs are met when they feel that they are being stimulated by their work and growing through the experience, making them feel worthwhile. In need theory, it should be asked if the person's needs are being satisfied. If the answer is yes, there is probably job satisfaction. If the answer is no, there is probably job dissatisfaction.

Pfeffer and Slancik proposed a different idea for job satisfaction. This is the theory of social information processing. The idea of this theory is that there is information in the environment all around us that we pick up on. Much of this information is of a social nature, that we pick up from the other people we are around in the area. We will be satisfied with this job, according to the theory, if other people around us are satisfied and giving off cues to indicate this. A person may have a boring, tedious job lacking variety and they will be happy and satisfied with the job if the other workers are happy and satisfied. A person's reaction and satisfaction with a job depends mainly on what they learn from the cues that others in the environment are giving off.

Staw takes a different view in dispositional theory. People have distinct personalities, and these personalities will be the determiner of job satisfaction. People who are positive and optimistic will experience more job satisfaction than a negative, pessimistic individual. It won't matter much what the job is, or how other people like it. it is a person's personality that is the main determining factor in job satisfaction.

In order to test dispositional theory, workers could be given a personality inventory to see which aspects of personality they score high and low on. They would be tested for, perhaps, agreeableness. Then they could be evaluated on how satisfied they are with their jobs. It would be expected that people who score low on agreeableness may experience more job dissatisfaction than people who score high on this trait. The reasoning is that disagreeable people are more negative and pessimistic, thus enjoying work less and finding things to complain about. Looking for correlations between personality traits and job satisfaction could serve as data to confirm the theory of dispositionalism.

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