oa Arbeidstevredenheid als maat voor kwaliteit van de arbeid

Job satisfaction as measure for the quality of working life

Dutch organizations spend a great deal of money in measuring job satisfaction in order to improve organizational performance and simultaneously the quality of working life (QWL). However, in Dutch literature, there is an abundance of sociological and psychological critique on the use of job satisfaction as a measure for QWL. Therefore we studied 50 English empirical journal articles for arguments in the discussion of whether job satisfaction is a useful measure for QWL. The results indicate that job characteristics as well as dispositional traits, such as negative affectivity, are important determinants of job satisfaction. Many studies assume that workers adjust their expectations in order to overcome a misfit between expectations and working conditions. However, adjustment is hardly operationalized. Since we found that job satisfaction is determined by more factors than work characteristics, we conclude that it is not a useful measure for QWL. Organizations cannot develop improvement measures based on job satisfaction scores solely.