Determinants of Employee Job Satisfaction: An Empirical Test of a Causal Model

Abstract

The job satisfaction model embedded in the Price-Mueller turnover model was revised and estimated. The revised model examined the effects of a series of environmental, job characteristics, and personality variables that were excluded from the Price-Mueller model. Two-wave longitudinal data were collected from 405 employees of a 327-bed Veterans Administration Medical Center. Four different models representing refinements of the proposed model were estimated using LISREL maximum likelihood methods. The exclusion of important job characteristics (role conflict, supervisory support, and task significance) by the Price-Mueller model was not found to have a significant impact on the explanatory power of the revised model. However, the exclusion of an environmental factor (opportunity) and a personality variable (positive affectivity) was found to be a serious omission. Overall, it was found that the degree to which employees like their job is influenced by a combination of characteristics of the environment (opportunity), the job (routinization and distributive justice), and personality variables (positive affectivity and work motivation). Fifty-seven percent (57%) of the variance in job satisfaction was explained by the revised model, as compared with 49% for the Price-Mueller model.