ResearchGate See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315611371 uncovering the predispositional roots of job satisfaction Chapter · January 2012 CITATIONS 0 READS 175 1 author: Hisham Hawass Delta University for Science and Technology 16 PUBLICATIONS 102 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects: Project personality in the egyptian business context View project Project View project ????? ????? ?????? ????? ?????? All content following this page was uploaded by Hisham Hawass on 24 March 2017. The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.
6 Uncovering the Pre-Dispositional Roots of Job Satisfaction Hisham Hamid Hawass Business Administration, Faculty of Commerce in Damietta, University of Mansoura Egypt "He who lives in harmony with himself lives in harmony with the universe" Marcus Aurelius 1. Introduction Understanding the determinants of Job satisfaction has long been the main focus of academic research in various business fields including; marketing, human resource management and organizational psychology. Business managers consider job satisfaction as one of the most important employee attitudes because of its positive work-related outcomes such as enhanced employee's job performance, organizational commitment and citizenship behaviour. In service-oriented firms, a satisfied employee may be the facilitator of customer- orientation implementation. A number of studies have found a positive relationship between employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction. In this context, the positive emotions and attitudes towards an organization motivates the employee to kindly treat customers simply because they are the ultimate source of organization success. The vast majority of satisfaction studies has focused on work characteristics which may induce positive attitudes towards the organization such as organizational culture, structure, leadership style and pay. This research stream assumes that employee attitudes are influenced by a number of environmental stimuli in which managers have to carefully embody within the organizational system. Although many of the assumptions of the job characteristic model has been empirically proven, I believe that the causes of job satisfaction are also rooted deeply within the psycho-cultural fabric of the individual. This belief is motivated by the findings of recent dispositional research which emphasize that job satisfaction is a stable individual attitude which continues, at the same level, for a long period of time even when the nature of the job slightly changes. Dispositional studies also suggest that job satisfaction correlates with specific personality traits such as extraversion. However, the dispositional research stream has not yet explained the cultural background upon which the relationship between personality traits and job satisfaction occur. In other words, it ignores the role of cultural values in shaping personality traits which, in turn, affect employee attitudes and behaviours. This is possibly due to the shortage in organizational behaviour studies which focus on geographical areas other than North www.intechopen.com
114 Business Dynamics in the 21st Century America. Thus, the dispositional perspective of job satisfaction deserves more attention whilst focusing on the cultural dimension of the society under examination. The purpose of this study is twofold. First, it provides a theoretical