CHAPTER 2

1. REVIEW OF LITERATURE

 Eskildsen and Nussler, 2000 suggest that employers are fighting to get talented employees in order to maintain a prosperous business. Ray Hammer, 2000 as well as many other researchers/authors agree. Mark Parrott, 2000 believes that, there is a straight line between employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction. He believes that todays employees pose a complete new set of challenges, especially when businesses are forced to confront one of the tightest labor markets in decades. Therefore, it is getting more difficult to retain employees, as the pool of talent is becoming more-and more tapped-out. The research below, which focuses primarily on employee retention through job satisfaction, supports this contention.  Weiss, 2002 has argued that job satisfaction is an attitude but points out that researchers should clearly distinguish the objects of cognitive evaluation which are affect (emotion), beliefs and behaviors.  Diaz-Serrano and Cabral Vieira, 2005 suggest that as per Investigation by several disciplines such as psychology, sociology, economics and management sciences, job satisfaction is a frequently studied subject in work and organizational literature. This is mainly due to the fact that many experts believe that job satisfaction trends can affect labor market behavior and influence work productivity, work effort, employee absenteeism and staff turnover. Moreover, job satisfaction is considered a strong predictor of overall individual well-being.  Gazioglu and Tansel, 2002 also suggest that job satisfaction is a good predictor of intentions or decisions of employees to leave a job.  According to Clark, 1998 suggest that ) Job satisfaction is important in its own right as a part of social welfare, and this (simple) taxonomy [of a good job] allows a start to be made on such questions as In what respects are older workers jobs better than those of younger workers? (And vice versa), Who has the good jobs? and Are good jobs being replaced by bad jobs?

 In addition, measures of job quality seem to be useful predictors of future labor market behavior. Workers decisions about whether to work or not, what kind of job to accept or stay in, and how hard to work are all likely to depend in part upon the workers subjective evaluation of their work, in other words on their job satisfaction.  Spector, 1997 suggest that Job satisfaction is simply how people feel about their jobs and different aspects of their jobs. It is the extent to which people like (satisfaction) or dislike (dissatisfaction) their jobs.  According to Wood et al. (1986), suggest that job satisfaction determines the level of job satisfaction on the basis of employees perception on how much are they satisfied with the information or guidelines provided to them by their supervisors to carry out their job.  Locke, 1976 defines job satisfaction as the workers appraisal of the degree to which the work environment fulfills the individuals need.  Price, 2001 suggest that job satisfaction is an affective orientation that an employee has towards his or her work. Kam, 1998 defines it is an affective reaction to a job that results from the comparison of perceived outcomes with those that are desired.  Chen, 2008 suggest that job satisfaction describes the feelings, attitudes or preferences of individuals regarding work. McCloskey and McCain, 1987 suggest that , it is the degree to which employees enjoy their jobs  Arvey and Dewhirst (1976), took 271 scientists as a study sample, and found that the degree of job-satisfaction of the workers with high achievement motivation exceeded that of workers with low achievement motivation. Also autonomy is an important concern for employees job satisfaction.  Carr and Kazanowsky (1994) suggested that inadequate salary was much related to employees dissatisfaction. Dogan and bicioglu, 2004; Knoop, 1991 suggest that recent studies showed that a participative (democratic) management style was mostly preferred by todays managers to increase their employees job satisfaction.  Agarwal and Ferrat, 2001; Poulin, 1994; Chen, 2008 suggest that numerous researches have been going on job satisfaction for many years. And it is common thought that job satisfaction influences organizational behavior, namely it positively affects employee working performance and organizational commitment, and negatively influences employee turnover.

 Ross and Reskin, 1992; Agho et al., 1993; Stordeur et al., 2001; Chu et al., 2003; Kafetsios and Zampetakis, 2008 suggest that the relationships between job satisfaction and many variables such as motivation, stress, salary, promotion, role conflict, distributive and procedural justice, role ambiguity, autonomy, workload, leadership style, educational level, emotional intelligence are still being analyzed in different fields as an attractive and important subject of management literature.  Sengin (2003), and Hinshaw and Atwood (1984) suggested that identify variables that influence employee job satisfaction as: (1) demographic variables: education, experience, and position in the hierarchy; (2) Job characteristics: autonomy, tasks repetitiveness, and salaries; and (3) organizational environment factors: degree of professionalization, type of unit.  Locke (1976) stated job satisfaction as a pleasurable positive state resulting from one's job and job experience. Individuals show pleasurable positive attitudes when they are satisfied with their job.  Drever (1964) described job satisfaction ''as an end state of feeling." Singh (1990) pointed out that the job satisfaction is a part of life satisfaction, the nature of one's environment off- the- job. Similarly, a job is an important part of life, job satisfaction influences one's general life satisfaction as an effective reaction, feeling of employees with job, supervision, coworkers, salary/pay and his/her current and future career progress. The causes of employees' satisfaction are restricted to implant factors alone but they sum the whole gamut of men's needs and aspirations.  Reddy and Rajasekhar, 1990 suggest that Job satisfaction is a general attitude which is the result of many specific attitudes.  Srivastava and Pratap (1984) studied job satisfaction and organizational climate among executives and supervisors, reported a significant positive relationship between the overall climate and job satisfaction. Job satisfaction was also found related to various individual dimensions of organizational climate such as leadership, communication, interaction, influence in decision making, goal-setting and control.