The Impact Of Job Level And Sex Differences On The Relationship Between Life And Job

The Impact of Job Level and Sex Differences on the Relationship between Life and Job Satisfaction Author(s): Michael J. Kavanagh and Michael Halpern Source: The Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 20, No. 1 (Mar., 1977), pp. 66-73 Published by: Academy of Management Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/255462 Accessed: 25/06/2009 02:33 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=aom. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

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Academy of Management Journal 1977, Vol. 20, No. 1, 66-73

The

Impact

ofJob

Differences

Life

and

Job

on

the

Level

and

Sex

Relationship Between

Satisfaction'

MICHAEL J. KAVANAGH MICHAEL HALPERN State University of New York at Binghamton

Questionnaire data were collected from 411 university employees at three job levels to test two hypotheses relative to differences in the relationship between job and life satisfaction for male and females. Comparisons indicated strong differences, primarily for females, between an earlier study and this study for the life-job satisfaction relationships. Women's rights are receiving considerable attention in organizations today. The various legal suits filed and won under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as well as the more active role of women's movement advocates during the past decade, seem to have sensitized American industry. Smolowe (1974) has succinctly described this historical development, and Marine (1974) has provided a "guide" for businessmen to deal with women's liberation. In a related discussion, Stein and Bailey (1973) have examined achievement motivation in females and concluded that "achievement-motivation theory was developed to explain the behavior of males ... Not surprisingly, it does not work for females" (p. 362). Societal norms have been frequently mentioned as a major factor in role definitions for men and women. It is usually assumed that a man's needs are fulfilled to a great extent in the work role, since societal norms indicate that the male's job should be a significant part of his life. On the other hand, society has expected the woman's need-fulfillment to come Michael J. Kavanagh is Associate Professor, School of Management, State University of New York at Binghamton,Binghamton,New York. Michael Halpern is an attorney and former student, School of Management, State University of New York at Binghamton,Binghamton,New York. 1 This report is based in part on data collected in conjunction with an Honor's Thesis in Organizational Psychology for the second author. A portion of this research was reported at the 82nd Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association, New Orleans, 1974. The authors would like to thank Dr. Laurie Larwood for critically reading this paper. 66

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from the home, thus, career-versus-marriageand mother-versus-workerrole conflicts may become operative in the lives of employed women. Job roles have been assumed to satisfy different needs for males and females in terms of their total life roles. However, if organizations are concerned with the "whole" employee, then the integration of life and work roles becomes important. Thus, the question of differences between sexes in job satisfaction may be less important than examining the relationship between life and job satisfaction for males and females. The relationship between life and job satisfaction has been the subject of several studies (Friend & Haggard, 1948; Herzberg, Mausner, Peterson & Capwell, 1957; Iris & Barrett, 1972; Levitin & Quinn, 1974; Quinn, Staines & McCullough, 1974), but most relevant for this research was a study by Brayfield and Wells (1957). Collecting data from 41 male and 52 female civil service employees in general office occupations, they examined the relationships between life and job satisfaction. Their results indicated that there were no significant relationships between job and life satisfaction for the women, but these relationships were all significant in a positive direction for the men. Brayfield and Wells (1957) offered two possible explanations for the striking discrepancy between the male and female results. First, the job could have been more important to the men because they "were in higher job classifications which entail some independent judgment and carry higher salaries" (p. 202). Although job level has been identified as a factor in job satisfaction (Gurin, Verloff & Feld, 1960; Porter & Lawler, 1965), the level differences in the Brayfield and Wells (1957) study were small, and considering the strong differences in the results between males and females, this does not seem a satisfactory explanation. The second explanation offered by Brayfield and Wells (1957) was that "the job plays a more significant role in the lives of these men than it does for the women" (p. 205). In fact, the women reported that their jobs were "nothing more than a living" and at the same time they "were doing as well at their jobs as their families expected" (p. 204). The societal norms earlier discussed would support these results and responses by the women in the 1950s; that is, prior to the more active role of the women's movement, these seemed to be the prevailing opinions. However, the women's movement has been working during the last decade to change these feelings and attitudes of women, to alter the prevailing stereotype which states that women can not do well in business and should not try, i.e., a woman's work is not a central aspect of her life. Moreover, the women's movement has attempted to change societal norms and expectations in terms of the attitudes of both women and men relative to a woman's status in an organization. This job equality emphasis has serious implications for employed women in terms of self-esteem and identity (McPartland & Cummings, 1958), which should strongly affect the significance the work role plays in the lives of women.

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The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between life and job satisfaction for males and females to determine if the different empirical relationships found by Brayfield and Wells (1957) would appear in current data. Specifically, the present study replicated the measurements used in Brayfield and Wells' (1957) study but controlled job level to account for their first explanation. Data were collected from several job levels to test the hypothesis that job and life satisfaction will be positively related for both males and females regardless of job level (Hypothesis 1). In addition, it was hypothesized that the relationship between job and life satisfaction should increase in magnitude with higher job levels (Hypothesis 2). This hypothesis was based on the previously cited work on job level differences as well as on the evidence suggesting that persons in higher level jobs have greater opportunities to fulfill higher-level needs (Porter & Lawler, 1965). METHOD

Questionnaires containing the same four scales used by Brayfield and Wells (1957) were distributed to approximately 1,000 university employees. Four hundred thirty-seven questionnaires were returned, of which 411 were usable. These included 141 females and 38 males from job level one (nonsupervisory, nonprofessional, or clerical), 54 females and 129 males from job level two (faculty or professional), and 18 females and 31 males from job level three (supervisory for faculty and professional to include deans and vice presidents). Level three was a combination of levels collapsed because of small n problems. All respondents remained anonymous, and only sex and job level were identified. The four measures used from the Brayfield and Wells (1957) study were: (a) the Brayfield-Rothe Job Satisfaction Index (Brayfield & Rothe, 1951)-an overall measure of job satisfaction using general items; (b) measure the SRA Employee Inventory (Dabas, 1958; SRA, 1952)-a which is a summation of responses to specific job situation or content items; (c) the Rundquist-Sletto Morale Scale (Rundquist & Sletto, 1936)-a measure of general life satisfaction; and (d) the Weitz Test of General Satisfaction (Weitz, 1952)-a summation of responses to specific life situation items. From the preceding paragraphs, it should be noted that this study replicates the questionnaire methodology of Brayfield and Wells (1957), but not exactly the subject sample. In this sense, the authors are also examining the external validity or generalizability of Brayfield and Wells' results. Even though job level one subjects in this study are similar to the clerical employees in the 1957 study, the organizational context is markedly different. Of course, level two and three subjects in this study are considerably different from the earlier study. Thus, interpretations of changes between the two studies will take these facts into consideration.

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RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Hypothesis 1

The results of the correlational analysis for this study's data as well as the results from the Brayfield and Wells (1957) study are presented in Table 1. As a methodological note, the correlations between all four measures for the total sample are shown in Table 2. Although all these correlations are significant, it is obvious that the magnitude of the relationships is not strong enough to conclude they are all measuring the same thing. For this reason, all four relationships for life and job satisfaction are considered in Table 1, rather than, for example, combining the satisfaction measures of each type into one for life satisfaction and one for job satisfaction. It is readily apparent from the results in Table 1 that Hypothesis 1 was strongly supported, as the pattern of results present a sharp contrast to those of Brayfield and Wells. No significant relationships between life and job satisfaction for females were reported by Brayfield and Wells (1957), whereas there are strong relationships in the university data, including job level one, which is the closest to their female sample. The differences for the males between this study and the Brayfield and Wells (1957) study appear minor, except the correlations between the Weitz and the SRA, for which there is no readily apparent explanation. Of more importance is that all four correlations are significant and positive, as they were for the 1957 results. Why the dramatic change? It may be that in the 1950s we indeed lived, to borrow some phraseology, in a "male chauvinistic" world. The woman's primary role was seen to be in the home, and it may have been that the common, and accepted, reason for a woman to take a job was to "wait for or get a man." It is easy to understand the conclusion reached by Brayfield and Wells (1957), reflecting their times and their sample, that the work role may not have been terribly significant for the lives of their female respondents. The 1960s appeared to be a sensitization period for Americans, with the rise, among other things, of the demand for equality of the sexes. In fact, the women's movement can best be conceptualized as an attitudinal and behaviorial change effort, whose targets are every male and female in the United States. It could be that this combination of sensitization and strong publicity may have in part led to the results found here for the females. However, it should be obvious that there have been other significant societal changes since 1957, and these could have affected the results. More importantly, it should be noted that there are several strong, competing explanations for the differences in the results from 1957 and 1973. It may be that the differences between the 1957 and the 1973 results for women were a function of a kind of social desirability response set. It simply may have been socially inappropriate for a woman to express

TABLE 1

Correlations Between Life and Job Satisfaction for Females a Brayfield and Wellsb Measure a

GLS versus SJS SLS versus SJS GLS versus GJS SLS versus GJS Average Interscale rs

Male (N = 41)

Female (N = 52)

Total Samplec Male (N = 198)

Job Level

Male Female (N = 213) (N = 38)

1J

Female (N - 141)

Jo

Male (N = 1

.67** .68** .49** .32*

.04 .12 .19 .23

.49** .42** .27** .21**

.53** .47** .34** .20**

.68** .39* .61** .34*

.57** .48** .28** .23**

.47* .44** .23* .18*

.628

.145

.37

.413

.575

.423

.348

a The measures used were: GLS-general life satisfaction, Rundquist-Sletto;;(2) SJS-specific job sa faction,, Brayfield-Rothe;(4) SLS-specific life satisfaction, Weitz. The average interscale correlations b From Brayfieldand Wells (1957). e From the universitysample. *p < .05. **p < .01.

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TABLE 2 Correlations Between Measures of Job and Life Satisfaction for Total Samplea Specific Job Satisfaction General Specific General Specific a For

Job Satisfaction Job Satisfaction Job Satisfaction Job Satisfaction

.44

General Life Satisfaction .31 .51

Specific Life Satisfaction .20 .44 .52

n = 411, correlations of .10 and .13 are significant at the .05 and .01 levels respec-

tively.

pleasure in her work during the 1950s. Two possible reasons for this might be pressures from competitive males and self-concept. During the 1950s, the pressures from male co-workers and sulpervisors against a woman expressing enjoyment of her work may have led most women to feel that their job roles were not related to their outlook on life. Furthermore, what may have changed over time is the ability of women to express pleasure with their jobs as they relate to their self-concepts, and consequently, their lives.2 Another explanation for the contrasting results in Table 1 may be sample differences in terms of work environment. It could be that the organizational climate and attitudes found in a university environment would be more supportive of the women's movement than those found in many other organizations. For example, had the authors chosen to replicate exactly the organizational environment of the 1957 study, city government office employees, decidedly different results may have been discovered. The impact of these environmental differences simply cannot be tested from these data. Obviously, the hypothesized impact of this environmental variable needs more empirical investigation. Finally, it should be noted that some recently reported results (Levitin & Quinn, 1974) are relevant to this hypothesis. Six surveys conducted from 1958 to 1973 show increasing magnitudes of the correlation between life and job satisfaction for females. The 1958 result, which was at least two or three years after Brayfield and Wells collected their data, shows a correlation for females of .15 (p < .01, two-tailed); while the correlation for males was .16 (p < .01, two-tailed). Contrary to the Brayfield and Wells (1957) results, the male-female difference did not appear in these results. However, it should be noted that the 1958 survey results were based on single-question measures of job satisfaction and general happiness, while the Brayfield and Wells (1957) results were based on multiple-item life and job satisfaction measures. Thus, this study more closely replicates the methodology of Brayfield and Wells (1957). 2 The authors are most appreciative to Dr. Laurie Larwood, who suggested this explanation for the results.

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Hypothesis 2

Hypothesis 2 can be tested by examining the last row of Table 1 for the three job levels. Calculating average interscale correlations for males and females at each level indicates that Hypothesis 2 fails miserably. As evidenced in Table 1, and contrary to Hypothesis 2, the average interscale correlation between life and job satisfaction decreases as one goes higher in job level. Although none of these differences between job levels for either males or females are statistically significant, the decreasing trend is clearly there. The relationship between life and job satisfaction is lowest for persons, male and female, at job level three. Although one would expect increasingly close relationships between job and life satisfaction at higher job levels because of the higher achievement level, which usually includes higher pay and status, these results simply do not support this notion. It was felt, given the achievement motivation literature (McClelland, 1961) and the popularized version of the assumption that man strives to "get ahead" in organizations (Peter & Hull, 1969), that persons at higher job levels in the organization would revel in having "made it" and this would carry over to their life satisfaction. How then does one interpret this clear tendency in the results contrary to expectations? One explanation may be that as one goes up in an organization, the amount of pressures and stress on the individual increases. In order to successfully deal with this added stress, one must be able to cope or disengage from the work role (Singer, 1974). If this is true, it means that persons at the higher job levels in this study, in order to survive psychologically, may have simply done a good job of splitting their work from their life outside their work. In fact, it may be this coping ability that allowed these individuals to get to their present job level (Singer, 1974). Obviously, these interpretationsare tentative and require empirical testing. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

The most overwhelming result of this research is the clear differences between the Brayfield and Wells (1957) correlational results for males and females and the results here. Their female respondents reported no significant relationships between their attitudes about their job and their life, whereas this female sample reported strong and significant relationships. The importance of this finding is magnified when comparing the patterns of correlations between males and females, since the authors controlled for job level while job level remains an alternate explanation for their results. In fact, regardless of job level, the results of this study show significant changes compared to the Brayfield and Wells results. The obvious question is why, and competing explanations were: (1) attitudinal changes in females as a result of the women's movement; (2) differences in organizational environments across samples; (3) differences

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in types of employees across samples; and (4) changes in mean life and job satisfaction across samples. Obviously, these competing explanations all need further empirical testing. Finally, a finding that is somewhat disquieting is the downward trend in the relationship between job and life satisfaction as job level increases. If this were to hold true in other types of organizations, it should receive serious research attention. Whether this is unhealthy, as the authors' personal biases would indicate, or healthy, as Singer (1974) argues, is open to empirical investigation. REFERENCES 1. Brayfield, A. H., and H. F. Rothe. "An Index of Job Satisfaction," Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 35 (1951), 307-311. 2. Brayfield, A. H., and R. V. Wells. "Interrelationships Among Measures of Job Satisfaction and General Satisfaction," Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 41 (1957), 201205. 3. Dabas, Z. "The Dimensions of Morale: An Item Factorization of the SRA Employee Inventory," Personnel Psychology, Vol. 11 (1958), 217-234. 4. Friend, E., and B. T. Haggard. "Work Adjustment in Relation to Family Background," Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 31 (1948), 65-78. 5. Gurin, G., J. Verloff, and S. Feld. Americans View Their Mental Health (New York: Basic Books, 1960). 6. Herzberg, F., B. Mausner, R. 0. Peterson, and D. F. Capwell. Job Attitudes: Review of Research and Opinion (Pittsburgh, Pa.: Psychological Service of Pittsburgh, 1957). 7. Iris, B., and G. V. Barrett. "Some Relations Between Job and Life Satisfaction and Job Importance," Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 56 (1972), 301-304. 8. Levitin, T. E., and R. P. Quinn. "Changes in Sex Roles and Attitudes Toward Work" (Paper presented at the 1974 Conference of the American Association for Public Opinion Research). 9. Marine, G. "A Businessman's Guide to Women's Liberation," Master in Business Administration, Vol. 8, No. 2 (1974), 27-31. 10. McClelland, D. C. The Achieving Society (Princeton, N.J.: Van Nostrand, 1961). 11. McPartland, T. S., and J. H. Cummings. "Self-conception, Social Class and Mental Health," Human Organization, Vol. 17 (1958), 319-325. 12. Peter, L. J., and R. Hull. The Peter Principle (New York: Bantam, 1969). 13. Porter, L. W., and E. E. Lawler. "Properties of Organization Structure in Relation to Job Attitudes and Job Behavior," Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 64 (1965), 23-51. 14. Quinn, R. P., G. L. Staines, and M. R. McCullough. Job Satisfaction: Is There a Trend? Manpower Administration, Monograph No. 30, (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Labor, 1974). 15. Rundquist, E. A., and R. F. Sletto. Personiality in the Depression (Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press, 1936). 16. Singer, M. T. "Presidential Address-Engagement-Involvement: A Central Phenomenon in Psychophysiological Research," Psychosomatic Medicine, Vol. 36 (1974), 1-17. 17. Smolowe, C. "Corporations and Women: A Decade of Near-Ms.'s," Master in Business Administration, Vol. 8, No. 2 (1974), 32-34. 18. SRA. General Manual for the SRA Employee Inventory, 3rd ed. (Chicago: Science Research Associates, 1952). 19. Stein, A. H., and M. M. Bailey, "The Socialization of Achievement Orientation in Females," Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 80 (1973), 345-366. 20. Weitz, J. "A Neglected Concept in the Study of Job Satisfaction," Personnel Psychology, Vol. 5 (1952), 201-205.