Satisfaction and Behavioral Reactions of Employees To Task Characteristics as a Function Of Job Longevity, Age, and High-Order Needs

The present study investigated the moderating influence of job longevity, age, and high-order needs on the relationships between five separate task dimensions and overall job satisfaction. Basically, it was found that the strength of the task dimension— job satisfaction relationships are significantly affected by job longevity regardless of age and high-order needs. More specifically, three separate stages of job longevity are deduced, i.e., a learning, responsive, and an unresponsive stage. Only during the responsive stage were the satisfaction reactions of employees significantly correlated with all of the task characteristics. Furthermore, satisfaction was related most significantly to the outcomes of performance and turnover during the responsive stage. Individual differences, as measured by high-order need strength, were also investigated within the job longevity framework. Survey data from 3085 public sector employees belonging to four different governmental organizations were used to investigate the hypothesized relationships. Satisfaction and Behavioral Reactions of Employees To Task Characteristics as a Function Of Job Longevity, Age, and High-Order Needs Over the past years, an impressive number of studies have documented the deleterious effects of assigning employees to boring, meaningless, and routine jobs (e.g., Walker and Guest, 1952; Blauner, 1964; Shepard and Herrick, 1972). As summarized by Work in America (1973) , it is the simplification and standardization of job assignments that purportedly results in low motivation and satisfaction, high absenteeism and turnover, poor production quality, as well as a number of other undesirable consequences. In addition, the contemporary theories of Maslow (1954), Argyris (1957), Herzberg (1966), Porter and Lawler (1968), and Trist (1970) all emphasize that the manner in which jobs are designed has a significant impact on employee attitudes, feelings, and behaviors. Performance and satisfaction might be enhanced if jobs were designed to be more challenging. In response to these ideas, a number of job enrichment experiments have been undertaken to improve a variety of problematic conditions, see Glaser (1975) . Despite these interventions, little cumulative knowledge has been achieved regarding the applicability, effectiveness, or process of job redesign (Hulin and Blood, 1968; Hackman and Lawler, 1971). Furthermore, Hackman (1975) reports that at least half of the attempts at job enrichment have failed while Fein (1974) and Gomberg (1971) question the validity of the self-reported job design successes in general. Consequently, if we are to learn more about when and how to design enriched job environments effectively, then we need to understand thoroughly how different kinds of employees react to different task dimensions over time and under varied