This study contributes to the work design literature, investigating job complexity within the job characteristics model. In particular, the influence of job complexity on job satisfaction was statistically assessed.
Additionally, empowering leadership was analyzed as a possible moderator of this relationship. Both the main and the moderating effect were hypothesized to be positive. As it turns out, job complexity can indeed positively predict job satisfaction. However, the moderating effect of empowering leadership was found to be negative. Results are discussed in the light of previous literature, taking two possible natures of job complexity into account: that of a challenge stressor and that of a hindrance stressor.
Table of Content
Introduction
Theoretical Foundations & Hypotheses
Method
Results
Discussion
References
Appendix
Abstract
This study contributes to the work design literature, investigating job complexity within the job characteristics model. In particular, the influence of job complexity on job satisfaction was statistically assessed. Additionally, empowering leadership was analyzed as a possible moderator of this relationship. Both the main and the moderating effect were hypothesized to be positive. As it turns out, job complexity can indeed positively predict job satisfaction. However, the moderating effect of empowering leadership was found to be negative. Results are discussed in the light of previous literature, taking two possible natures of job complexity into account: that of a challenge stressor and that of a hindrance stressor.
Introduction
Employees who are dissatisfied with their job are more likely to quit (Egan, Yang, & Bartlett, 2004; Porter & Steers, 1973), to show poor individual performance (Judge, Thoresen, Bono, & Patton, 2001), and to frequently be absent from or late to work (Farrell, 1983). They also tend to suffer from mental illnesses such as depression or burnout (Faragher, Cass, & Cooper, 2005). Due to the various economic, social, and health-related issues that job (dis)satisfaction can affect, the factors influencing job satisfaction itself have been the object of interest of countless interdisciplinary studies over the last decades. And still, as organizations and work environments change, possible influence factors need to continuously be (re)investigated, so that employees’ satisfaction with their job can be enhanced and possible consequences of dissatisfaction avoided.
According to Kalleberg (1977), there are three basic types of explanations accounting for variations in job satisfaction: the employee’s personality (see also Judge, Heller, & Mount, 2002; Vroom, 1964), the meaning an employee attributes to the job (see also Morse, 1953), and the characteristics of the job (see also Lawler & Hall, 1970; Hackman & Lawler, 1971; Hackman & Oldham, 1975, 1976; Herzberg, Mausner, & Snyderman, 1967). One job characteristic is the level of complexity, or scope. Job complexity is to be clearly distinguished from the sheer amount of work. Hence, job complexity refers to qualitative workload rather than quantitative. As simpler jobs are successively being replaced with machines, there is a shift to more complex, high-skilled jobs in today’s digitized society. Hence, job complexity as a factor of job satisfaction is worth looking at.
While the significance of this relationship between job complexity and job satisfaction has been proven within various empirical settings (Chung-Yan, 2010; Gould, 1979; Grebner et al., 2003; Melamed, Fried, and Froom, 2001), its direction and linearity is not thoroughly consistent across different studies. It turns out that nature, strength, and direction of this relationship might in turn be influenced by other, perhaps complementary, job characteristics, such as job autonomy (Chung-Yan, 2010).
Providing autonomy from bureaucratic constraints represents one of four aspects of empowering leadership, along with enhancing the meaningfulness of work, fostering participation in decision making, and expressing confidence in high performance (Ahearne, Mathieu, & Rapp, 2005). Consider an employee conducting complex, time-intensive tasks who is also confronted with low autonomy, little decision-making power, poor external confidence in performing well, and lack of expressed importance of the done work. One would intuitively think that this employee is likely to be overstrained. If, however, the leadership at hand is executed in an empowering manner, high job complexity might be rather associated with motivating challenge. By implication, the possible moderating effect of empowering leadership on the relationship between the complexity of and the satisfaction with one’s job is investigated in the present research. Understanding not only the influence of complexity on satisfaction but also its interaction with the leader’s employee empowerment might yield useful implications for both the research of occupational behavior and managers in work design practice.
Theoretical Foundations & Hypotheses
Designing work in a way that yields high employee satisfaction has been subject to various theorists’ discussions. One of the best known and established approaches modelling the influence of job characteristics on employees’ reactions, such as being satisfied with the job, is the job characteristics model by Hackman & Oldham (1975, 1976). The model hypothesizes that five types of job characteristics, namely skill variety, autonomy, task meaningfulness, task identity, and feedback, positively influence three critical psychological states, namely perceived work meaningfulness, knowledge about one’s work’s outcomes, and the perceived responsibility for those outcomes. These psychological states are considered critical to employee’s reactive behavior at work, such as performance, absenteeism, or job satisfaction.
Based on this model, scholars investigating ways and consequences of job enrichment argue that increasing job scope provides workers with more opportunities for personal achievement and recognition of that achievement, fostering increased job performance and satisfaction (Hackman, Oldham, Janson, & Purdy, 1975; Loher, Noe, Moeller, & Fitzgerald, 1985; Paul, Robertson, & Herzberg, 1969). For the purpose of this study, job scope, or job complexity, is defined as the extent of perceived (1) job complexity, (2) skill requirements, and (3) timely effort necessary to learn those required skills for doing the job well, following Shaw and Gupta (2004). Hence, as an “overall” job characteristic, complexity indicates enrichment on different levels, summarizing the level of complexity of the available job characteristics. Given that job enrichment provides a broader range of achievement and recognition opportunities, it can increase job satisfaction through the psychological mechanisms self-efficacy or self-esteem (Dunnette, Campbell, & Hakel, 1967; Judge & Bono, 2001; Loher, Noe, Moeller, & Fitzgerald, 1985).
Self-efficacy refers to the personal judgements of individuals about their ability to perform certain tasks (Parker, 1998). Employees feeling capable to complete a specific task perform better and are subsequently more satisfied than the ones with low self-efficacy (Judge & Bono, 2001). Self-esteem describes the value an individual attributes to itself as a person or, in the work context, as a worker. Parallelly to self-efficacy, employees with high levels of self-esteem tend to perform better at work and to be more satisfied with their job (Judge & Bono, 2001). Therefore, high levels of job complexity are expected to positively influence job satisfaction, by facilitating increases in self-efficacy and self-esteem. Thus, the first hypothesis is stated as follows:
Hypothesis 1: The level of job complexity positively affects the level of job satisfaction.
If this theory of job enrichment enhancing job satisfaction through the psychological mechanisms of self-efficacy and self-esteem applies, job complexity can be referred to as a challenge stressor (Boswell, Olson-Buchanan, & LePine, 2004). A challenge stressor causes a state of positive stress which promotes job accomplishment. If, however, exogenous or work-environmental factors pave the way, job complexity might act as a hindrance stressor, indicating a negative, constraining form of stress (Boswell, Olson-Buchanan, & LePine, 2004).
One such exogenous factor is age, or career stage. It has been shown that a positive relationship between job complexity and job satisfaction exists for workers in early career stages, while less so for older, more experienced employees (Gould, 1979). Here, the fact whether the stressor of job complexity is promoting work accomplishment or not depends on the level of career-related experience the employee holds. This moderating effect could be explained by the reasoning that individuals of a younger age are still relatively low on work-related self-esteem and self-efficacy, and appreciate it more when they are challenged and successfully accomplish their work.
Another example for a situational factor is noise at the workplace. High job complexity is associated with lower job satisfaction in the presence of a negative, environmental stressor, such as noise (Melamed, Fried, & Froom, 2001). Here, a stressor “overload” transforms a former challenge stressor into a hindrance one.
Parallelly, Chung-Yan (2010) found that job autonomy provided by the leader also moderates the complexity-satisfaction relationship. Here, the lack of autonomy leads to constrains in getting the job done, representing an additional stressor, turning the otherwise challenge stressor job complexity into a hindrance stressor. As mentioned above, job autonomy represents one of four aspects of empowering leadership (Ahearne, Mathieu, & Rapp, 2005). Research investigating the influence of empowering leadership on work-related attitudes and reactive behavior shows that it can serve as a reducer of negative stress (Pearson & Moomaw, 2005; Savery & Luks, 2001). If the employee feels empowered by the leader, those findings imply that job complexity acts as a challenge stressor rather than a hindrance stressor, positively affecting job satisfaction. Hence, empowering leadership is expected to positively moderate the effect of job complexity on job satisfaction. The second hypothesis is therefore formulated as follows:
Hypothesis 2: Empowering leadership positively moderates the effect of job complexity on job satisfaction.
The hypothesized model is illustrated in Figure 1, summarizing both main and moderator effects that are investigated and hypothesized. To test the hypotheses, an online survey was conducted and analyzed as described in the following sections.
Figure 1: Hypothesized Model
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