ROBERT W. LENT1 AND STEVEN D. BROWN2
1University of Maryland, College Park, MD
2Loyola University Chicago, Chicago, IL
People work for many reasons and differ in the rewards they receive from their work (Blustein, 2006; Lent & Brown, Chapter 1, this volume), yet they generally wish to be satisfied with and effective at their jobs. Work organizations also have a strong desire to hire workers who will be both happy and productive on the job. These two outcomes—work satisfaction and satisfactory performance—have, understandably, been the focus of a great deal of theory and research, given their profound consequences (e.g., emotional, economic) for both worker and employer. While they are often studied separately, they can be seen as representing complementary views on effective adjustment to work. When the focus is on how the worker feels about his or her work (including its conditions and rewards), the commonly used term is job satisfaction; when the perspective shifts to the question of how well the worker performs his or her job, we may speak about his or her job satisfactoriness (Lofquist & Dawis, 1984). These language conventions in the vocational literature imply that, as in any contract, it is important for both parties to be satisfied—in this case, the worker with the job (and what it offers), and the employer with the worker (and what he or she contributes to the work organization).
According to the theory of work adjustment (TWA), the worker's job satisfaction and satisfactoriness are, together, expected to lead to job tenure, or length of time that the worker will stay in a particular job or work environment (see Swanson & Schneider, Chapter 2, this volume). That is, satisfied workers are assumed to be motivated to remain in their jobs and, likewise, employers have a vested interest in retaining satisfactory (i.e., productive) workers. The reasonableness of these twin assumptions is immediately obvious. Imagine a work organization populated mostly by miserably unhappy and poorly performing workers. Over time, one would expect a great deal of turnover: those who can do so will tend to seek more satisfying work elsewhere, while the least productive will risk losing their jobs (or experiencing other negative consequences, such as frozen wages, which may exacerbate their dissatisfaction).
Research findings generally support the expectation that satisfaction and satisfactoriness should each predict job tenure (Swanson & Schneider, Chapter 2, this volume). However, these relationships are complicated by many factors. For example, some workers remain in unsatisfying jobs because they perceive few good alternatives (e.g., given their age, skill set, geographical location, family responsibilities), have limited support for making a job change, or fear “jumping from the frying pan into the fire” during difficult economic times. Likewise, employers may either retain workers or lay them off for reasons other than the strength of their work performance (e.g., seniority, outsourcing, corporate mergers, plant closings).
Although satisfaction and satisfactoriness offer no guarantee of job stability, and even though the world of work has been undergoing dramatic change in recent years (Lent & Brown, Chapter 1, this volume), these two outcomes are still considered important markers of work adjustment, albeit with some key qualifications. In particular, while everyone who works would most likely prefer to have a satisfying job, there are many situations in which job choices are dictated more by economic need or other considerations (e.g., family wishes, job availability, skill or educational limitations) than by work enjoyment. Also, as noted by Super's life‐span, life‐space career theory (see Hartung, Chapter 4, this volume), the work role varies in its centrality for different people. Work satisfaction is, therefore, likely to be especially salient for those who view work as among their most significant life roles than for those who are more psychologically invested in other roles, such as family member or community volunteer. Different people also hold varying standards for their work performance, with some focused on doing the minimum required and others wishing to excel, either for intrinsic (e.g., self‐satisfaction) or extrinsic (e.g., pay) reasons.
In this chapter, we will draw on a variety of perspectives—especially person–environment (P–E) fit and social cognitive career theories—that may be used to help counselors conceptualize and assist clients experiencing problems with work dissatisfaction or substandard performance. Although our primary focus will be on remedial counseling (i.e., where existing problems have motivated help‐seeking), the practical implications we derive from the literature are also relevant for developmental and preventive interventions—that is, for promoting work satisfaction and performance proactively or for nipping problems in the bud where they do occur. We divide the chapter into two main sections focusing, respectively, on factors that promote satisfaction and effective performance in work settings. Within each section, we offer examples of how the theoretical and research literatures may be used to inform interventions. Although we believe these literatures also have valuable implications for providing counseling on satisfaction and performance issues to students and to those engaged in other life roles, our primary focus here will be on adult workers.
This section will (a) consider the typical ways in which job, or work, satisfaction has been defined and measured; (b) discuss major sources of, and theoretical views on, job satisfaction, particularly those that may have particular relevance for counseling; and (c) identify suggestions for promoting work satisfaction that can be derived from research and theory. While the literature on job satisfaction is voluminous, the limited scope of this chapter requires a highly selective review. Extensive coverage of job satisfaction (and related “job attitude” variables) can be found elsewhere, particularly in the organizational psychology literature (e.g., Brief, 1998; Credé, 2018; Judge, Hulin, & Dalal, 2012; Locke, 1976; Schleicher, Hansen, & Fox, 2011; Spector, 1997). The approach taken here primarily reflects a vocational psychology/career counseling perspective (Lent, 2008), which is aimed at translating knowledge about job satisfaction into practical interventions designed primarily to assist workers (though work organizations may also benefit from such interventions).
Since most people spend a sizable portion of their lives working, how they feel about their work can be quite important to them, their significant others, and their work organizations. For example, meta‐analytic evidence supports the popular belief that job satisfaction is related to job success and other indicators of positive work functioning. In particular, happy workers are likely to be productive workers, both in doing the formal parts of their jobs (task performance) and in making informal contributions to their organizations (contextual performance); they are also less likely to engage in behaviors that can harm their organizations (Judge et al., 2012; Schleicher et al., 2011). Affect at work may also spill over into people's nonwork lives (e.g., Judge & Ilies, 2004; Rain, Lane, & Steiner, 1991). In addition, job satisfaction may contribute to overall life satisfaction, mental health, physical health, and even longevity (Fritzsche & Parrish, 2005; Lofquist & Dawis, 1984; Schleicher et al., 2011; Spector, 1997).
Job satisfaction has been formally defined as “a pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one's job or job experiences” (Locke, 1976, p. 1300). In simpler terms, it refers to the extent to which people like their jobs (Spector, 1997). Common synonyms for job satisfaction include work/job enjoyment, happiness, and well‐being. Although its basic definition may appear to be fairly straightforward, as we will see, job satisfaction becomes a more complex matter when theorists and researchers need to be more precise about such things as which aspects of the job to focus on, from whose perspective, and over what length of time.
Job satisfaction is typically assessed by asking for a worker's self‐report, allowing individuals to consider and weigh whatever specific factors are deemed relevant to their overall level of work enjoyment. It is also possible to obtain satisfaction ratings through “external” means, for example, by asking Suzie's supervisor, romantic partner, or coworkers about her degree of job satisfaction. While these alternative perspectives are useful for some purposes, in most inquiry on job satisfaction, Suzie would be seen as the key arbiter of how she feels about her own job or work situation. That is, satisfaction is usually viewed as a subjective matter.
Perhaps surprisingly, when asked by opinion researchers, most people report fairly high levels of overall job satisfaction. For instance, in a 2008 Gallup poll, 48% of U. S workers reported being completely satisfied with their jobs and 42% said they were somewhat satisfied; 7% reported being somewhat dissatisfied and 2% were completely dissatisfied; 1% reported no opinion (http://www.gallup.com/poll/109738/us-workers-job-satisfaction-relatively-high.aspx; retrieved January 13, 2020). Respondents gave more variable responses, however, when they were asked about their satisfaction with particular parts of their jobs. For instance, over 2/3 were completely satisfied with the safety conditions of their jobs and with their relations with their coworkers, whereas under 1/3 were completely satisfied with their amount of work stress or pay.
The 90% of respondents who were at least partly satisfied with their jobs overall had dipped only slightly by 2011 (http://www.gallup.com/poll/147833/job-satisfaction-struggles-recover-2008-levels.aspx; retrieved January 13, 2020), despite 3 years of economic recession. Of course, responses to the 2011 survey may have been affected by workers' relief over simply having a job during the recession. The percentages of those who were at least partly satisfied with their jobs did, however, vary somewhat as a function of demographic group membership. For example, older, higher‐paid, better‐educated, and Racial/ethnic majority workers reported the highest rates of satisfaction—generally 90% or higher. However, no demographic group studied showed less than an 82% rate of overall job satisfaction either in 2008 or 2011. The percentages vary a bit from year to year, yet U.S. workers have continued to report that they are generally satisfied with their jobs (https://news.gallup.com/poll/1720/work-work-place.aspx; retrieved January 13, 2020). Although this is good news for most, the 10% or so who are relatively unhappy (including higher percentages in some demographic groups) amounts to literally millions of people who may potentially be aided by career interventions.
The Gallup poll used about the simplest possible method of assessing job satisfaction—essentially, asking people a single question about how satisfied they were with their jobs, with two response options reflecting satisfaction (completely or somewhat satisfied) and two others reflecting dissatisfaction (completely or somewhat dissatisfied). A similar method was used when asking about satisfaction with particular aspects of one's job (e.g., pay). The only simpler approach would be to ask for a single “are you satisfied or dissatisfied?” judgment. Indeed, for some reporting purposes, the Gallup poll aggregated the two satisfaction response options into a single “satisfied” rating, and the two dissatisfaction options into a single “dissatisfied” rating, thereby dichotomizing workers into satisfied versus unsatisfied categories.
While the Gallup approach may be sufficient for purposes of a general opinion survey, most vocational researchers prefer scales that are a bit more sophisticated from a psychometric standpoint (e.g., use of multiple items and response options, asking about satisfaction in different ways), yet are still fairly straightforward, brief, and easy to use. The measures they use tend to assess either global or facet satisfaction. Global measures reflect overall feelings about one's job. Two popular examples include the Index of Job Satisfaction (Brayfield & Rothe, 1951) and the Job in General Scale (JIG; Ironson, Smith, Brannick, Gibson, & Kaul, 1989), from which very brief (5–8 item) forms have been devised. The JIG, for example, asks workers to rate their job using a variety of feeling‐oriented and evaluative (e.g., “enjoyable,” “good”) terms. Facet measures assess satisfaction with specific aspects of one's job, such as the work activities one performs, the rewards offered by the job, the nature of the work conditions, and the people with whom one works. Examples of facet measures include the Job Descriptive Index (Smith, Kendall, & Hulin, 1969) and the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (MSQ; Weiss, Dawis, England, & Lofquist, 1967). They naturally tend to be a bit longer (e.g., 72–100 items) than general measures of job satisfaction because they cover more content areas, but briefer forms, such as a 20‐item version of the MSQ, have also been developed. Researchers sometimes assess both forms of satisfaction or average together facet item responses to yield a composite measure of job satisfaction.
Apart from the general versus facet focus, researchers must also decide on the time frame of the assessment. Job satisfaction can be measured in terms of how people feel about their jobs either over nonspecific time periods (e.g., “most of the time”; Ironson et al., 1989) or over particular time periods (e.g., the past week, today). More immediate feeling judgments tend to be easier to make and may be more likely to capture responses to particular work events (e.g., conflict with a supervisor). Retrospective or indefinite time periods require people to remember or reconstruct how they might have felt in the past (e.g., “let's see, how did I feel about my work last year?”). Such summary judgments involve simplifying cognitive rules (e.g., recalling a particularly salient set of work experiences) that can bias reports of past feelings (Kahneman, 1999) and confound job satisfaction ratings with people's characteristic affective traits (e.g., general tendencies to be happy or unhappy across life contexts).
It should be noted that, in addition to level of satisfaction with one's current job or its facets, satisfaction can also be assessed in relation to broader aspects of work experience, such as one's occupational field or career on the whole. The latter, more global perspective can be assessed, for example, with a measure of career satisfaction (Greenhaus, Parasuraman, & Wormley, 1990), which is sometimes viewed as an indicator of subjective career success (Ng, Eby, Sorensen, & Feldman, 2005) because it reflects people's sense of satisfaction with their progress or success at key aspects of their career lives (e.g., meeting one's goals for income or advancement). Though this broader sweep on one's career represents a valuable area of inquiry, we will confine our focus to job satisfaction because it has attracted the lion's share of research and may also lend itself particularly well to intervention (i.e., by attending to current conditions or aspects of the self that may be most amenable to change efforts).
Job satisfaction can stem from many different factors. We will consider here four major views on the origins of work satisfaction: person, environment, P–E interaction (or fit), and integrative positions. The distinction between these categories is not always crisp, particularly when the individual is the sole source of information about self, environment, or P–E fit. For instance, in rating one's work environment, the person is telling us how he or she experiences that environment, which may or may not be consistent with the views of his or her coworkers. Despite potential overlap among them, it may nevertheless be useful to present these various sources of satisfaction under different headings.
Person variables. This category includes personality and affective traits that have been linked to satisfaction outcomes. Personality researchers assume that job satisfaction reflects more global tendencies to feel or act in certain ways regardless of the specific life context. In this view, job satisfaction may be less about the job than it is about the person—how he or she generally experiences the world in relation to the self. In a meta‐analysis, Judge, Heller, and Mount (2002) found that three of the “Big Five” personality traits (extraversion, neuroticism, conscientiousness) yielded small to medium correlations with job satisfaction (also see Brown & Hirschi, 2013). Other meta‐analyses have found that the traits of positive affect and negative affect were moderately associated with job satisfaction (e.g., Bowling, Eschleman, & Wang, 2010). Ilies and Judge (2003) reported that 29% of the variance in job satisfaction may be due to genetic factors, lending support to the argument that “job satisfaction is, in part, dispositionally based” (Judge et al., 2002, p. 530).
Job satisfaction ratings have been found to be somewhat stable over time. For example, Staw and Ross (1985) reported moderate stability coefficients over 2‐ and 5‐year intervals, though job satisfaction tended to be more stable when workers remained in the same positions than when they changed employers or occupations. Other research suggests that job satisfaction can fluctuate over time and conditions (Judge & Ilies, 2004), particularly when job satisfaction is assessed over shorter time periods (e.g., on a daily basis). Moreover, situational and cognitive variables have been found to predict job satisfaction independently of traits (e.g., Watson & Slack, 1993). Thus, the trait and heritability findings do not rule out the importance of nongenetic sources of job satisfaction.
What might we conclude from a counseling perspective? Our main interpretation of the findings is that job satisfaction is responsive both to dispositional and situational factors. If job satisfaction were only an immutable quality of the person (e.g., people are born to be happy or unhappy), as some writers believe (e.g., Lykken & Tellegen, 1996), then one would expect very high stability of job satisfaction over time and despite changing contexts. The moderate stability coefficients—and the sensitivity of satisfaction ratings to work events, situational influences, and cognitions—suggest that job satisfaction is potentially modifiable (rather than merely a matter of genetic fate). However, efforts to enhance job satisfaction will no doubt profit from additional research on the specific pathways (intermediate variables and processes) through which traits are linked to job satisfaction (Brief, 1998; Heller, Watson, & Ilies, 2004).
Environment variables. This category includes a variety of work condition and climate factors (e.g., social support, role stressors). Job satisfaction has been linked to many features of the work environment, particularly as people experience this environment subjectively. One influential view is that job satisfaction depends on the degree to which people perceive that their work environment provides a general set of favorable conditions, characteristics, or opportunities to fulfill their values. Warr (1999) organized commonly studied work characteristics and values into a set of 10 job features (e.g., opportunity for personal control, supportive supervision, valued social position, availability of money) that have been associated with job‐specific well‐being indices. It is noteworthy that several of Warr's categories involve social features of work. Other writers have noted that work environments offer opportunities for companionship, emotional support, belongingness, and practical assistance (Turner, Barling, & Zacharatos, 2002). Indeed, findings show that the perceived social climate of work relates substantially to job satisfaction (Carr, Schmidt, Ford, & DeShon, 2003).
Many studies have examined particular positive and negative work conditions, such as supports and stressors. A number of distressing work conditions—such as role stressors (e.g., role ambiguity, conflict, and overload), incivility, and harassment—have been linked to job satisfaction, with some findings showing that such work conditions account for significant unique variance in job satisfaction apart from affective dispositions (Lent, 2008). Organizational support theory (Kurtessis et al., 2017; Shore & Shore, 1995) offers a larger conceptual umbrella within which to view supportive or hostile work conditions. Perceived organizational support refers to the degree to which workers feel that their organization cares about their welfare, appreciates their contributions, and is committed to them. For instance, the experience of stressful work conditions or unfair pay may lead people to see their workplace as unsupportive which, in turn, diminishes their satisfaction. Perceived organizational support may, therefore, be a central mediating variable that helps explain how diverse work conditions affect satisfaction.
Person–environment fit. Another perspective—and one that has particularly influenced the thinking of career counselors—assumes that it is not the presence of generally favorable job characteristics or conditions per se that leads to job satisfaction, but rather the capacity of the work environment to provide specific conditions or rewards that individuals desire, based on aspects of their work personalities. This is the P–E fit perspective on job satisfaction. For instance, TWA posits that individuals will be satisfied to the extent that the work environment provides a set of reinforcers (e.g., variety, autonomy) that meet their personal work needs/values (e.g., Swanson & Schneider, Chapter 2, this volume). Holland's (1997) theory maintains that people will be more satisfied when their vocational interests/personalities match (are highly congruent with) those of others in their work environment (Nauta, Chapter 3, this volume)—for example, when an Investigative type person works in an Investigative type environment. Research findings indicate that P–E fit, operationalized in terms of Holland interests or TWA values, tends to be modestly related to job satisfaction (Nauta; Swanson & Schneider), though fit–satisfaction relations are stronger under certain conditions (Su, Murdock, & Rounds, 2015), for example, where the nature of P–E fit is judged subjectively by the person rather than by comparing independent measures of the person and his or her environment.
An integrative perspective. A recent trend has been to develop integrative models of work satisfaction that bring together person, environment, and P–E fit perspectives. Social cognitive career theory (SCCT), presented in Chapter 5, is one such approach. SCCT includes a variety of cognitive, behavioral, and environmental variables that are assumed, individually and jointly, to promote job satisfaction. In particular, the theory posits that people are likely to be happy at work to the extent that they are engaged in valued activities, are making progress toward personal goals, feel self‐efficacious at meeting their goals and performing their jobs, believe that their work will produce valued outcomes, and perceive ample supports (and minimal barriers) for their work behavior and goal pursuit (Lent & Brown, 2006, 2008). Tests of the social cognitive satisfaction model have yielded promising results, though not all hypothesized paths are uniquely predictive of job satisfaction in all model tests (Sheu et al., in press) (see Lent, 2008 and Judge et al., 2012 for coverage of additional integrative models of job satisfaction).
From a counseling perspective, research on work conditions, P–E fit, and social cognitive variables offers an important counterpoint to the literature on dispositional predictors of job satisfaction. The dispositional research produces a view of job and other aspects of satisfaction as relatively fixed (e.g., Lykken & Tellegen, 1996), whereas situational and cognitive approaches encourage a focus on antecedents of job satisfaction that are potentially modifiable via counseling or other means (e.g., self‐help, organizational interventions). For example, by setting and pursuing personal goals, or by identifying organizations (or niches within organizations) where they are likely to find support and a sense of reciprocated loyalty, people may be partly able to promote their own work satisfaction—rather than merely feeling forced either to “grin and bear it” or look for a different job. This is not to imply that everyone will be equally able to make changes in themselves or their work environments to enhance their job satisfaction, but even small exercises of personal control may be good for one's morale.
It should be clear from the above review that job satisfaction is a “multiply determined phenomenon” (Lent, 2008, p. 475) in the sense that a number of different variables contribute to its prediction when it is studied in groups of people. However, when individual clients seek counseling because they are dissatisfied with their job or career, our experience has been that they often perceive a particular factor (or small set of factors) to be at issue. They may be able to point to fairly specific conditions, events, or relationships that they do not like (or that they may feel anxious, angry, or depressed about) in their current work situation. On the other hand, some clients may experience job dissatisfaction as a vague sense of ennui, staleness, or as a growing conviction that their work has come to lack meaning or purpose for them (Lent, 2013b).
In many cases, clients may enter counseling asking for assistance in changing their jobs or careers. This is often a sign of work dissatisfaction that has reached a point where the client feels that escape may be the best or even the only viable answer. How the counselor and client define the problem will partly determine whether counseling is directed at environmental change, self‐change, or both. For example, will the counselor take the client's desire to leave the current job at face value or dig deeper to identify the source(s) of dissatisfaction? Can something be done to manage the condition(s) that seem to be behind the client's dissatisfaction? If so, is the client likely to be happy remaining in the current job—or is the P–E gulf just too wide to be bridged?
As should be apparent, the first step in counseling for job satisfaction is to assess the problem carefully. How dissatisfied is the client and with what, in particular? Fortunately, the literature can be used to provide a structure for assessing job satisfaction and its sources. For example, if formal assessment is preferred, a brief measure, such as the JIG, can be used to gauge the client's overall level of job satisfaction. If the counselor is comfortable with a more informal approach, he or she can simply ask the client to rate his or her current or usual level of job satisfaction on a scale of 1 (totally miserable) to 10 (totally happy). Although some counselors would simply infer the client's degree of satisfaction from qualitative information provided in the first interview, an advantage of obtaining numeric ratings as a part of problem assessment is that they provide an explicit baseline against which efforts to enhance job satisfaction can later be compared.
Where it is clear, either from the client's presenting problem or targeted assessment, that dissatisfaction is likely to be the focus of counseling, it is useful to explore in greater depth the source of the dissatisfaction—and to ascertain whether it appears limited to the current job situation or to extend beyond it (e.g., poor fit with one's larger occupation in terms of values or interests). Our review suggests that most specific sources of work satisfaction/dissatisfaction are likely to fall within several broad categories, such as environmental conditions (e.g., a nonsupportive supervisor), cognitive‐person factors (e.g., self‐efficacy, goal progress), traits (e.g., a predisposition toward negative affect), and P–E fit (e.g., not getting what one wants from work). Table 23.1 lists common causes of job dissatisfaction, which can be used to structure the assessment process and to identify possible targets for counseling.
Despite their placement in different conceptual categories in the table, it is important to keep in mind that—unless external sources of information are gathered—the attribution of the problem's source is linked to “the eye of the beholder.” Although it is important to respect the client's point of view, it is also important to appreciate that this view is usually not the only one possible. For example, the client may feel certain that his or her supervisor is the cause of the client's dissatisfaction when, in fact, others generally find it pleasant to work with the supervisor. Such differences in perception may mean that what the client sees as a problem with the work environment could also be viewed as a matter of P–E fit (e.g., the client's difficulty interacting with the supervisor around particular issues). We find it helpful, like most counselors, to start off by exploring the client's perspective. But it can also be invaluable to seek additional sources of information that can support, challenge, or broaden that perspective. For example, the client can be encouraged to discuss with coworkers how they experience or deal with a particular issue that the client experiences as problematic. The counselor could also form hypotheses based on aspects of the client's in‐session presentation (e.g., low affect, lack of assertion, difficulty listening, lack of follow‐through on homework assignments) that may be relevant to his or her work relationships or experience of work dissatisfaction.
Job dissatisfaction is often linked either to the absence of something positive that the client wants (e.g., engrossing work activities, better pay, friendly coworkers) or by the presence of something negative that he or she does not want (e.g., stress, role conflicts, harassment). The client's decision to seek counseling likely implies that he or she feels unable to access the positive things or to neutralize the negative ones. To clarify these perceptions, the counselor might ask the following sorts of questions: (a) What do you want from your work that you are currently not getting (or not getting enough of)? (b) What parts of your job or work situation do you dislike the most (or even dread)? (c) What have you tried doing to get more of what you want (or to deal with the unpleasant parts of work)? (d) How do you like to spend your time when you are not working? (e) How does your work life fit with these other parts of your life? (f) How happy, or satisfied, with your life do you tend to be on the whole?
TABLE 23.1 Common Sources of Work Dissatisfaction
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The first few questions are intended to help clarify needs/values that are not being adequately met at work (e.g., insufficient variety or growth opportunities) and to identify negative work conditions or role strain issues (e.g., overwork, interpersonal tensions, work–family conflict). The client's responses could lead to more in‐depth exploration of the sources of dissatisfaction, conditions that exacerbate or lessen it, and the utility of current coping strategies. The last few questions address work–nonwork interface and possible affect concerns. Yet another way to get at some of these issues is through a version of the “magic question:” “Imagine you were to wake up one day to find yourself truly happy at work. What would need to change for that to happen in real life?” Although clients can often provide a window on their primary perceived source of dissatisfaction without a great deal of prompting, more thorough exploration may reveal secondary sources of dissatisfaction and hypotheses about coping options.
Where a more structured or thorough approach is preferred, a facet measure of job satisfaction, like the MSQ, could be used to survey a range of potential sources of dissatisfaction with the job. To explore potential trait‐based reasons for job dissatisfaction, a simple, brief measure like the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS; Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988) can be administered. The PANAS contains two 10‐item scales that measure, respectively, characteristic levels of positive (e.g., enthusiastic) and negative (e.g., scared) affect. Clients can be instructed to indicate how they “generally feel” (i.e., without respect to life context) or how they feel specifically, most of the time, when at work.
Once the counselor has integrated various sources of assessment data to conceptualize the problem—and once the client and counselor have arrived at a shared construction of the likely source(s) of the client's dissatisfaction—a counseling plan can be designed. The plan might include a variety of options for the client to consider, such as (a) making changes in the self (e.g., managing time differently to deal with work overload, developing ways to manage problematic affective tendencies; Brown, Ryan, & McPartland, 1996; Lent, 2004), (b) making changes in the work environment (e.g., negotiating for more challenging work assignments, finding advocates to redress unfair conditions), or (c) making a job or occupational change. When none of these options is feasible (and if the client feels that continuing to endure job dissatisfaction is a lesser evil than leaving his or her current job), compensatory strategies might be considered, such as increasing one's involvement in nonwork activities that allow for personal growth, valued goal pursuit, or social participation.
The approach we have described here is largely derived from the literature on work satisfaction and integrates ideas from P–E fit theories, SCCT, and general cognitive‐behavioral counseling theories. The methods of other career theories presented in the first section of this book could also be assembled to inform interventions designed to prevent or treat work dissatisfaction. For example, career construction theory (Savickas, Chapter 6, this volume) could suggest narrative methods to help clients “edit” unsatisfying work stories and envision new scripts for more fulfilling or meaningful work. Where career change seems indicated, established methods of career choice counseling can be adopted (see Sampson, Osborn, & Bullock‐Yowell, Chapter 21, this volume). Where a change of employers is desired, the client can be assisted with job search methods described by Brown (Chapter 22, this volume). However, in such cases, it may still be valuable to explore and deal with sources of dissatisfaction (e.g., affective traits, unreliable coping methods) that may follow the client to a new job or career path.
We turn now to a discussion of satisfaction from the perspective of the work organization; that is, to the employee's satisfactoriness in performing his or her work roles. Counselors working with adults frequently encounter clients seeking help with problems that involve job performance. Such problems may be a client's primary reason for entering counseling (perhaps to stave off an impending job loss or to deal with blocked advancement opportunities) or may be contributory to, or exacerbated by, other presenting concerns (e.g., depression). The primary purposes of this section are to summarize relevant research and theory and to draw implications for promoting work performance. As in the satisfaction section of this chapter, we will begin by considering key ways that job satisfactoriness has been defined and measured and then turn to a discussion of major sources of satisfactoriness, drawing upon theoretical perspectives that are relevant to career counseling. Finally, we will summarize counseling implications that may be derived from research and theory.
Job satisfactoriness refers to the organization's satisfaction with the employee and is assessed in most organizations by supervisor performance appraisals. Although research on job satisfactoriness typically uses standardized measures like the Minnesota Satisfactoriness Scales (MSS; Carlson, Dawis, England, & Lofquist, 1963), most employers have their own performance appraisal systems that reflect their focus on particular work tasks and performance criteria. Poor appraisals from an employing organization may lead people to seek help from a counselor or, in some cases (especially with managers and executives), to assignments to work with a job coach.
Work or job performance is a related but broader term that refers to the adequacy with which a person fulfills his or her job‐specific tasks or other behaviors that contribute to the organization. Research on work performance often uses supervisor appraisals to index employees' levels of work performance, but may also include other types of measures (e.g., job simulations and work sample tests, records of customer satisfaction or complaints, measures of productivity, job knowledge tests, and measures of performance in training). Work performance has historically been a major focus of research in industrial/organizational psychology and has greatly informed understanding of employee satisfactoriness.
It is possible to differentiate performance and satisfactoriness at a conceptual level: performance may connote objective or data‐driven indicators of role functioning, whereas satisfactoriness involves a summary judgment (usually made by a supervisor) of the individual's performance, taking into account various (objective and subjective) data sources. In other words, satisfactoriness reflects how happy the organization (or a representative of the organization) is with the employee, given assessments of his or her work behavior. These terms are, however, often used as synonyms in the literature and, in practice, satisfactoriness/performance appraisal ratings may be considered as an efficient way to index performance, at least from the perspective of the work organization. Because the distinction between the two is often muddied in practice and because the larger literature on this topic in organizational psychology more often uses the term performance (though satisfactoriness remains popular with some in vocational psychology), we will use these terms interchangeably here.
We should also note that we will focus this section on the quality or level of work performance (or satisfactoriness) in its several forms rather than on the outcomes or rewards of performance (e.g., salary level, promotions). Rewards, of course, help to motivate performance and also play important roles relative to workers' job satisfaction, tenure (Dawis & Lofquist, 1984), and sense of career success (Ng et al., 2005). Yet they are not the same as performance itself and are often influenced by extra‐performance variables (e.g., seniority, gender bias, economic conditions). Models of career self‐management (e.g., Lent, Chapter 5, this volume) and research on underemployment (Allan & Kim, Chapter 24, this volume) suggest a variety of adaptive strategies (e.g., self‐advocacy, networking, job searching, attending to structural barriers, critical consciousness raising) that might be used to help workers respond to perceived gaps between their performance quality and its rewards.
Job performance is one of the central constructs in organizational psychology (Campbell, Gasser, & Oswald, 1996). Not surprisingly, there is a vast literature focusing on the antecedents and consequences of job performance. Research has recently produced an expanded view of work performance. Results of this body of research have revealed that job performance is not a unidimensional construct, but instead involves several aspects of employee behavior, all of which may influence the performance appraisals of individual employees. In other words, the question of how well a person does his or her job is often not so simple; the answer may well differ, depending on which dimension of performance one considers.
Task and contextual performance. Contemporary conceptions of work performance include two to four broad classifications of employee behavior that contribute to organizational effectiveness. The first, usually labeled as task performance, focuses on how well employees perform the specific work tasks prescribed by their jobs or job descriptions (e.g., selling, teaching, writing, plumbing). Task performance, which reflects the common image of what people do when they are at work, has been a major focus of research since the beginning of organizational psychology, and has been shown to be an important factor underlying performance appraisals (e.g., Rotundo & Sackett, 2002).
Organizational psychology scholars have, in more recent years, recognized the importance of employee behaviors that are not strictly prescribed by job descriptions and are not explicitly required, but that nevertheless contribute to organizational effectiveness by enhancing the psychological and social context in which work occurs (Organ, 1988). These extra‐role, “beyond the call of duty” behaviors—typically labeled contextual performance (CP) or organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) (Borman & Motowildo, 1993, 1997; Organ, 1988, 1997; Smith, Organ, & Near, 1983)—include helping and cooperating with others, volunteering to do more than the minimum required in the job, following procedures even when personally inconvenient, persisting to accomplish tasks, and defending and supporting the organization's objectives (Borman & Motowidlo, 1993).
Borman (2004) suggested that the various OCB behaviors can be subclassified within a three‐category system. The first OCB category, personal support, describes behaviors that are intended to facilitate coworker performance and include helping others by offering suggestions, teaching skills, assisting on tasks, and providing emotional support. This category also includes cooperative behaviors (e.g., accepting suggestions, putting team needs ahead of one's own needs) and courteous behaviors (e.g., showing consideration and confidence in others). The second OCB category, organizational support, involves behaviors aimed at the organization rather than individual employees. Such behaviors include representing the organization favorably and promoting its public image, showing loyalty despite temporary hardships, supporting the organization's mission and objectives, complying with organizational rules, and suggesting improvements. The third OCB category, conscientious initiative, includes behaviors that are less interpersonally or organizationally directed, but that show effort and initiative on the part of the employee (e.g., persisting on difficult tasks, taking on extra work to get the job done, finding additional work to do when one's own tasks are completed, and taking the initiative to develop new knowledge and skills).
Other, similar taxonomies focus on the value of both interpersonally and organizationally directed citizenship behaviors. For example, Organ and colleagues (e.g., Organ & Paine, 1999; Smith, Organ, & Near, 1983) suggest that prosocial behaviors directed at other individual employees (OCB‐I) and those directed at the organization as a whole (OCB‐O) represent conceptually and empirically distinct types of OCB. The former (OCB‐I), like Borman's personal support dimension, generally involves cooperating with and helping others, being courteous to fellow employees, and displaying an altruistic attitude to others in the organization. The latter (OCB‐O), similar to Borman's organizational support dimension, is defined as behaviors that demonstrate identification with and allegiance to the organization, defend the organization against threats, and endorse and support the organization's objectives (e.g., Borman & Motowidlo, 1993; Graham, 1991).
Both types of OCBs (in addition to behaviors involving conscientious initiative) have been hypothesized to contribute to the performance appraisals of employees, above and beyond their task performance. In the case of OCB‐I, it has been suggested that a reciprocity norm may operate between the supervisor and subordinate. For example, employees who perform these types of citizenship behaviors (e.g., helping a worker who has fallen behind on a task) often free up supervisors' time to work on other important tasks. As a result, supervisors may reciprocate this help by providing positive performance appraisals. OCB‐O may form an important aspect of performance appraisals, especially today when perceptions of commitment to organizations seem to be declining (e.g., Johnson, 2005), by demonstrating to managers loyalty and commitment to the organization.
Research on OCB generally confirms that it relates positively to organizational effectiveness and negatively to counterproductive work behaviors (CWBs) (see Organ, 2018), but there are two important caveats. First, engaging in too much OCB may come at the expense of employees' task performance as well as feelings of stress and fatigue and family relationships (Dalal, Lam, Weiss, Welch, & Hulen, 2009; Trougakos, Beal, Cheng, Hideg, & Zweig, 2015). Organ (2018) labeled this a “too much of a good thing” phenomenon. Second, it appears that many employers, in the current work climate, are making increasing demands on employees, many of which fall outside of prescribed job duties. Some recent findings suggest that this may backfire in that demands for OCB can result in an increase in CWBs (Bauer, Wright, Askew, & Spector, 2018). Demands for OCBs have also been found to relate to work overload, lower levels of job satisfaction, and increased work–family conflict (Bolino, & Turnley, 2005).
OCB researchers have noted that the current economic environment requires organizations to be flexible and to be able to adapt quickly to changing local, national, and worldwide trends in order to improve their products and services and remain competitive in the global marketplace (e.g., Jelinek & Schoonhoven, 1993). Accordingly, scholars have begun to recognize that another type of OCB may contribute significantly to the productivity or efficiency of work organizations. Called voice (or challenge‐oriented as opposed to affiliative‐oriented OCB) by Van Dyne and LePine (1998), this type of OCB includes “making innovative suggestions for change and recommending modifications to standard procedures even when others disagree” (p. 109), challenging the status quo, and promoting change in the organization. There are several reasons why voice may contribute to performance appraisals independent of both task performance and other types of OCB. First, as we suggested earlier, employee voice may be seen as integral to initiating the types of changes and adaptability required in today's business climate. Second, employees who provide valuable suggestions to managers on how to improve the organization are likely to help managers be more successful in their own jobs. Third, voice behaviors may be seen as a reflection of the employee's commitment to the organization, much like OCB‐O type behaviors.
Research has generally confirmed that voice has a positive effect on organizational/work group performance, but only up to a certain point. For example, MacKenzie, Podsakoff, and Podaskoff (2011) found that the amount of voice provided by members of a work unit related to unit performance in an inverted U manner—increasing voice was associated with increased unit productivity up to a point, after which productivity tended to suffer. Also, providing “voice” is not without its risks: recent surveys have indicated that as many as 85% of managers are reluctant to speak up about their work‐related concerns because they feel that doing so will have little impact and may result in adverse personal outcomes, such as negative performance appraisals (e.g., Milliken, Morrison, & Hewlin, 2003; Souba, Way, Lucey. Sedmak, & Notestine, 2011).
Some findings suggest that the effects of voice on performance appraisals depend on characteristics of the message, the recipient (supervisor), and how the sender (employee) is otherwise performing at work. For example, Whiting, Maybes, Podsakoff, and Podsakoff (2012) found that voice was better received when potential solutions accompanied the report of a problem. Otherwise, voice may be viewed as complaining. Other findings suggest that managers (the recipients) with a low sense of managerial efficacy may see voice as a challenge to their competence and may appraise employees more negatively if they provide voice (Fast, Burris, & Bartel, 2014). On the other hand, leaders who build strong, high‐quality dyadic relationships with their employees (Graen & Uhl‐Bien, 1995) and who encourage the sharing of ideas (Lee, Diefendorff, Kim, & Bian, 2014) tend to encourage voice and reward employees who speak up and offer suggestions.
Finally, Whiting, Podsakof, and Pierce (2008) found significant interactions among task performance, OCB, and voice as sources of performance appraisal. Specifically, they found that voice influenced performance appraisals positively only if task performance, citizenship behavior, or both were high. In other words, supervisors in this study gave more weight to voice when employees were also contributing to the organization via acceptable task or contextual performance. Because voice behaviors have the potential to threaten the status quo and engender organizational defensiveness, it may be that employees who exercise their “voice” have credibility only if they are seen as effective performers in other ways. Otherwise, supervisors and coworkers may take the position, “why should we listen to you?”
Counterproductive work behaviors. A third set of employee behaviors has also been seen as contributing to performance appraisals separately from task and contextual performance, but in the opposite direction—CWBs. CWB involves voluntary behaviors that harm the well‐being of the organization (Rotundo & Sackett, 2002) and negatively affect an organization's productivity and culture. Examples of CWB behaviors that have been studied include (a) personally deviant behaviors (e.g., substance and alcohol abuse, other illegal behaviors), (b) destructive or hazardous behaviors (e.g., violating security and safety, destroying equipment), (c) aggression and unruliness (e.g., actions that harm other workers, such as gossiping and spreading rumors), and (d) behaviors that diminish organizational productivity (e.g., taking overly long breaks, being tardy, missing work, sabotaging the work of others, behaving in an unprofessional manner with customers).
Adaptive performance. The changing nature of the work world has also led some investigators to posit that a fourth class of performance behaviors may be critical in the current marketplace and that supervisors may also consider these behaviors when making performance appraisals. Called adaptive performance (e.g., Pulakos, Arad, Donovon, & Plamondon, 2000), these behaviors include employees' facility at handling emergency or crisis situations and work stress, solving problems creatively, dealing with uncertain and unpredictable work situations, and adapting to new cultures. Adaptive performance is conceptually related to career adaptability (Savickas, Chapter 6, this volume), career preparedness (Lent, 2013a), and similar constructs that are of current interest in career counseling and vocational psychology.
Relations among the types of work performance. Researchers have examined the relations among the various types of work performance to determine whether they truly represent distinct psychological dimensions. LaPine and Van Dyne (2001) explored the relations among task performance, voice, and other forms of OCB and found that voice was sufficiently distinct from other forms of organizational citizenship to warrant its separate assessment in the study of work performance. However, studies of the relations between individually focused (OCB‐I) and organizationally focused (OCB‐O) citizenship behaviors suggest that they may not be empirically distinguishable when assessed from the perspective of supervisors. LePine, Erez, and Johnson (2002) found large meta‐analytic correlations among measures of OCB‐I and OCB‐O. They also found that potential antecedents of OCB (e.g., job satisfaction) produced similar relations to OCB‐I and OCB‐O behaviors. Together, these results suggest that OCB‐I and OCB‐O behaviors may form a single larger psychological construct. Whether considered as distinct manifestations of OCB or as a single category, an adequate understanding of clients' OCB may require exploration of their interactions with fellow employees, contributions to the organization's culture and objectives, and voice (or demonstration of independent initiative) in the organization.
Research has also shown that CWB is empirically distinguishable from the other forms of work performance. Dalal (2005), for example, reported only moderately sized meta‐analytic correlations between measures of OCBs and CWBs. Understandably, prosocial behaviors are inversely related to CWBs (i.e., those who demonstrate good organizational citizenship are less likely to engage in organization‐harming behaviors). However, the negative correlations between these two constructs are not so large as to suggest that they are just opposite poles of a “good to bad” worker continuum. Others have found that task performance relates only weakly to OCBs and CWBs (LaPine & Van Dyne, 2001), but more strongly to adaptive performance (Shoss, Witt, & Vera, 2012). Despite the positive correlation between adaptive and task performance, research suggests that they are distinct constructs (Griffin, Neal, & Parker, 2007) and that both are used in performance appraisals (Johnson, 2001).
Types of performance and supervisor appraisals of work effectiveness. From a counseling perspective, it is important to note that task performance, adaptive performance, OCB, and CWB each contribute to performance appraisals (i.e., ratings of employee satisfactoriness). Researchers have found that task performance and OCBs both correlate substantially with overall performance ratings (e.g., .43 for task performance and .41 for contextual performance; Motowidlo & Van Scotter, 1994). CWBs seem also to contribute importantly to overall performance appraisals, apart from the contributions of task performance and OCBs. In a study of performance appraisals in five occupational groups, Rotundo and Sackett (2002) found that task performance and CWBs each correlated more highly with overall performance appraisals (average rs of .50 and −.52 for task performance and counterproductive behaviors, respectively) than did OCBs (average r = .29).
In summary, the research in this area suggests that work performance encompasses more than just task performance. In addition to how well people perform the tasks that are formally required of them, performance appraisals can be influenced by the prosocial behaviors that employees display at work, including the degree to which they cooperate with and help others (OCB‐I), support and defend the organization as a whole (OCB‐O), demonstrate conscientious initiative, and offer challenging and innovative suggestions to improve the organization's effectiveness (voice). Performance appraisals also take into account counterproductive behaviors that detract from or harm the organization and employees' abilities to adapt to changed work requirements and circumstances.
In terms of organizational citizenship, supervisors may attend to behaviors that challenge the status quo (voice), as well as to more cooperative types of behaviors aimed at helping fellow employees or promoting the organization as a whole. The impact that voice behaviors have on employee satisfactoriness may depend on other types of contributions that employees make to the organization. Voice may not be well accepted by supervisors unless employees are performing their job tasks well or contributing in other ways to the performance and climate of their organization. It is also possible that voice behaviors will be more likely to be heeded and rewarded if solutions are offered along with challenges to the status quo—a style issue that may be explored in counseling. Another issue to explore in counseling is the degree to which a supervisor or the employing organization values suggestions from employees.
Many variables discussed earlier in this chapter as sources of job satisfaction have also been found to be important sources of job satisfactoriness. These include person variables, the work environment, P–E fit, and various social cognitive variables.
Person variables. Certain personality variables, especially the Big Five trait of conscientiousness (see Rottinghaus, Park, & Washington, Chapter 18, this volume), have been shown to reliably predict work performance. Several meta‐analyses (e.g., Barrick & Mount, 1991; Salgado, 1997) have found that employee conscientiousness may, in fact, represent one of the strongest predictors of work performance for most jobs. More fine‐grained analyses suggest that conscientiousness is an important predictor of task performance as well as OCB and CWB (Chiaburu, Oh, Berry, Li, & Gardner, 2011). However, some researchers have found that other Big Five traits rival conscientiousness in predicting OCBs and adaptive performance. For example, Chiaburu et al. (2011) found that openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness were all good predictors of both OCB‐I and OCB‐O, while extraversion and openness were good predictors of voice. The meta‐analysis by Huang, Ryan, Zabel, and Palmer (2014) suggested that emotional stability and a facet of extraversion (ambition) both predicted adaptive performance.
These findings suggest that work performance is partly linked to the personality dispositions that people bring with them to their work settings. For example, employees who tend to be cooperative (agreeable) and open to new experiences and ideas (open) may be more likely to engage in the types of citizenship behaviors that are seen as valuable in performance appraisals. Similarly, persons who are relatively outgoing (extraversion) and comfortable with change (open) may be more likely to effectively challenge the status quo when such behavior is desirable. Conscientious employees (those who are goal‐directed, organized, planful, and achievement‐oriented) seem to have an advantage over less conscientious employees in most, if not all, performance domains that are included in performance appraisals.
Two other types of person variables have been studied in relation to work performance: general cognitive ability and emotional intelligence (EI). General cognitive ability (or intelligence), which reflects the ability to learn new tasks (Schmidt, 2002), is indexed by a variety of commercially available intelligence and ability tests. It has been found to be a strong predictor of work performance (see Metz & Gardner, Chapter 17, this volume). Meta‐analytic correlations between intelligence and work performance are especially large, suggesting that as much as 25% of the variance in work performance is accounted for by employee general cognitive ability, irrespective of type of job, though more complex jobs seem to require more general learning ability than do less complex jobs (e.g., Schmidt, 2002). General cognitive ability appears to relate to task performance in at least two ways, both directly (i.e., higher levels of cognitive ability enable stronger performance) and indirectly, through the acquisition of job knowledge (see Schmidt, 2002); those with higher levels of general cognitive ability learn what is required on their jobs more quickly and easily than do those with lesser ability.
General cognitive ability (as well as personality variables) also relates to OCBs, but it appears that EI accounts for significant unique variance over and above cognitive ability and personality in predicting OCB, including voice. For example, Miao, Humphrey, and Qian (2017) presented meta‐analytic data to suggest that EI adds incremental validity in predicting both OCB and CWBs. Bozionelos and Singh (2017) identified two EI components (abilities to appraise emotions and regulate them) as being most strongly related to OCB‐I (helping others) and voice—those who were best at appraising the emotions of others and regulating their own emotions tend to engage in more helping and voice behaviors than those lower on these two EI dimensions. Miao et al. (2017) also suggested that employees can be trained to increase their emotional competence.
Environment variables. Several features of the work environment have also been found to relate to employee satisfactoriness, most notably role stressors and strains (role ambiguity, conflict, and overload), perceived organizational support, job autonomy, organizational climate, and perceptions of organizational justice (Carr et al., 2003; Colquit, Scott, Rodell, Long, & Zapata, 2013; Langfred, & Moye, 2004; Morgeson, Delaney‐Klinger, & Hemmingway, 2005). Perceived organizational support and perceptions of organizational justice both center on employees' perceptions of fairness (e.g., in how organizational procedures are applied and rewards are distributed) and are related to OCBs (positively) and CWBs (negatively; Colquit et al., 2013; Ford, Wang, Jin, & Eisenberger, 2018).
There is also evidence that these environmental factors may be linked to performance indirectly, through the intervening variable of employee satisfaction. This indirect pathway may be more pronounced in the case of OCBs and CWBs than task performance (Eatough, Chang, Miloslavic, & Johnson, 2011). In other words, employees who view their work environments as nonsupportive (e.g., because they routinely receive ambiguous assignments or view the organization as unfairly distributing rewards) are likely to become dissatisfied at work. Dissatisfied workers are, in turn, less likely to engage in OCBs and more likely to exhibit CWBs compared to satisfied workers, whose more supportive environments are perceived as fair and as encouraging goodwill. As noted earlier, similar effects have been found (i.e., reduced job satisfaction, increased CWBs) when OCB is demanded by organizations (Bauer et al., 2018).
Person–environment fit. P–E fit has also been found to predict job performance as well as job satisfaction (see the satisfaction section of this chapter). For example, Holland's theory (see Nauta, Chapter 3, this volume) hypothesizes that work performance, like satisfaction, results from working in an occupational environment that is congruent with one's personality. Thus, an IA person working in an IA environment will tend to like the job more and perform better in it than a person with an SE personality working in an IA environment. The TWA (see Swanson & Schneider, Chapter 2, this volume) also maintains that harmonious P–E matches produce both worker satisfaction and satisfactoriness. In the case of satisfactoriness, better fit between the employee's abilities and the ability requirements of the work environment is assumed to lead to better work performance. Findings indicate that both forms of P–E fit (Holland congruence and TWA correspondence) are modestly related to various indices of work performance, and that TWA correspondence accounts for unique variance in the prediction of job satisfactoriness beyond Holland congruence (e.g., Dawis & Lofquist, 1984).
An integrative perspective. The performance model of SCCT (see Lent, Chapter 5, this volume) attempts to integrate several sets of variables that, together, are seen as promoting work performance. While acknowledging various person, learning, and environmental variables that contribute to performance, this model highlights the joint roles of cognitive ability and work‐related skills, self‐efficacy beliefs, outcome expectations, and performance goals relative to work performance. More specifically, SCCT hypothesizes that general cognitive ability and the specific work skills that people develop (through prior mastery experiences and by observing others) influence task performance both directly and indirectly via self‐efficacy beliefs. Self‐efficacy is seen as enabling performance in several ways, in particular, by helping people to organize and deploy their cognitive abilities more effectively and form more optimistic outcome expectations.
SCCT also posits that self‐efficacy and outcome expectations affect work performance, at least in part, via their influence on the types of work goals that people set for themselves. Persons with more robust self‐efficacy beliefs and positive outcome expectations are likely to set more challenging performance goals than do workers with weaker self‐efficacy beliefs and less positive (or more negative) outcome expectations. More challenging goals, in turn, are expected to motivate people to work harder at goal attainment, leading to higher levels of performance. In a meta‐analysis of research on a portion of the performance model, cognitive ability and self‐efficacy were found to jointly predict both work goals and performance (Brown, Lent, Telander, & Tramayne, 2011).
While SCCT's performance model was specifically developed to account for task performance, it may also have implications for understanding how much and how well people engage in contextual performance. In particular, the performance model might be extended to posit that workers are more likely to perform extra‐role citizenship behaviors when they possess both strong self‐efficacy beliefs and favorable outcome expectations related to these behaviors (i.e., when they believe they can perform the OCBs successfully and that doing so will produce positive rather than negative outcomes). As we noted previously, engaging in citizenship behavior, though positively valued by employers, is not without its costs for employees; it can, for example, be associated with work overload, job stress, and work–family conflict (Bolino & Turnley, 2005). Some employees may, understandably, be reluctant to engage in OCBs because of such anticipated costs (i.e., negative outcome expectations may outweigh positive ones). Although there is need to test the SCCT performance model in the context of organizational citizenship, these speculations suggest the potential value of helping clients to consider both the pros and cons of engaging in increased OCB.
Like satisfaction, job satisfactoriness is multiply determined. Thus, it is useful for counseling aimed at performance problems to begin by determining the major sources of a clients' lack of satisfactoriness at work. We typically start by exploring the degree to which inadequate task performance, OCBs (including voice), CWBs, and adaptive performance might be contributing to clients' performance appraisals. We try to determine whether clients are aware of the importance of adaptive performance, citizenship behaviors, and CWBs to performance appraisals. We have found that some clients think that doing their official job tasks well is all that is required of them. Although this might be an accurate assumption in some work settings, an exploration of the degree to which extra‐role behaviors are positively valued in their organizations can be enlightening to clients.
One strategy for gathering data on task and adaptive performance, OCBs, and CWBs is to ask clients to describe their past work day or week. Counselors can listen for instances of citizenship and counterproductive behaviors and probe for examples of each (e.g., What did you do last week to help a fellow employee? How do you feel about your organization's goals and values? What do you do when you disagree with the direction your organization or work unit is going?). Counselors can also develop checklists of potential OCBs and CWBs. Clients can be asked to complete the checklist between sessions or the counselor may present items orally to the client for in‐session discussion. Table 23.2 provides a summary of behaviors that can be used to create such a checklist.
TABLE 23.2 Examples of Organizational Citizenship Behaviors and Counterproductive Work Behaviors
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* Source: Adapted from Borman, W. C. (2004). The concept of organizational citizenship. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 13, 238–241.
It may be also helpful for clients to seek the perspectives of a supervisor or trusted coworkers on their task and adaptive performance and extra‐role behaviors, because external feedback may help clients to peer around their own blind spots. In fact, in some cases, consultation with several other feedback sources may be useful in creating a composite picture of one's performance. To the extent that perceptions of satisfactoriness lie in the eye of the beholder, and in situations where work performance appraisals are heavily based on subjective data, such interpersonal feedback may prove very informative. This suggestion is similar to the practice of “360° feedback” in organizational consultation where, for example, performance feedback is sought from a sample of a target individual's supervisors, coworkers, and subordinates or customers.
Where external feedback is sought, it may be important to discuss or role‐play with clients how to gather and respond nondefensively to constructive feedback. It may also be valuable to employ performance instruments that closely reflect the actual tasks and OCBs of the employee's work environment. Another, possibly less threatening approach to assessment may be to rely on prior performance appraisals that the client has received, possibly augmented by follow‐up discussions between the client and his or her supervisors to get a clearer sense of areas for improvement and how they will be assessed.
We have often found it beneficial to explore specifically the extent to which feelings of job satisfaction might be affecting clients' performance. For example, unhappiness at work may serve as a negative motivational force, contributing to diminished task performance, withholding of citizenship behavior, or involvement in CWBs (e.g., frequent absences, tardiness, brusqueness with customers or coworkers). (Of course, there may be bidirectional relations as well, with performance problems serving to diminish work satisfaction, resulting in a negative satisfaction–performance cycle.) Should lack of satisfaction seem to be contributing to satisfactoriness problems, we typically shift our focus to identifying the underlying sources of clients' dissatisfaction and proceed with counseling strategies outlined in the first section of this chapter.
Where assessment results suggest that clients' unsatisfactoriness is due primarily to task performance problems, we would want to ascertain the work tasks that seem to be problematic for them, their abilities to meet task demands, and their self‐efficacy beliefs. Should assessment results reveal that citizenship behaviors are contributing to unsatisfactory performance appraisals, we would attempt to identify the basis for these appraisals (e.g., lack of knowledge of their importance, negative outcome expectations, lack of skill or low self‐efficacy beliefs at citizenship behaviors) and then proceed to explore options for improving contextual performance in ways that parallel the promotion of task performance.
Strategies derived from SCCT or P–E fit theories can be used to target features of the client, work setting, or their possible mismatch that, if addressed, could enhance performance (e.g., identifying and accessing desired organizational supports or reinforcers). Where ability or skill limitations are implicated, these can be approached in several ways. For example, intervention could focus on motivational variables (e.g., self‐efficacy, goals) that may optimize use of one's abilities (see Lent, Chapter 5, this volume). Training or continuing education might also be used to strengthen or update work‐specific skills that can enhance performance. When other options may not be viable, efforts can be made to identify new job roles or tasks (either within the current environment or elsewhere) that may better match the client's current abilities and desired level of effort.
Finally, it can be helpful to assess performance‐related aspects of personality (see Rottinghaus et al., Chapter 18, this volume) early in counseling. In particular, where clients score low on measures of conscientiousness, the counselor can explore the degree to which specific aspects of conscientiousness (e.g., lack of goal directedness or organization, poor time management or follow‐through) may be contributing to unsatisfactory performance appraisals. While usually conceptualized as a cluster of traits in the personality literature, we find it useful to view conscientiousness as a set of behaviors that, like most other behaviors, can be broken into smaller segments and learned through observation and practice. This focus on conscientious behaviors may be extremely valuable for certain clients in that it frames the problem in motivational or self‐regulation terms that can be tackled via social learning strategies, rather than construing it as necessarily a matter of static disposition.
Problems of work satisfaction and satisfactoriness represent primary reasons why some adult clients seek counseling. For others, these may be secondary to other presenting concerns (e.g., depression, lack of life satisfaction). In either case, the promotion of satisfaction or satisfactoriness represents an important goal for counseling. We offer the following take‐home messages for practitioners.