Job Satisfaction

During the last decades, most of the social scientists have reached to a common understanding about the meaning or definition of the job satisfaction. Spector, 1997 cited in (VanVoorhis and Levinson, 2006), defined job satisfaction as the level of how individuals like their jobs as well as their feeling about different aspects of their jobs. According to Fogarty (1994) job satisfaction is “refers to the extent to which employees gain enjoyment from their efforts in the workplace"(Tuzun, p.729, 2007). Similarly, Locke (1976) has been defined Job satisfaction as "a pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one's job or job experience" (Biswas, p. 28, 2009).

Job satisfaction is critical to retaining and attracting qualified individuals. Job satisfaction include specific aspects of job such as pay, benefits, promotion, work conditions, supervision, policy and procedures and co-workers relationships (Misener et al., 1996).

Kivimaki and Kalimo (1994) cited in (Al-Zu'bi, 2010) pointed out that employees who are satisfied in their work have more innovative in their work which contribute to quality improvement. In addition, job satisfaction found affecting customer's satisfaction in positive way.

Many researches conducted in different fields such as business, industry, medicine, social sciences, and education, reveals that job satisfaction is associated with employees’ performance, absenteeism, productivity, task success, turnover, professional attitude, and other social and personal variables that that have impact on the employees’ life.

Over the past five decades, the job satisfaction study has been of interest to scholars in organizational studies since the 1930s, when Elton Mayo had conducted his famous Hawthorne studies. These studies were concerned mainly on the effects of supervision, incentives, and working conditions in the job satisfaction. Results of a meta-analysis concluded there is a strong relationship between job satisfaction and performance (Tillman et. al 2010).

Job satisfaction is a mixture of cognitive and effective reaction to the different perception of what employees would like to receive in comparison with what they actually receive from their organizations. Job satisfaction has two sides - positive and negative. The positive side is where the employees are experiencing high level of satisfaction that leads to positive reaction toward their job such as high work quality, high productivity, high loyalty and organizational commitment as well as better health and quality life of the employees. The negative side is where the employees are experiencing low level of satisfaction (dissatisfaction) that leads to negative reaction toward their job such as low productivity, low quality, employees’ problem, high absenteeism, high turnover, and employees’ grievances that is affecting the performance and reputation of the organization negatively.