Employment status and job satisfaction
Abstract
Purpose
Motivated by the concept of procedural utility, which emphasises the salience of process-related job aspects, the purpose of this paper is to addresses three questions: first, “is job satisfaction different for the self-employed with no employees and the self-employed with employees?”; second, “is job satisfaction different for managers employed in smaller establishments and managers employed in larger establishments?”; and third, for both the self-employed and those in waged work, is job satisfaction overall correlated with satisfaction with ten identified job aspects’?
Design/methodology/approach
A data set which has its origins in the (UK) 2006 Skills survey is examined, making use of ordinal logit estimations.
Findings
There are differences in job satisfaction between the self-employed with no employees and those with employees, with the latter tending to be more likely to be satisfied. There are differences in job satisfaction between managers in smaller establishment and managers in larger establishments, but not for the three process-related job aspects associated with procedural utility. For the self-employed, there is a predominantly positive and sometimes statistically significant correlation between an individual's job satisfaction overall and satisfaction with the ten job aspects. For the waged worker, there is a uniformly positive and predominantly statistically significant correlation between an individual's job satisfaction overall and satisfaction with the ten job aspects.
Research limitations/implications
The self-employed and those in waged work cannot be assumed to constitute homogeneous groups. Consequently, when future research seeks to examine the manner in which job satisfaction may differ across employment status groups, these groups cannot be treated as mere dichotomous dummy variables.
Originality/value
This is an empirically based reappraisal of hypotheses associated with procedural utility which focuses upon within group differences for two sub-populations in the data set, the self-employed and waged workers.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The 2006 Skills Survey data set was downloaded from the ESRC Data Archive. The survey was co-funded by the ESRC, the Department of Education and Skills, the Department for Trade and Industry, the Learning and Skills Council, the Sector Skills Development Agency, Scottish Enterprise, Future Skills Wales, the East Midlands Development Agency, Highlands and Islands Enterprise and the Department for Employment and Learning (Northern Ireland). None of these parties, however, has any responsibility for the use made of the data set, nor any conclusions drawn from the analysis within this paper. The author acknowledges the constructive comments received from two anonymous referees on a much earlier version of this paper.
Citation
Sutherland, J. (2013), "Employment status and job satisfaction", Evidence-based HRM, Vol. 1 No. 2, pp. 187-216. https://doi.org/10.1108/EBHRM-08-2012-0008
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2013, Emerald Group Publishing Limited