Job Satisfaction and Implications for Organizational Sustainability: A Resource Efficiency Perspective

• Main Author: Thomas Lange
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-03-01
• Series: Sustainability
• Subjects: employee well-being; job satisfaction; organizational sustainability; resource efficiency; stochastic frontier analysis
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/7/3794

This study contributes to the organizational sustainability literature by exploring a methodology for defining and making the notion of employee flourishing at work operational. It applies stochastic frontier methods on British longitudinal data to estimate the maximum job satisfaction that employees can achieve should they utilize their resources efficiently. It offers a new perspective on the notion of social comparisons and extends the literature by demonstrating the scope for organizational intervention in the context of commonly assumed, time invariant variables, which are often thought to be beyond interventionist possibilities. Findings suggest that many British employees fail to reach their job satisfaction potential, reporting satisfaction scores below those of their peers with similar resource endowments. This inefficiency correlates strongly with personality traits. Implications for organizational sustainability policy and practice are discussed.