RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SELECTED JOB FACTORS AND JOB SATISFACTION
Vecchio (1991) states that one's thoughts, feelings, attitudes, and action tendencies toward his/her job can be characterized as one's job satisfaction. He goes on to note that job satisfaction has been an important variables for study for three basic reasons: (1) Workers' physical and mental well-being is correlated with their degree of job satisfaction such that the greater the satisfaction levels, the better the physical and mental health records; (2) Job satisfaction is central to an organization's ability to attract and retain qualified workers; and (3) Low levels of job satisfaction have been found to be related to a number of organizational problems and difficulties including turnover, absenteeism, filing of grievances and union-organizing activities.
Over the years, there has been a good deal of theory as well as research conducted on factors that influence levels of job satisfaction. For example, Eisikovits, Meier, Guttmann, and Shurka (1985) measured job satisfaction and social work supervision in public welfare agencies in Israel with 63 workers receiving professional supervision.
Supervisory variables such as the worker's professional development and the supervisor's administrative skills were positively correlated with both the work environment and job satisfaction. Supervisors' unrealistic expectations of the supervisees were negatively correlated with job satisfaction and free expression of frustration and aggression. Similar findings have been reported by Thompson (1971) and Cherniss (1978) who Like Eisikovits et al (1985) also collected data from social worker samples employed in non-educational settings.
Salary and caseload have also been found to contribute to social workers levels of job satisfaction (Vinokur, 1991) such that smaller caseloads tend to be associated with more job satisfaction. As for salary, Bishop (1980) reports that...