lin, 1969, pp. 27 44).
The early models of job satisfaction were causal in nature. Organizational managers and executive committee level officers in organizations frequently criticized causal models of job satisfaction as motivational tools because the causal models did not provide the strength and preciseness of analysis required to accurately define the relationships between job satisfaction and various organizational outcomes, and to develop effective strategies to promote desirable organizational outcomes through the enhancement of job satisfaction (Blegen, 1993, pp. 36 41). Researchers then oriented studies toward the identification of the specific factors that affected job satisfaction (Locke, 1983, p. 1302). This body of work has come to be know as the content theories of job satisfaction, and includes the spectrum of theoretical and empirical work in the field of job satisfaction from Abraham Maslow to the contemporary period (Scott, 1992, pp. 6 8, 34 72).
Maslow (1954, pp. 97 101) dealt with job satisfaction through a motivation theory the hierarchy of needs. The hierarchy divided human needs into higher and lower orders. The lower order needs are primary, such as food, shelter, sex, and physical security, while the higher order needs involve love for other and self actualization. When the lower order needs are absent in the life of an individual, the satisfaction of those needs become the center of the individual's life. In most modern societies, however, the primary needs are satisfied. Thus, real motivation especially within organizational structures results from individual desires to satisfy their higher order needs (Maslow, 1966, p. 189). Employees are frequently critical of organizational structures and cultures that deny them to opportunities to satisfy higher order needs (Harari, 1994, pp. 30 32).
Maslow (1954, p. 97) recognized the significance of lower order needs as motivators, yet contended th...