Satisfied employees are more productive. Discuss this statement critically drawing on theory and research. .
Response.
In recent years, there has been much debate, whether satisfied employees are more productive or infact take advantage of their comfortable working environment, and as a result perform badly. In this essay I will be using the term 'productivity' as the means to describe the effect on high job performance, as the two terms are used interchangeably through many studies based on this area of organizational psychology. When looking at the relationship between job satisfaction and job performance or whether there is a relationship at all; it is still an area in which consistent research is always been carried out on. Thus far, studies have been unable to find a correlation between the two (Fisher, 1980), and for this reason more complex investigations have taken place on surrounding topics such as self-esteem (Korman, 1971) to see if it can aid in finding a relationship between satisfaction and job performance. Logically it would seem feasible that a more satisfied employee would work harder and as a result become more productive and increase their work performance but through recent studies it has proven incredibly difficult to decipher a true relationship between the two due to inconsistencies and ambiguities in theories and research. Despite this, it is in the interest of organisational psychologists to discover and ascertain the link between the two so that the workplace's productivity and efficiency can be increased. Therefore in order to understand the intricacy of the linkage, we must look at theories behind what causes job satisfaction in the first instance as well as taking key studies into consideration.
A theory that has direct correlation with the statement 'satisfied employees are more productive' was put forward explaining how this relationship is moderated by a moderated variable.