The Influence of Job Longevity on Employee Reactions to Task Characteristics

Abstract

The present study investigated the moderating influence of job longevity and growth-need strength on the relationships between overall job satisfaction and the five task dimensions of skill variety, identity, significance, autonomy, and feedback. Basically, it was found that the strength of the task dimension-job satisfaction relationships are significantly affected by job longevity regardless of age and growth-need strength. More specifically, three separate stages of job longevity are deduced, i.e., a learning, a responsive, and an unresponsive stage. Only during the responsive stage were the satisfaction reactions of employees significantly correlated with all of the task characteristics. Furthermore, satisfaction was related most significantly to the outcomes of performance and turnover during the responsive stage. Individual differences, as measured by growth-need strength, were also investigated within the job longevity framework. Survey data from 3,085 public sector employees belonging to four different governmental organizations were used to investigate the hypothesized relationships.