Revisiting Internal Marketing for the Determinants of Job (Dis)Satisfaction by Using Asymmetric Approach

Abstract

Research in the fields of organizational behavior, human resources, or sustainable development management has paid much attention to employee job satisfaction and suggests it is critical to a firm obtaining a dominant position and gaining competitive advantage in a competitive environment. From the internal marketing perspective, how to satisfy employee job satisfaction to retain the valuable human resources needed to achieve sustainable development of the organization is a major concern of scholars and practitioners. However, most studies focus on above-average job satisfaction and relatively neglect below-average job satisfaction. Accordingly, this study categorized relevant antecedents into causal configurations for identifying the sufficient conditions of job (dis)satisfaction. Specifically, this study investigated how employees can achieve job satisfaction or dissatisfaction based on a fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA). Most problems and theories of social science are formulated in terms of sets and set relations, while study employs asymmetric thinking in data analysis of previous linear relationships. The fsQCA found three and two causal configurations to be sufficient for high employee job satisfaction and dissatisfaction, respectively. For instance, the results indicate one configuration, namely task-related, innovation-related, coworker-related, and personal-related characteristics present but supervisor-related characteristics absent, can achieve high employee job satisfaction when the values of task-related, innovation-related, coworker-related, and personal-related characteristics are high with lower values of supervisor-related characteristics.

1. Introduction

This study contributes to understanding the sufficient conditions of job satisfaction and dissatisfaction for achieving sustainable development of organizations based on a quantitative background to qualitative approaches. In general, employees differ greatly from robots. Human resources play a major role in corporate sustainable development [1]. The changing nature of employment in recent decades requires assessing the consequences of employment situations [2]. A growing body of literature highlights the importance of employee job satisfaction, as the competition of business activities or effectiveness of employee behaviors has been receiving a lot of attention from academics and practitioners. Human resources literature has a long history of exploring employee job satisfaction. Job satisfaction indicates an overall assessment of different aspects of one’s job, ranging from the extent to which the job fulfills basic physiological and psychological needs to broader cognitive evaluations [3]. Job satisfaction has been described as a key outcome in the person–environment fit theory [4]. Several studies have provided valuable contributions to the knowledge of human resources and proposed that job satisfaction plays a critical role in human resources, which can be seen as the major determinant of firm success (e.g., [5,6,7,8,9]).

Job satisfaction is the major topic to study because job satisfaction is a positive emotional state resulting from the appraisal of job experience [10,11,12]. Job satisfaction represents how individuals feel about their jobs [13]. In general, job satisfaction represents the workers’ overall evaluation of their jobs [12]. Job satisfaction can be defined as an employee’s affective or emotional reaction to their job [5]. The resource-based theory indicates that resources can offer above average returns in the short run, knowledge is the critical input in the long run, and that the primary resource is that which is unable to be imitated or substituted [14,15]. Workers who have more job satisfaction presumably change jobs less often and more often invest in firm-specific human capital [11]. Motivating employees to perform knowledge-intensive activities to create a sustainable competitive advantage is a broad managerial challenge [16]. Combs and Ketchen [17] indicated that resources must meet three criteria (namely, valuable, rare, and imperfectly imitable) to sustain above-average performance based on the resource-based view. Accordingly, research in the fields of organizational behavior, human resources, and strategic management has paid much attention to employee job satisfaction and suggests it can play a critical role in human resource or organizational psychology.

Many studies of practical relevance for human resources management focus on the consequences of job satisfaction (e.g., [2,13,18,19,20,21]). According to two-factor theory, or motivation–hygiene theory, job satisfaction may reduce the expectation of leaving the current job because job dissatisfaction is an important factor contributing to turnover intentions. Hight and Park [20] indicated that job satisfaction has a significant, negative impact on turnover intentions. Brawley and Pury [18] proposed that job satisfaction is negatively related to turnover. Since leadership and employee behaviors have been shown to be strongly associated with important work-related attitudes, job satisfaction is an important outcome variable [2]. A higher degree of job satisfaction may be associated with positive benefits such as better productivity, better health outcomes, lower absenteeism, and greater likelihood of remaining in the field of work [22]. Peng [23] examined the effects of different facets of job satisfaction on task performance and contextual performance. Tongchaiprasit and Ariyabuddhiphongs [21] explored the relationships among creativity, job satisfaction, job stress, and turnover intention. Meyer et al. [24] further suggested that lower job satisfaction is strongly related to job burnout. Accordingly, satisfying employees or enhancing employee job satisfaction can improve performance and reduce turnover intention. The outcomes and contributions of job satisfaction have focused on addressing performance, job stress, and turnover intention. Although the consequences of job satisfaction are important subjects, employees act based on their own interest, utility, or satisfaction according to classical economics theories [25]. What determines employee job satisfaction or dissatisfaction? How to stand out and win the employee’s favor is a major concern of scholars and practitioners in order to keep valuable human resources and, thus, to create a sustainable competitive advantage. In other words, employees might reduce turnover intention or not leave their job if managers can maximize their job satisfaction or avoid job dissatisfaction.

Several studies propose that managers should pay more attention to how to satisfy their employees to enhance valuable activities (e.g., [7,9,10,22,26,27,28]). The literature on job satisfaction has extensively investigated a variety of factors that explain why some employees report higher satisfaction than others [7]. The issue of antecedents is chiefly concerned with key factors or determinants leading to employee job satisfaction. D’Ambrosio et al. [9] explored the effects of the perception of one’s income on both job and life satisfaction. Alegre et al. [10] explored the impacts of relationships (namely, employee–organization, employee–supervisor, and employee–coworker relationships) on job satisfaction. Chng et al. [29] proposed that a fit among all compensation schemes, executive characteristics, and situational factors is crucial to motivate desirable managerial behaviors. Chang and Cheng [30] investigated the combinations of LMX (i.e., leader–member exchange), self-determination, managerial control, work–family conflict, and managerial work–family support to explore the sufficient conditions for obtaining high R&D employee job satisfaction. Cheng et al. [25] developed a conceptual model to examine the effect of product innovation, process innovation, performance, and conflict on R&D employee job satisfaction. Fiori et al. [27] focused on exploring the influences of career adaptability, positive affect, and negative affect of job satisfaction and work stress. Hauff et al. [31] proposed that job characteristics were associated with job satisfaction. Lamberta et al. [32] further explored the influences of four types of support on job satisfaction. Colbert et al. [8] explored the effectiveness of six relationship functions (i.e., task assistance, career advancement, emotional support, friendship, personal growth, and giving to others) on job satisfaction. Firth et al. [33] investigated the relationships among psychological empowerment, cross-cultural motivation, challenge stressors, hindrance stressors, initial work adjustment, word adjustment change, and job satisfaction. Accordingly, the antecedents of job satisfaction or dissatisfaction have been focused on task-related, innovation-related, supervisor-related, coworker-related, and personal-related characteristics.

While these studies have provided valuable contributions to the knowledge of job satisfaction and proposed that it plays a critical role in human resources, most of these studies focused on the “net effects” estimation approach to research and explored the symmetry relationship among the antecedents and job satisfaction. Social science theorists have developed a large body of concepts and methods for asymmetrical relationships because several problems of social science can be thought of as verbal and are formulated in terms of sets and set relations [34]. Different from variable-based approaches, the set-theoretic approach or asymmetric thinking in data analysis, such as fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), focuses on treating configurations for testing social science theories rather than a net effect estimation approach [35,36,37]. In social science studies, fsQCA has been widely employed as a powerful technological tool. For instance, Fiss [36] categorized structure, strategy, and environment into causal configurations for exploring the sufficient conditions of high performance rather than showing the value of each condition contributing to performance. Chang and Cheng [30] explored combinations of relevant antecedents resulting in R&D employee job satisfaction based on balance theory. Tóth et al. [38] also investigated combinations of financial and non-financial benefits, costs, trust, and dependency for achieving relational attractiveness of the customer. Hughes et al. [37] further proposed a configuration approach to family firm performance that accounted for complex interdependencies among entrepreneurial, innovation, and family influence conditions. All of these studies use fsQCA to identify the causal configurations found to be sufficient for high outcome. However, most studies focus on above-average outcomes and neglect below-average outcomes. Based on these regards, this study attempts to combine relevant antecedents (i.e., task-related, innovation-related, supervisor-related, coworker-related, and personal-related characteristics) into various causal configurations to explore the configurations for achieving above-average job satisfaction (i.e., high job satisfaction) and below-average job satisfaction (i.e., low job satisfaction or job dissatisfaction) by employing fsQCA.

In terms of internal marketing, job satisfaction or dissatisfaction plays a critical role in human resources and can be seen as the major determinant of a firms’ success. Therefore, the major purpose of this study is to evaluate employee job satisfaction and job dissatisfaction by integrating the perspectives of organization-related, supervisor-related, coworker-related, and personal-related characteristics using asymmetric thinking in data analysis and move away from previous linear relationships. Almost all studies applied fsQCA to explore the causal configurations found to be sufficient for high outcomes. Therefore, this study firstly employs fsQCA and focuses on categorizing relevant antecedents (i.e., task-related, innovation-related, supervisor-related, coworker-related, and personal-related characteristics) into causal configurations for achieving high outcome (i.e., employee job satisfaction). Furthermore, managers must understand how to retain valuable employees, and they need to know why their employees are not satisfied with their job. Based on this regard, this study further identifies sufficient conditions for low job satisfaction. To clarify, the first research question of this study is what the major relevant antecedents of job satisfaction are. The second question focuses on identifying sufficient conditions of high job satisfaction, and the third research question in this study is what the sufficient conditions are for managers to avoid low employee job satisfaction. Specifically, this study comprises five parts. Part one illustrates the background, motivation, and purpose of the research. The remainder of the study is organized as follows. This study reviews the literature that is relevant to job satisfaction and relevant antecedents. Part three represents the empirical research design including construct measurement and sampling design. Part four presents the results of data analysis. Part five further indicates the contributions of this study.

2. Literature Review

The past two decades have seen a great deal of concern about job satisfaction, and motivating human capital is a major managerial challenge in a highly competitive environment. In the context of employee behavior, researchers in the fields of human resource management and organizational behavior theory have focused on job satisfaction and paid much attention to exploring the antecedents, consequences, and typologies of job satisfaction [4,12,21,39,40]. In the context of job satisfaction, previous studies have formally defined job satisfaction as an employee’s overall emotional and cognitive evaluation about his/her job [3,10,41,42,43,44]. Bunderson et al. [6] indicated that job satisfaction is measured as global filling or evaluation about the enjoyment or satisfaction with the job. Job satisfaction can be defined as overall appraisal of enthusiastic or pleasant about the work, and when an employee receives his/her expect resources, he/she will be more satisfied with the job based on seminal theory of job satisfaction [8]. Employee individual job satisfaction is a work-related beneficial attitude that reflects the extent to which an employee evaluates certain aspects of their job [45]. Job satisfaction is one of the most frequently researched work-related attitudes, and it is generally defined as a pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from the cognitive evaluation and affective responses of an employee’s job or job experiences [10,46,47,48,49]. Job satisfaction can be examined from an employee’s emotional response to pay and rewards.

Job satisfaction is about being satisfied with individual and overall aspects of a job, and it is negatively associated with the expectation of leaving the current job [50,51]. Job satisfaction is typically defined as a worker’s overall evaluation of his/her job. Lamberta et al. [32] indicates that job satisfaction is an affective/emotional response by an employee concerning his/her particular job and whether the employee likes the job. Job satisfaction is a salient and powerful workplace concept. Low levels have been found to be associated with absenteeism, turnover, and job burnout among correctional staff. Job satisfaction is an affective reaction or a cognitive attitude toward a job, and it can be defined as a pleasurable or positive emotional state aroused by an employee’s own evaluation of the job, work situation, or his/her own work experience. Job satisfaction, including intrinsic and extrinsic satisfaction, refers to an employee’s attitudes or opinions toward the job itself or the relevant environment and to their overall emotional response to their job roles [52]. Peng [23] suggests that job satisfaction can be separated into intrinsic job satisfaction (i.e., reflects the professional’s sense of self-efficacy) and extrinsic job satisfaction (i.e., affects an employee’s internal motivation) that contributes materially to both personal well-being and organizational effectiveness.

Job satisfaction is influenced by cognitive beliefs about the job, mood, and emotions, and it may closely relate to income, working conditions, effort requirements, chance for promotions, or self-actualization potential and more. Tongchaiprasit & Ariyabuddhiphongs [21] indicates that job satisfaction can be defined as satisfaction with the intrinsic and extrinsic aspects of the chef’s role. Zopiatis, Constanti, and Theocharous [53] show that job satisfaction is a predict behavior, which in turn enables employees to regulate their assessment as to whether it is worthwhile to change any aspects of their behavior. Employee satisfaction is an internal process factor and product quality is an indicator of competitive advantage, and satisfied employees are more devoted to their work and company [54]. Accordingly, this study defined job satisfaction as an employee’s a work-related attitude resulting from overall emotional and cognitive evaluation about his/her job.

Exploring the impacts of antecedents on job satisfaction or dissatisfaction is the major concern of scholars and practitioners, and several studies have been focused on task-related, innovation-related, supervisor-related, coworker-related, and personal-related characteristics. In the context of task-related antecedents, many studies have focused on the stress, responsibility, or complexity of tasks [6,8,32,39,43,44]. Employees may feel work stress when he/she finds it hard to concentrate on their tasks [27]. Task-related leadership is essential for optimal performance and job satisfaction [39]. Hauff et al. [31] shows that task identity and task significance are the job characteristics that are associated with job satisfaction. Peltokorpi and Froese [46] propose that numerous jobs, tasks, and organizational characteristics determine job satisfaction, which, in turn, acts as a determinant of organizational commitment, motivation, anxiety, stress, satisfaction, turnover, and job performance. Son and Ok [47] indicate that extraversion will moderate the U-shaped relationship between organizational tenure and a newcomer’s job satisfaction. Peng [23] integrates task and contextual performance into a more thorough model of job satisfaction and job performance. Troesch and Bauer [48] investigate job satisfaction and stress in second career teachers compared to first career teachers and the role of self-efficacy. Bunderson et al. [6] shows that, whereas acclivity in influence relations reduces conflict and thereby enhances both group performance and member satisfaction, centralization and steepness have negative effects on conflict, performance, and satisfaction, particularly in groups that perform complex tasks. Kwak et al. [40] further suggests that work-related effort will have a direct, positive effect on job satisfaction. Accordingly, there may be conflict or work stress within a work team regarding task responsibilities or task complexity.

Furthermore, Colbert et al. [8] proposes that task assistance, career advancement, emotional support, friendship, and personal growth may positively relate to job satisfaction. Jha et al. [28] indicates that service leaders nurture a customer service culture that increases their job satisfaction and commitment to the organization. Lamberta et al. [32] suggests that job stress, job involvement, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment are the major antecedents of job satisfaction. Job stress is psychological strain leading to job-related difficulty, tension, anxiety, frustration, and worry. Job stress can be harmful over time and lead to reduced job satisfaction. Meyer et al. [24] examines how stress influences negative outcomes, such as job satisfaction and burnout, and suggests that stressors typically include high workload, feeling inadequate to perform procedures, and working in poorly staffed environments. Ouyang et al. [52] focuses on occupational characteristics, including income, job characteristics, work–family conflict, stress, and leadership, but more researchers are turning their attention to the influence of individual factors on job satisfaction. Challenging stressors are positively related to changes in work adjustment over time [33]. Tongchaiprasit and Ariyabuddhiphongs [21] examines the relationships between creativity, job satisfaction, job stress, and turnover intention, indicating that job stress reflects the workload and adequacy of resources, which is negatively associated with job satisfaction. Based on these regards, this study defined task-related antecedents of job satisfaction or dissatisfaction as the employee’s evaluation of task stress and task complexity. This study developed the following hypotheses:

H1:

Task-related antecedents are associated with job satisfaction.

In general, innovation is turned into the principal method of adapting to enhance competition and the persistence of superior profits in a dynamic environment. Innovation is generally defined as the commercial application of new knowledge and the implementation of ideas, and it plays an important role in a firm’s survival. The relationships between innovation and job satisfaction has been of great interest to researchers [25,55,56]. Innovation is critical for a firm to obtain a dominant position and increase profits in a highly competitive environment, and both product innovation and process innovation may influence job satisfaction though organizational performance and conflict [25]. Innovation creates opportunities to redefine work processes and develop novel operational capabilities, and innovations may impact job satisfaction or job performance [55]. Innovation will influence important job and work process outcomes. Successful innovation enhances employee job outcomes and supply chain management effectiveness. Employees will experience significant changes in their work processes following implementation of a supply chain management system.

The importance of innovation for economic growth has long been part of growth theory, and innovation may associate with employee job satisfaction because employees who experience job satisfaction will support rather than resist innovation. Innovation is generally defined as the commercial application of new knowledge and the implementation of ideas. They further propose that human capital or employees are an important part of innovation, and innovative characteristics have strong effects on employee happiness or satisfaction. Innovativeness and market success of innovations can build on integrating customer information, but role-related stress may lead to psychological withdrawal in the form of reduced job satisfaction [56]. Innovation is a major mechanism in a firm’s competition that appropriately modifies products, processes, and management systems to adjust to the market’s rapidly changing needs and may influence the pleasurable emotional state of employee. Therefore, innovation-related antecedents in this study include product innovation and process innovation. Furthermore, the following hypothesis is developed:

H2:

Innovation-related antecedents are associated with job satisfaction.

Organizational management has a significant effect on job involvement [49]. The leader–member relationship and supervisor support have strong influences on employee job satisfaction and performance because employees may not mind working harder when he/she likes their supervisor or receives their support. Alegre et al. [10] focuses on investigating the combinations of autonomy, teamwork, supervisor support, identification with the strategy, and employee work–family balance to obtain high employee job satisfaction. Employee job satisfaction is a work-related attitude that reflects the evaluation of co-workers, the supervisor, career opportunities, the organization, and working conditions [45]. Fiori et al. [27] explores the impacts of supervisor, job security, salary, conditions, and colleagues on job satisfaction. Lamberta et al. [32] investigates the relationships among administrative support, supervisory support, coworker support, and family and friends support with job stress, job involvement, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment. They indicate that supervisors can help employees or members see challenges in a more positive light, and supervisory support can help remove stressors or enhance employee job satisfaction.

Job satisfaction represents an appraisal or assessment of the job’s situation, and it mediates the relationship between perceived corporate social responsibility and organizational commitment [50]. Employee–organization relationship, the employee–supervisor relationship, and the employee–coworker relationship are three main relationships that affect employee satisfaction [10]. Workplace cyberbullying is a growing phenomenon with important consequences ranging from employee mental strain and low job satisfaction [51]. Coworkers are a dimension to measure job satisfaction. An employee sharing information with other employees about their experience or support may be associated with the job satisfaction of other employees [18]. Coworker support refers to the perceptions of support from work and can help deal with stressors and facilitate management of minor problems quickly before they get out of hand [32]. Peltokorpi and Froses [46] show that communication and the relationship between employees and coworkers may result in affective or emotional evaluation of an employee. Coworkers are defined as anyone you work with who is not a direct supervisor, and satisfaction with coworkers is key facets in job satisfaction [8]. Accordingly, this study also focused on supervisor-related (i.e., supervisor support) and coworker-related (i.e., coworkers support) antecedents of employee job satisfaction and dissatisfaction. Therefore, the following hypotheses are developed:

H3:

Supervisor-related antecedent is associated with job satisfaction;

H4:

Coworker-related antecedent is associated with job satisfaction.

In the context of personal characteristics, several studies focus on exploring family /friends support or work–family balance [10,31,32,46,52]. Most previous studies have focused on investigating the influences of occupational characteristics (e.g., income, job characteristics, work–family conflict, stress, and leadership) and individual factors on job satisfaction [52]. Work–family balance is an important antecedent of employee job satisfaction, and work–family conflict or imbalance may influence employees’ attitudes toward their jobs because most employees divide their daily life between work and family [10]. Hauff et al. [31] suggests that the relationship between work and family is the externally generated goal of an employee. Lamberta et al. [32] indicates that family and friends are the primary social support for people outside the workplace and can help individuals deal with work problems. Job stress can be harmful over time to both employees and organizations, leading to increased mental withdrawal from the job, and support from family or friends may reduce the stress and enhance the emotional evaluation of employee [32]. Peltokorpi and Froese [46] propose that family and marital status can have a spillover effect on employee job satisfaction. Therefore, this study focuses on family/friends support to explore the personal-related antecedent of job satisfaction and dissatisfaction. Accordingly, the following hypothesis is developed:

H5:

Personal-related antecedent is associated with job satisfaction.

In sum, all task-related, innovation-related, supervisor-related, coworker-related, and personal-related characteristics may influence employee job satisfaction or dissatisfaction. Accordingly, this study attempts to combine relevant antecedents (i.e., task-related, innovation-related, supervisor-related, coworker-related, and personal-related characteristics) into various causal configurations to explore the configurations for achieving employee job satisfaction and dissatisfaction. In other words, managers can maximize his/her job satisfaction or avoid job dissatisfaction based on these configurations, and then employees may not leave their job or reduce turnover intention. Therefore, the following hypotheses are developed:

H6:

Task-related, innovation-related, supervisor-related, coworker-related, and personal-related characteristics can categorize into causal configurations for achieving high job satisfaction;

H7:

Task-related, innovation-related, supervisor-related, coworker-related, and personal-related characteristics can categorize into causal configurations for achieving high job dissatisfaction.

3. Empirical Research

The major purpose of this study is to investigate combinations of relevant antecedents (i.e., task-related, innovation-related, supervisor-related, coworker-related, and personal-related characteristics) for analyzing employee job satisfaction and dissatisfaction. The empirical study has been followed by drawing specific guidelines. The conceptual framework and construct measurements for the research constructs, such as task-related, innovation-related, supervisor-related, coworker-related, personal-related antecedents, and employee job satisfaction, are introduced in this part. Then, the research design including the sampling plan and data collection are described.

3.1. Measure Development

This study attempts to collect and analyze quantitative data, and the survey questionnaire items are developed in the following stages. First, previous studies and theories were integrated to formulate the key components related to job satisfaction. To integrate the constructs of the manager–employee relationship strategy, this study focuses on task-related, innovation-related, supervisor-related, coworker-related, personal-related antecedents, and employee job satisfaction as research constructs. Previous research related to research constructs was reviewed to develop our empirical measures. Second, this study invited experts, including professors who are proficient in the research of the issues related to human research and managers who work for a famous company, to participate in the process of selecting appropriate items. Questionnaire items were revised based on the results of the pilot study before being put into the final form. Then, participants were asked to rate the relevance of each item to their company for research constructs on a seven-point Likert scale, anchored by “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree.” Based on the results of this pilot study, some items were deleted. The final version of measurements was described below.

This study defined the task-related antecedent of job satisfaction as the employee’s evaluation of task stress and task complexity. Six items assessing the extent to the overall work-related attitude were adopted from Azar et al. [5], Bunderson et al. [6], Fiori et al. [27], and Tongchaiprasit and Ariyabuddhiphongs [21]. The sample questionnaire items are “I feel excessive workload in my job” and “I am lack of feedback on performance”. In addition, five items for the innovation-related antecedent including product innovation and process innovation were adopted from Cheng et al. [25] and Woisetschlager et al. [56]. The sample questionnaire items are “Product use (needs served) new to the firm” and “A product is totally new to the firm”. As to the supervisor-related antecedent, five items were developed to measure supervisor support based on Fan et al. [12], Lamberta et al. [32], and Ouyang et al. [52]. The sample questionnaire items are “Supervisors are supportive of employees” and “My supervisor looks out for my personal welfare”. According to previous research relating to the constructs of the coworker-related antecedent, this study applied coworker support to measure the coworker-related antecedent of job satisfaction. Five items were adopted from Brawley and Pury [18], Lamberta et al. [32], and Colbert et al. [8]. The sample questionnaire items are “I am able to discuss problems with my coworkers” and “My coworkers provide me support in solving personal problems”. As to the personal-related antecedent, five items were adopted from Colbert et al. [8], Lamberta et al. [32], and Salmela-Aro and Upadyaya [42] to measure family/friends support. The sample questionnaire items are “When my job gets me down, I know that I can turn to family for support” and “When my job gets me down, I know that I can turn to friends for support”. Furthermore, this study defined job satisfaction as the employee’s work-related attitude resulting from overall emotional and cognitive evaluation about his/her job. Five items assessing the extent to which overall work-related attitude were adopted from Bunderson et al. [6], Colbert et al. [8], Fan et al. [12], and Ötting and Maier [41] to measure employee job satisfaction. The sample questionnaire items are “I find real enjoyment in my job” and “I am never bored with my job”.

3.2. Sampling Design

This study contributes to understanding how employees can achieve job satisfaction and dissatisfaction by conducting a quantitative study at first and then a follow-up qualitative study. Following the recommended procedure for fsQCA analysis [34,57], this study chose a configurational approach to investigate the combinations of task-related, innovation-related, supervisor-related, coworker-related, and personal-related characteristics for achieving employee job satisfaction and dissatisfaction. To assess the applicability of this conceptual model, this study developed a questionnaire and distributed it to a sample of employees of firms. We first contacted employees of the target firm by e-mail to solicit their willingness of participating in the survey. To capture the response rate, this study sent out reminders about three weeks and one month after they agreed to participate. This study focused on employee’s job (dis)satisfaction based on the perspective of internal marketing, and the recruitment date range was between August 2019 and January 2020. In order to understand how employees measure (dis)satisfaction, full-time working experience was the criterion for selecting the participants in this study to represent sustainable labor market. Eventually, this research obtained a final valid sample of 227 respondents from employees.

Table 1. Characteristics of the respondents.

		Frequency	Percentage (%)
Gender	Male	152	66.94
	Female	75	33.06
Marriage	Single	61	26.87
	Married	166	73.13
Age	Less than 30 years old	21	9.25
	31 to 35 years old	25	11.01
	36 to 40 years old	83	36.56
	41 to 45 years old	66	29.07
	More than 46 years old	32	14.10
Education	Senior High School	4	1.76
	Vocational School	42	18.50
	College	121	53.30
	Graduate School	60	26.43
Seniority	Less than 5 years	35	15.42
	6 to 10 years	66	29.07
	11 to 15 years	89	39.21
	More than 16 years	37	16.30

represents the basic attributes of the respondents. More than 66% of the respondents were male, more than 73% of the respondents were married, more than 65% of the respondents were 36 to 45 years old, more than 53% of the respondents had college education, and about 68% of the respondents had 6 to 15 years of seniority.

4. Results

To verify the dimensionality and reliability of the research constructs, purification processes, including factor analysis and internal consistency analysis (Cronbach’s alpha), were conducted in this study. The reliabilities and validities for the constructs are shown in

Table 2. Results of factor and reliability analysis.

	Number of Items	Reliability	Convergent Validity
Task-related	6	0.872	0.786
Innovation-related	5	0.824	0.759
Supervisor-related	5	0.901	0.839
Coworker-related	5	0.881	0.746
Personal-related	5	0.904	0.812
Job satisfaction	5	0.889	0.795

. The reliability of the measurement items was verified by Cronbach’s alpha coefficients. The alpha values for all research constructs were greater than 0.8. Following Hair et al. [58], these high alpha values suggest that the research constructs all had high internal consistency among the research items. Furthermore, the validity of the construct was measured by the explained variance of each factor from factor analysis. The cumulative percentage of total variance extracted by factors all followed the requirements suggested by Hair et al. [58], indicating that the reliabilities and validities of these constructs are acceptable. Therefore, tests of hypotheses were undertaken while using factors of these constructs in assessing the interrelationships among the research variables.

In order to test hypotheses, this study used structural equation modeling (SEM) for path analysis and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA). Regarding path analysis, the path coefficients of task-related, innovation-related, supervisor-related, coworker-related, and personal-related characteristics influences on job satisfaction were −0.321 ** (H1 was supported, t = −2.75, p-value < 0.01), 0.303 * (H2 was supported, t = 2.03, p-value < 0.05), 0.276 * (H3 was supported, t = 2.12, p-value < 0.05), 0.344 ** (H4 was supported, t = 2.85, p-value < 0.01), and 0.166 * (H5 was supported, t = 1.97, p-value < 0.05), respectively. In other words, task-related, innovation-related, supervisor-related, coworker-related, and personal-related characteristics were associated with job satisfaction. Based on the user’s guide of fsQCA [57], we explored the configurations for achieving high employee job satisfaction and dissatisfaction in several steps. In order to transform antecedents (i.e., task-related, innovation-related, supervisor-related, coworker-related, and personal-related characteristics), employee job satisfaction, and dissatisfaction into fuzzy variables, it was necessary to calibrate them in first step. This study set original values of 7.0, 4.0, and 1.0 from 7-point Likert scales to correspond to full membership (95%), cross-over anchors (50%), and full non-membership (5%), respectively. According to Fiss [36] and Ragin [57], the second step is to recognize configurations that are sufficient to the outcome from those that are not by specifying the consistent cutoff value as 0.75 and the number-of-cases threshold as 1. Ragin [57] recommended standard analysis rather than specify analysis of fsQCA to generate the “intermediate” solution. Thus, this study provides the intermediate solution that partial logical remainders are incorporated in the third step.

Table 3. The causal configurations for high job (dis)satisfaction.

	Path	Task	Innovation	Supervisor	Coworker	Personal	Raw Coverage	Unique Coverage	Consistency	Solution Coverage	Solution Consistency
Job satisfaction	A1	●	●	○	●	●	0.83	0.36	0.77	0.89	0.91
	A2	○	●	●	○		0.79	0.23	0.88
	A3	●	○	●	●	●	0.63	0.16	0.72
Job dissatisfaction	B1	○	●	○	○		0.53	0.36	0.87	0.65	0.93
	B2	●	●	○	○	●	0.39	0.13	0.91

Notes: Black circles “●” indicate the presence of causal conditions (i.e., antecedents). White circles “○” indicate the absence or negation of causal conditions. The blank cells represent “don’t care” conditions.

summarizes intermediate solutions for achieving high employee job satisfaction and dissatisfaction, respectively. The consistency indices include similar significance metrics, and high consistency indicates that a subset relation exists, which in turn supports an argument of sufficiency [57]. Table 3 shows that consistency values of configurations and solutions exceeded 0.72. These results indicate that these configurations were sufficient in causing high employee job satisfaction and dissatisfaction. In addition, coverage measures the extent to which the configurations accounted for the outcome. Results also displayed that raw and solution coverage values were more than 0.39. In other words, the configurations explained a large proportion of high employee job satisfaction and dissatisfaction.

For enhancing the readability and simplicity, Figure 1 represents three sufficient conditions (i.e., A1, A2, and A3) of high employee job satisfaction, and Figure 2 indicates that there are two (i.e., B1 and B2) causal configurations found to be sufficient for high employee job dissatisfaction. Black circles indicate the presence of a causal condition, white circles indicate the absence or negation of a condition, and the blank cells represent “don’t care” conditions. For instance, configuration A1 signals a logical statement “task-related*innovation-related*~supervisor-related*coworker-related*personal-related characteristics”. This configuration shows that the combination of high levels of task-related, innovation-related, coworker-related, and personal-related characteristics with a low level of the supervisor-related characteristic can lead to high employee job satisfaction. In other words, even the level of supervisor-related characteristics cannot improve in the short-run, and the manager must focus on task-related, innovation-related, coworker-related, and personal-related characteristics at the same time. Path A2 shows that a combination of innovation-related and supervisor-related characteristics, as well as the absence of task-related and coworker-related characteristics, results in high level of employee job satisfaction. Path A3 indicates that high levels of task-related, supervisor-related, coworker-related, and personal-related characteristics with a low level of the innovation-related characteristic can lead to a high level of employee job satisfaction. Comparatively, path B1 shows that a high level of innovation-related with low levels of task-related, supervisor-related, and coworker-related characteristics result in a high level of employee job dissatisfaction (i.e., low level of employee job satisfaction). Path B2 indicates that high levels of task-related, innovation-related, and personal-related characteristics with low supervisor-related, coworker-related, and low personal-related characteristics results in a low level of employee job satisfaction. Furthermore, task-related, innovation-related, supervisor-related, coworker-related, and personal-related characteristics are present or absent in A1, A3, and B2. Therefore, H1 to H5 were supported. Task-related, innovation-related, supervisor-related, coworker-related, and personal-related characteristics can be categorized into three causal configurations for achieving high job satisfaction and two causal configurations for job dissatisfaction. Accordingly, H6 and H7 were further supported by the results of fsQCA.

5. Conclusion

The first research question of this study investigated what the major relevant antecedents of job satisfaction are. Both results of SEM and fsQCA indicated that five hypotheses were supported. These results showed that task-related (i.e., task stress and task complexity), innovation-related (i.e., product innovation and process innovation), supervisor-related (i.e., supervisor support), coworker-related (i.e., coworkers support), and personal-related (i.e., family/friends support) characteristics were associated with an employee’s job satisfaction. According to the second and third research questions, this study focused to combine potential relevant antecedents, such as task-related, innovation-related, supervisor-related, coworker-related, and personal-related characteristics, to explore the configurations for achieving high employee job satisfaction and dissatisfaction by conducting a quantitative study that focused on asymmetric data analyses using fsQCA 2.5 software, which is available at the website fsQCA.com. fsQCA can produce causal conditions that are sufficient for the outcome based on Boolean algebra [30]. The intermediate solution of fsQCA identified three and two configurations found to be sufficient for high employee job satisfaction and dissatisfaction, respectively.

There are several potential implications for sustainable development of organizations associated with these configurations. Configuration A1 shows that even the level of supervisor support cannot improve, and task-related characteristics (i.e., task stress and task complexity) cannot reduce in the short-run; managers must focus on innovation-related, coworker-related, and personal-related characteristics at the same time. For example, managers can make employees work at home moderately through the use of online meetings in order to enhance innovation, coworker support, and family/friends support. Configuration A2 shows that even the level of coworker support cannot improve, and employees can achieve high job satisfaction by improving innovation and supervisor support as well as reducing task stress and task complexity. This result implicates that managers can reduce workload, provide feedback on performance, and look out for employee’s personal welfare. Configuration A3 indicates that managers must focus on supports of supervisors, coworkers, and family/friends at the same time; for example, managers can look out for employee’s personal welfare and improve relationships among coworkers, family or friends. Path B1 and path B2 show that managers cannot have high innovation, low boss support, and co-worker support existing together in order to avoid low employee job satisfaction. In other words, managers must at least be able to reduce levels of production innovation or process innovation, or increase support of employees.

There are some limitations associated with this study. First, this study focused on exploring relationships among task-related, innovation-related, supervisor-related, coworker-related, and personal-related antecedents and employee job (dis)satisfaction. Future research can explore other relevant antecedents such as economic-related or environment-related characteristics. Second, this study used questionnaires to collect primary data, and future research can add other data collection methods. Third, the period of the sampling process was between August 2019 and January 2020. Accordingly, future research can consider conducting a long-run analysis, such as over a couple years or decades.