Acta Universitatis Danubius. Œconomica, Vol 8, No 2 (2012)

Abstract

The cultural invasion assisted by technology, globalization and economics has made Industrial societies more dynamic. The human aspect has become the most key factor in the organizational systems to be cared as a glass case aiming at employees’ motivation, job satisfaction, commitment and performance to achieve organizational effectiveness, which is the multiplied effect of productivity and social health of the organization. The motivational theories examined by Maslow, Herzberg, Vroom, Alderfer and Hackman relate need and psychological gratification to motivation and job satisfaction and they consider performance as the end result. However, Lawler and Porter postulate reversely that job performance leads to job satisfaction. Hence these theoretical postulates, which are unresolved, are re-examined. The study focuses on testing the degree and direction of the relationship between Performance and Job Satisfaction with intervening variables such as job relations, commitment, role conflict, value system, motivation and organizational climate and with socio-economic variables such as salary, age, gender, caste, education and job experience. The study is conducted on 928 employees drawn from 13 public sector and 5 private sector organizations usings simple random sampling and males as the matching sample in the State of Andhra Pradesh, India. It is evident from the study that the performance level of the employees is significantly lesser than their job satisfaction level. It is true in case of both the females and the males. The analysis leads to state that all those performing well are satisfied and all those satisfied do not perform well indicating that performance leads to job satisfaction and job satisfaction does not lead necessarily to performance.  This empirical evidence supports the theory of Lawler and Porter.  In addition, the intertwined relationship of the variables is found and sets the direction for future studies at micro level.