Moderating Role of Affective Commitment on Job Control’s Relationship with Job Satisfaction Amongst Human Service Employees

Human service employees are exposed to high levels of work-life stressors being frontline workers (Barack et.al., 2017) . Sustained exposure to work stressors, emotionally charged situations, and high work caseloads are associated with job dissatisfaction, lack of commitment, and turnover. Work environments consist with a complex work environment and highly technology intensive. Organizational climate within human services settings is characterized by long working hours, teamwork conflicts, complex tasks and with high financial uncertainty. Herzberg and Snyderman (1959) conducted multiple studies to determine the work environments causing job dissatisfaction. Motivation theory posits that intrinsic and extrinsic factors impacts one’s job satisfaction and dissatisfaction (Herzberg and Snyderman 1959; Herzberg, 1968). These extrinsic psychological needs are employee wages, relationships, and supervision time given to employees and intrinsic psychological needs promote motivations and are directly related to employee’s sense of self achievement, recognition and personal growth and career advancement. Job control and affective commitment are work related factors which contribute toe job satisfaction. Research hypotheses were developed to explore the relationship employees work characteristics of job control or autonomy, job satisfaction, and the moderating role of affective commitment. Previous scholars have demonstrated a link between several work environment factors contributing to job satisfaction and employee retention (ValPalumbo, McIntosh, Rambur, & Nyad 2009).

Methods: A cross-sectional correctional design data was collected from 253 social work professionals working during the Fall of 2016 in human service settings in New York City. This study data was collected by surveying 253 nonprofit employees working at a human service agency located in New York City (53% response rate) in Fall 2016. The surveys were conducted in-person at staff monthly meetings where each employee was provided with a survey questionnaire, letter of introduction, and an envelope to place the complete questionnaire. The Cronbach’s alphas for the study’s measures were above the accepted cutoff. For construct validity, all survey items loaded onto their respective factors at above 0.41. Discriminant validity was established using maximum likelihood estimation with varimax rotation. Data were analyzed using regression applying the hierarchical moderator regression analysis. Procedures by Aiken and West⁷ methods were utilized to test the three hypotheses in SPSS 25⁸. No item cross-loaded on to another factor above. Finally, except for two extreme outliers, no violations of OLR regression were noted.

Findings: Results showed that there were two critical constructs of job control and affective commitment significantly increasing employees’ levels of job satisfaction. The study tested a positive effect of job control employees received while preforming on their perceptions on job satisfaction and the positive effect of perceived affective commitment on job satisfaction. Overall, our findings extend a better understanding of job stress and control employees exert in their jobs within human services to improve job satisfaction and emphasizing the moderating importance of affective commitment in increasing employee’s satisfaction and wellbeing.