Review of Effects of Willingness to Happiness on Job Satisfaction Mediated by Subjective Well-being in the Agricultural Bank Headquarters in Tehran

Transcription

1 Review of Effects of Willingness to Happiness on Job Satisfaction Mediated by Subjective Well-being in the Agricultural Bank Headquarters in Tehran Zahra Yarameshlu, Dr. Zahra Alipur Darvish, Mr. Dr. Jamshid Salehi Sadaghiani MA in Human Resources Management, North Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran Departments of Business Management, North Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran Departments of Industrial Management,Allameh Tabatabai University,Tehran,Iran Abstract Since, today job satisfaction of managers in organizations is considered to be important, the present study is conducted aiming to evaluate the effect of willingness to happiness on job satisfaction mediated by subjective well-being. To achieve this goal, the staff of headquarter of Agricultural bank staff in Tehran was chosen as the statistical population and the data received is analyzed by structural equations technique. The results showed that willingness to happiness has a positive and significant impact on subjective well-being and subjective well-being has a significant positive impact on job satisfaction. Keywords: happiness, subjective well-being, job satisfaction Introduction today, due to the fact that people spend most of their time in organizations, organizations have realized the benefits of happiness. Considering happiness of employees in the organization and providing grounds for their happiness is an effective and reliable way to achieve mental health of staff and given the challenges faced by organizations today, the creation of happy organization is one of the strategic needs for the success in long run. (Zeraei Matin et al., 2009) Since the employment in most communities has devoted a plenty of time of people to itself, it seems that the vitality of the people can be affected by the level of job satisfaction. Research has shown that the level of job satisfaction is related to some cases from socially important variables such as mental health, longevity, family relationships. All these factors are both affected on and impressed by the vitality of work. Based on the results of research conducted in the field of happiness and well-being, in terms of 50% of people feeling of joy and well-being is the most important issue in life (Safari Shali, 2008). Dalai Lama believes that happiness is the most important goal in life, and has nothing to do with education, nationality, status or ideology of individuals. (Christopher and Hickinbotham, 2010) Theoretical Framework 99

2 Table 1 theoretical framework Research variable Date Author Variable Based on two perspectives, hedonism and virtue-orientation, they provide a model for the joy and identified three ways to 2005 Peterson et al. Happiness achieve happiness: pleasure, involvement and meaning Three components of willingness to happiness (pleasure, involvement, meaning) have a strong effect and relationship on life satisfaction Park et al. Happiness is associated with the performance, productivity, Lubomirski et 2005 job satisfaction and citizenship behavior. al. As spread happens from an area (i.e. life) to other areas (i.e. work) they described the relationship between happiness and the individual and organizational outcomes. A three-dimensional approach has been presented for subjective well-being including life satisfaction, positive feeling (emotion), negative feeling (emotion). They argued the positive feeling, happiness and life satisfaction as reflecting the subjective well-being (good feeling, excellent performance). Subjective well-being is a mediate between the tendency to happiness and the individual and organizational outcomes. They demonstrated that high levels of subjective well-being are dependent on high levels of job satisfaction. Subjective well-being has a direct and positive relationship with job satisfaction. They offered the transmission theory and found that the subjective well-being has a strong and direct impact on job satisfaction Hecht and Boyce 1994 Dayner et al Chassis and Anas Stewart and Rothman Becker and Arlmans 2008 Razel 2010 Bowling et al. Subjective well-being Job Satisfaction Indicators of subjective well-being (life satisfaction, positive and negative feelings) are directly related to job satisfaction and lead to employee commitment to the organization Bohm and Lubomirski Job satisfaction is related to subjective well-being as part of satisfaction. Job satisfaction has a strong impact and direct relation with the organizational commitment. There is a significant relationship between job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Variable of job satisfaction is a precondition for organizational commitment, not an outcome Dayner et al Shore and Martin Mohammed Ghamari 2011 Katsika et al. Research literature Happiness and job satisfaction with the mediation of subjective well-being Based on hedonism and virtue-oriented approaches, Peterson et al. (2005) have proposed three components to reach happiness: joy, meaning and involvement that affect the people's subjective well-being. Dayner (199 4) have proposed a three-component model for subjective well-being. The first component is related to the satisfaction of individuals from various aspects of life. Two other components (positive and negative emotions) are aspects that describe the daily emotional experiences (Watson & Tellegen, 1985). Positive emotion is related to frequency and the positive and joyful feelings like happiness and joy. Conversely, the presence of 100

3 negative emotions such as sorrow shows the grief. About the relationship between job satisfaction in staff with their subjective wellbeing and happiness many researches have already been done. For example, Dulan and Gosselin (2000) showed a significant certain relationship between the two variables and they believed that those who obtained the desired usefulness from their job, will have better interpretation of their life. Baker and Orlmans (2012) suggest that high levels of subjective well-being is related to high levels of job satisfaction, frequent experiences of positive emotions and rare experience of negative emotions. Dayner et al., (2008) consider the job satisfaction as a form of domain specific satisfaction that is related to people's subjective well-being. Other studies showed that (Bohm and Lubomireski, 2008; Russell, 2008) subjective wellbeing indicators were directly associated with job satisfaction. Bowling et al (2010) presented the hypothesis off external effects that shows that experiences in one or more life domains have similar effects on other areas of life. They found that a combination of subjective well-being aspects has a stronger relationship with job satisfaction than the individual parts. They found that life satisfaction and positive emotion have a similar correlation with job satisfaction, whereas negative emotion has a lower correlation. Due to the interaction, they achieved a strong effect of subjective well-being on job satisfaction (Stewart and Rothman, 2012). However, in all researches, intensity and direction of subjective well-being and job satisfaction was not is the same way and correlation coefficient between the two structures have been reported 0.16 to 0.68 in the study since 1989 to 2002 (Bowling et al., 2010). Research done has led to the fact that some researchers suggest a causal relationship of subjective well-being and job satisfaction and some of them indicate the direction of the relationship from subjective well-being to job satisfaction (Bowling et al., 2010). Several studies have examined the relationship between job satisfaction and sub-dimensions of subjective wellbeing. A meta-analysis by Tait et al. (1989) found a correlation coefficient of 0/44 between job satisfaction and life satisfaction. A meta-analysis by Tursen et al., (2003) indicated that job satisfaction is associated with positive emotions and loss of negative feeling. Other studies also show that job satisfaction is positively associated with happiness (Mikalous and Orlando, 2006). Positive relationships found in the above mentioned studies can refer to job satisfaction as a sub-criterion of subjective well-being, something that some researchers also refer to. Research method The present study is descriptive-survey. The data needed for the study were collected through questionnaires so that the variable of happiness were examined based on the questionnaires of desire for happiness by Peterson et al. (2005), subjective well-being based on life satisfaction questionnaire by Diner (1994), emotional balance questionnaire by Bradborne (1969), job satisfaction variable based on job satisfaction questionnaire of Sachs (2006), organizational commitment variable based on organizational commitment questionnaire by Sachs (2006). The population of the research is the entire managers of the Agriculture Central Bank in Tehran that are 440. The statistical sample of this research is done through the table of determining sample size by Morgan-Krejecie method. According to the table for N = 440, the number of samples was n = 205. In this study, random - classified sampling was used to estimate the reliability, the test-retest method (Cronbach's alpha) was used. According to test-retest method, the questionnaire Cronbach's alpha coefficient was estimated equal to Required data were collected through a questionnaire that the data were collected in the following table. 101

4 Table 2 References of inventory Reference Question No. Index Variable Desire for happiness inventory Peterson et al. (2005) 1 to 18 Pleasure Involvement Meaning Desire happiness Inventory on emotional balance 19 to 28 Positive feeling Subjective Bradbourne (1969) Negative feeling well-being Dayner life satisfaction inventory 29 to 33 Life satisfaction (1994) Data Analysis Job satisfaction inventory Sachs (2006) 34 to 37 Excitement and job Job satisfaction Satisfaction Table 3Cronbach's alpha coefficient of the inventory Latent variable Number of Questions Cronbach's alpha 1 Desire for happiness Subjective well-being Job satisfaction Total inventory In this study, Lisrel and SPSS were used and for fitting the model, the structural equation modeling (SEM) was used which results of data analysis can be seen in Tables 4 and 5. for Table 4. Fitting parameters of research model Indicator title Acceptable range The amount Results X 2 /df 1 X 2 /df Approved model RMSEA 2 RMSEA < Approved model GFI 3 GFI> Approved model AGFI 4 AGFI> Approved model CFI 5 CFI> Approved model IFI 6 IFI> Approved model Chi Square Divided to Degree of Freedom 2 Root Mean Square Error of Approximation 3 Goodness of Fit Index 4 Adjusted Goodness of Fit Index 5 Comparison Fit Index 6 Incremental Fit Index

5 Table 5. confirmation or rejection the research hypotheses Research hypothesis (exogenous Path barriers) coefficient t-value Result 1 Impact of desire to happiness on subjective well-being of managers Confirmed 2 Impact of subjective well-being of managers on job satisfaction Confirmed Figure 1.The revised model Conclusions and recommendations About the first hypothesis, it can be inferred that the prediction of the subjective well-being for the variable desire for happiness is (R 2 = 0.33), which means that variable of desire for happiness explains 0.33 of the variance of subjective well-being that in the research conducted by the amount was equal to The impact of willing to happiness was approved by researches by Peterson et al. (2005) and Scalar and Seligman (2010).About the second hypothesis, the prediction of job satisfaction for the subjective well-being is (R 2 = 0.49), which means that subjective well-being explains 0.49 of the variance of job satisfaction that in the research conducted by the amount was equal to In research conducted by Bowling et al (2010), this value was equal to 0.49.Given the approval of the research hypotheses, it is recommended to create small and large groups or happiness working group to study, identify and spread happiness in the organization to convert the happiness into a corporate culture and to look at it as a competitive advantage. Identification of positive talents and potentials of managers and placing them in situations where they can challenge their skills and abilities, staying away from the traditional approach of human resources that emphasizes solving errors and bugs, and focus more on the positive capacities and increasing the capacities in individual and organizational macro policies to achieve sustainable competitive advantage based on the result that have the management happiness. References Bakker, A. B., & Oerlemans, G. M. (2012). Subjective well-being in organizations. In K. S. Cameron & G.M. Spreitzer (Eds).The Oxford handbook of positive organizational scholarship (pp ). NewYork, NY: Oxford. Boehm, J. K., & Lyubomirsky, S. (2008). Does happiness promote career success? Journal of CareerAssessment, 16,

6 Bowling, N. A., Eschleman, K. J., & Wang, Q. (2010).A meta-analytic examination of the relationship between job satisfaction and subjective well-being. Journal of Occupational and OrganizationalPsychology,83, Christopher, J.C.and Hickinbottom, S. (2010). Positive Psychology, Ethnocentrism, and the DisguiseIdeologyofIndividualism.Theory&Psychology,18(5), Diener, E. (1994). Assessing subjective well-being: Progress and opportunities. Social IndicatorsResearch,31, Diener, E., Kesebir, P., & Lucas, R. (2008). Benefits of accounts of well-being - For societies and forpsychological science. Applied Psychology: An International Journal, 57, Hecht, D. H., & Boies, K. (2009). Structure and correlates of spillover from nonwork to work: An examination of nonwork activities, well-being, and work outcomes. Journal of Organizational HealthPsychology, 14, Kehagias, J. (2011). The effects of organizational structureand job characteristics on export sales managers job satisfaction and organizational commitment.journal of World Business, 46, Keyes, C. L. M., & Annas, J. (2009). Feeling good and functioning well:distinctive concepts in ancientphilosophy and contemporary science. Journal of Positive Psychology, 4, Lyubomirsky, S., King, L., & Diener, E. (2005). The benefits of frequent positive affect: Does happinessleadtosuccess? Psychological Bulletin, 131, Park, N., Peterson, C., & Ruch, W. (2009). Orientations to happiness and life satisfaction in twenty-seven nations. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 4, Peterson, C., Park, N., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2005). Orientations to happiness and life satisfaction: The full life versus the empty life. Journal of Happiness Studies, 6, Saks, A. M. (2006). Antecedents and consequences of employee engagement. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 21, Shore, L. M., & Martin, H. J. (1989). Job satisfaction and organizational commitment in relation to workperformance and turnover intentions. Human Relations, 42, Swart, J. P.,&Rotmann, s. (2012). Authentic happiness of managers, and individual andorganisational outcomes. Unpublished doctoral thesis, North-West University, Vanderbijlpark, South Africa. Watson, D, & Tellegen, A, Toward a consensual structure of mood,psychological Bulletin,98 (2), Zarei,Matin, H (2009). AdvancedOrganizationalBehaviorManagement (ThirdEdition). Tehran: Agah Press. 104