A Study of the Impact of Social Health on Job Satisfaction (The Case of Golsan-Baft Factory's Employees in Tabriz City)

Introduction Job Satisfaction, as a crucial factor in organizations’ accomplishment, has long been in the core of organizational studies. According to the existing definitions, job satisfaction is regarded as multidimensional (i.e., cognitive, emotional, and behavioral) psychological responses to one's job (Hullin and et al., 2003) and is defined as a pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one's job or job experiences (Locke and et al, 1976, cited in Judge and et al, 2003: 26). Undoubtedly, maintenance and productivity of human resources is one of the most challenging tasks of any organization in modern times, and job satisfaction plays a pivotal role in accomplishment of this task. One of the main factors, (among others), which can affect the level of job satisfaction, is social well-being or social health. Although many variables have been identified as determinants of job satisfaction in the literature, however, little attention has been paid to the effects of social health, despite of long standing theoretical stances on the relationship. Three main theoretical frameworks exist in the literature for explaining the existence or level of job satisfaction, namely; situational approaches, dispositional approaches, and interactive approaches. Situational theories hypothesize that job satisfaction results from the nature of one’s job or other aspects of the environment; dispositional approaches assume that job satisfaction is rooted in the personological make-up of the individual; and interactive theories, trying to combine situational and dispositional approaches, propose that job satisfaction results from the interplay of the situation and personality (Judge and et al., 2001: 28). As a development for dispositional approaches, Judge and et al., (1997) have introduced ‘Core Evaluations’ concept, which relates to main personality characteristics that can influence people’s general satisfaction with life, including job satisfaction. Core evaluations could be related to oneself, to others, and to the world that one lives in. Those core evaluations which related to one's evaluation about other people and about the world, have many in common with the concept of Social Well-being that developed and operationalized by Keyes. According to Keyes, social well-being, which is the appraisal of one’s circumstance and functioning in society, has five different dimensions, including; social integration (the evaluation of the quality of one’s relationship to society and community), social acceptance (construal of society through the character and qualities of other people as a generalized category), social contribution (evaluation of one’s social value), social actualization (evaluation of the potential and the trajectory of society), and social coherence (perception of the quality, organization, and operation of the social world, and it includes a concern for knowing about the world) (1998: 122-3). By the use of employed theoretical framework, the effects of five dimensions of social well-being, beside of some background variables (such as employee’s age, sex, educational attainment, marital status, job experience, and income) on job satisfaction have been investigated in present study. Material and Methods Present study has been done by the use of survey method among all employees of Golsanbaft Corporation in Tabriz city, which has 523 employees. Needed data are gathered by the use of two standard questionnaires, namely; Abridged Job Descriptive Index (Bowling Green State University, 2009) for job satisfaction and Social well-being questionnaire developed by Keyes (1998). Although, questionnaires were standardized, however, all estimated Cronbach's Alphas for total indices and their dimensions were at acceptable level (>0.6), confirming the reliability of the indices have been used. Discussion of Results and Conclusions Descriptive statistics for background variables show that from 523 respondents, 459 (around 88 percent) were men, and 360 (about 69 percent) were married. Average age of respondents was 30.4 (min= 18 and max=57); average job experience in months was 37.7 (min= 1 and max=192); mean completed years of schooling was 11.3 years (min=1 and max 18); and average stated income was about 6640000 Rials (min= 4000000 and max= 14000000). According to findings, both social well-being (i.e., social health; min= 1.58, mean= 3.24, and max= 4.8) and job satisfaction (min= 1.8, mean= 3.22, and max= 4.83) were at medium level among Golsanbaft corporation’s personnel. Bivariate analyses show that the level of job satisfaction is not statistically different between men and women (mean for males= 3.21 and for females= 3.25) and married and non-married (mean for married= 3.20 and for non-married= 3.27) employees. Although weakly, however, both age (r= -0.13 and P < 0.01) and job experience (r= -0.14 and