Person-environment congruence, job satisfaction and job involvement

M.A.Questions regarding the possible interrelations of work-related constructs of person-environment congruence, job satisfaction and job involvement were posed in this dissertation. These constructs were defined in terms of three separate theoretical frameworks, namely Holland's (1985b) vocational choice theory, the Theory of Work Adjustment (Lofquist & Dawis, 1984), and Kanungo's (1982b) conceptualisation of job involvement, respectively. In accordance with these theories, the Self-Directed Search questionnaire, the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire, and the Job Involvement Questionnaire were used to operationalise these variables for the 114 psychologists and 44 optometrists who participated in the study. The person-environment congruence scores were computed by means of the Congruence Index (Brown & Gore, 1994). A secondary aim of the study was to evaluate the accuracy of environmental codes (one of the components of person-environment congruence) as have been provided by The South African Dictionary of Occupations (1987) for samples of psychologists and optometrists in the South African context. Different research designs were used to accommodate the diversity of the research objectives and hypotheses. A factorial research design was used to determine the potentiality of influences of person-environment congruence and job involvement on overall job satisfaction, intrinsic job satisfaction and extrinsic job satisfaction. Possible differences between the samples of psychologists and optometrists, and males and females were built into the general linear models encompassed by this design. Similarly, this design was used to determine whether job involvement is a function of personenvironment congruence, overall job satisfaction, intrinsic job satisfaction, extrinsic job satisfaction, gender and occupational group. Possible divergent effects of the samples and gender were further probed by means of generalised linear models (regression). Gender and sample-specific differences in terms of the variables of the study separately were examined through inferential statistics (t-tests). The possibility of a significant effect of job involvement on the relationship between person-environment congruence and job satisfaction assumed by Holland (1985b), was investigated by means of correlational analyses to conclude the examination of the relations among these variables. For the secondary aim of this study, the Environment Assessment Technique (Holland, 1985b) was used to calculate the respective environment codes of this sample of optometrists, and samples from four categories of registration of psychologists, namely clinical, counselling, educational and industrial psychologists, and then compared to the codes for these vocations listed in The South African Dictionary of Occupations (1987). The results of this study revealed significant effects of job involvement on overall job satisfaction and intrinsic job satisfaction, but nonsignificant effects of occupational group (or sample) and gender. Of the independent variables, only person-environment congruence had moderately significant effects on extrinsic job satisfaction. When job involvement served as dependent variable, only overall job satisfaction or intrinsic job satisfaction and the occupational group had any significant influence on it. The effect of the psychologist sample on job involvement was greater than that of the optometrist sample. No gender differences were found in terms of these linear models, or in terms of the variables of the study separately. Further findings revealed that job involvement does not have any significant effect on the hypothesised congruence-job satisfaction, congruence-intrinsic job satisfaction, or congruence-extrinsic job satisfaction relationships. When the environmental codes of the various samples were compared to the proposed Holland ISE (investigative-social-enterprising) environment code, vast discrepancies were found. A predominantly social environment code was obtained for clinical, counselling and educational psychologists, but an enterprising code for industrial psychologists. Although the optometrists obtained a predominately investigative code, their environment's subtypes could not be characterised as social and enterprising, but rather as enterprising and realistic. Suggestions were made that research employing sample-specific environmental codes in studies of person-environment congruence and its possible covariates is warranted. A need for empirical examinations of environmental codes of other vocational populations in South Africa was also identified. It was further recommended that the job involvement construct should be included in theories describing the antecedents, correlates and consequences of job satisfaction. This study was then evaluated in terms of criterion validity and external validity requirements, and the conclusion was drawn that within the limitations of the study, the research questions had been answered