Elsevier

Social Networks

Volume 23, Issue 4, October 2001, Pages 297-320
Social Networks

Goal specific social capital and job satisfaction: Effects of different types of networks on instrumental and social aspects of work

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0378-8733(01)00044-2Get rights and content

Abstract

This paper addresses the question “To what extent can job satisfaction be explained as the revenue of social capital?” By conceiving someone’s social network as social capital we specify conditions under which social ties do lead to job satisfaction. We inquire into the idea of goal specificity of social capital, which implies that a network with a given structure and content will have different impacts on various aspects of job satisfaction. If the content of the ties and the structure of the network at the job engender material well-being or produce social approval, satisfaction with the corresponding job aspects increases. Data were collected in 1993 using written questionnaires in two Dutch governmental agencies, one with 32 and the other with 44 employees. These workers’ networks were charted using nine name-generating questions.

Social capital, it turns out, is not an all-purpose good but one that is goal specific, even within a single domain of life such as work. Three effects stand out: First, the structure of the network and the content of the ties do matter. Networks of strategic, work-related ties promote an employee’s satisfaction with instrumental aspects of the job, like income, security, and career opportunities. Second, closed networks of identity-based solidarity ties improve an employee’s satisfaction with social aspects of the job, like the general social climate at work and cooperation with management and colleagues. Third, a network with a bow–tie structure (i.e., where a focal actor is the link between two or more mutually exclusive cliques) generally has strong negative effects on satisfaction with the social side of the job; although a bow–tie type network of trusting ties does increase satisfaction with the social side. This implies that Krackhardt’s hypothesis on the unpleasant feelings produced by bow–tie type networks has to be specified for the content of the ties that constitute such a network. The most important conclusion of our analysis is that goal specificity of social capital has implications for both structure and content of social networks. Achievement of a particular goal, such as satisfaction at work, requires not only networks of a certain structure or ties with a particular content, but specifically structured networks of ties with a particular content.

Introduction

Job satisfaction has been a focal issue in organizational research for decades. Many studies delve into the possible antecedents of job satisfaction. This paper too discusses antecedent conditions of job satisfaction. At the same time it attempts to build upon some new theoretical and empirical insights provided by the theory of social capital and the analysis of personal networks.

Next to socio-demographic background characteristics of employees, like age, sex, and education, various other conditions have come under scrutiny, including job characteristics like pay, stress factors, and role conceptions; organizational constraints; and employees’ psychological needs and personalities (Locke, 1976, Spector, 1997). Studies on the possible effects of job satisfaction on the individual employee or the work of the organization are also numerous. Such impacts are, e.g., physical well-being, psychological health, performance, absenteeism, turnover, and productivity (Thierry and Koopman-Iwema, 1984, p. 154; Spector, 1997).

Regarding individual characteristics as conditions for job satisfaction, there seem to be no large differences in job satisfaction between men and women, although women are generally paid less for doing work similar to men’s (Witt and Nye, 1992). Once job characteristics are accounted for, education has no influence on job satisfaction (Martin and Shehan, 1989). Older workers are generally more satisfied with their job, which might be due to their holding better jobs, having more skills, or being more in control of their work (the association, however, does not seem to be perfectly linear but U-shaped, see Brush et al., 1987).

Job characteristics like autonomy, clarity of expected performance, task identity, skill variety, and the like all promote job satisfaction (Fried and Ferris, 1987). Organizational constraints, like insufficient budgetary support or shortage of resources, negatively affect job satisfaction (Peters and O’Connor, 1980). Employees’ personalities too have been found to influence job satisfaction, as those with an internal locus of control are more satisfied with their jobs (Spector, 1997).

The original impetus for research on job satisfaction was a humanitarian interest of researchers working in the so-called “human relations tradition”. Herein, job satisfaction is assumed to be a basic value that should be attainable for all working people, and provision of agreeable social relations at the workplace is seen to cause workers to be satisfied with their jobs. These researchers were quickly joined by those who took a more instrumental view of the subject and assumed that a satisfied worker is probably also one who works hard and performs well.

Some findings corroborate the humanist view. For example, if employees feel they receive fair pay, they tend to experience more satisfaction on the job. However, the main assumption has hardly been tested, i.e., that agreeable social relations at the workplace make for job satisfaction. Studies conducted by Brass (1982), Hurlbert (1991), Bulder et al. (1995), and Hodson (1997) show inconsistent results. Some of the inconsistencies may flow from differences in measurement or data analysis. Hurlbert, e.g., analyzed personal networks that included non-work-related contacts, whereas the other authors dealt only with work-related ties. According to Hurlbert, cohesive personal networks of similar persons promote job satisfaction, an effect that is augmented as the network members (alters) have more resources, such as education. Using non-network data, Hodson found co-worker solidarity to have positive effects on job satisfaction. Brass failed to find an association between centrality in the network of a work organization and job satisfaction, although several different measurements for centrality were used. In their case study of two government agencies, Bulder et al. found no increase in job satisfaction attributable to number of ties or the density of personal networks at work. Heterogeneity of the network even had a negative effect.

Some of the original basic assumptions have been attenuated by results of empirical research. Job satisfaction is no guarantee for commitment to an organization or the absence of withdrawal behavior, like absenteeism, as was the original straightforward assumption. The association between job satisfaction and commitment to the organization is weak (cf. Lincoln and Kalleberg, 1990) as is the relation between job satisfaction and absenteeism (Farrell and Stamm, 1988). Job satisfaction does, however, clearly decrease turnover (Mitra et al., 1992). The instrumental view experienced a severe setback when job satisfaction was shown repeatedly to be only weakly or not at all related to job performance (see Petty et al., 1984, Iaffoldano et al., 1985, Perrow, 1986). Moreover, the opposite direction of causality is equally feasible. When organizations connect more rewards to good performance, the correlation between performance and satisfaction will increase (Jacobs and Solomon, 1977). A high income as such, however, is not a determining factor in job satisfaction (Spector, 1997).

In general, knowledge on job satisfaction is neither systematic nor consistent. Moreover, no clear mechanism has been specified to help us understand the empirical associations between job satisfaction, its antecedents, and its consequences. Because of these relatively discouraging results, many researchers lost interest in the topic and, for a while, “job satisfaction” was low on the research agenda of organizational science (see Flap et al., 1998). Currently, though, interest is reviving. Job satisfaction is simply too important to neglect, since work is central to society and to many people’s lives. Although job satisfaction may not be conducive to job performance, it was recently shown that it has many other consequences, different from those at first expected. Among others, job satisfaction was shown to influence so-called “organizational citizenship behavior”, i.e., providing help to co-workers that goes beyond the formal requirements of the job (Organ and Ryan, 1995) and discouraging destructive behavior at the workplace (Chen and Spector, 1992). An important contribution to the re-emergence of the field was made by the publication of several meta-analyses on antecedents and consequences of job satisfaction (e.g., Spector, 1997). Furthermore, new data became available allowing for better inquiry into the issue. Lastly, theoretical and methodological advancements in network research offer new opportunities for gaining insight into the association between social relations and job satisfaction. In particular, the theory of social capital suggests new ideas on how networks and job satisfaction may be related (Flap, 1999). The main idea is that social capital might be goal specific, i.e., job satisfaction might differ depending on the structure and content of the social network. The remainder of this paper elaborates on and tests a few of these ideas.

Section snippets

Social capital, goal specificity, and network structures

Within the theory of social capital, personal networks are considered to be a means to achieve individual goals. Therefore, we call them social capital rather than social resources, a term that is used to indicate similar phenomena (see Lin, 1992).

Hypotheses on social capital in different network structures

That cohesive networks (as depicted in Fig. 1, network A) might contribute to well-being is unquestioned. For example, Hurlbert (1991) assumes that cohesive networks of similar others both prevent and ameliorate consequences of stress. In a closed network, communications flow quickly and easily, thus every network member knows the same things. The network consists of many strong ties, which is one reason for its closeness: if actor A has a strong tie to actor B and actor B has a strong tie to

Data and measurements

Our data allow us to test our ideas on the goal specific effects of social capital on various aspects of job satisfaction. The data were collected in two governmental agencies in the Netherlands (a more extensive description is provided by Bulder et al. (1993) and by Bulder (2001)). The similarity in institutional context, work conditions, and characteristics of the employees of the two agencies controls for a number of other possible causes of satisfaction and makes it reasonable to attribute

Results

Like much other research, our data found almost no relationship between general network characteristics and general job satisfaction. We first present the results on network structures (hypotheses H1–H3), followed by results on network content (hypotheses H4 and H5), and finally, those on the combined effects of structure and content, i.e., the strong versions of the hypotheses (H1s, H2s, H3s1, and H3s2, respectively). Before doing so, we describe reactions to the different name-generating

Conclusion and discussion

Contrary to what would be suggested by the human relations tradition, social capital, social integration in general, does not influence all aspects of job satisfaction. This was already found in earlier research and was corroborated in analyses preliminary to this study. In this paper, we argued that a major reason for this lack of association might be that social capital is goal specific. The results of our analyses indeed suggest that social capital is not an all-purpose good, not even within

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    The study reported in this paper was made possible by grants from the Dutch Science Foundation and the Royal Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences. We want to thank Bert Bulder for his contribution to earlier versions of this paper.

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