Book Description

Identifying the factors affecting job satisfaction is an important issue for organizational researchers and managers. A large volume of research has identified two major groups of variables as important determinants of satisfaction. These groups are the demographic characteristics of the employee and the characteristics of the work environment. Building on this theoretical basis, this thesis examined the determinants of job satisfaction among United States Air Force security police. The security police career field provided a unique source of data. Until 1997, the career field was divided into two primary groups of employees, law enforcement specialists and security specialists. While the demographic characteristics of the two groups were very similar, the daily work environment was markedly different. This provided an opportunity to separate the effects of demographic and work environment variables as determinants of job satisfaction. The original theoretical model examined only the direct effects of the independent variables. While the overall explanatory power of this model was excellent, many of the key variables had little or no direct effect on job satisfaction. This led to a revision of the theoretical model that allowed for the indirect effects of the independent variables, as mediated by the intermediate variables. Using this revised model, it became apparent that the demographic variables and the assigned Air Force Specialty Code primarily had indirect effects on job satisfaction, while the perceived characteristics of the work environment had direct effects on job satisfaction.