The Impact of Job Level and Sex Differences on the Relationship between Life and Job

Satisfaction
Author(s): Michael J. Kavanagh and Michael Halpern
Source: The Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 20, No. 1 (Mar., 1977), pp. 66-73
Published by: Academy of Management
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/255462
Accessed: 25/06/2009 02:33

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless
you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you
may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=aom.

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed
page of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the
scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that
promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Academy of Management is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Academy
of Management Journal.

http://www.jstor.org
Academy of Management Journal
1977, Vol. 20, No. 1, 66-73

The Impact ofJob Level and Sex

Differences on the Relationship Between
Life and Job Satisfaction'
MICHAEL J. KAVANAGH
MICHAEL HALPERN
State University of New York
at Binghamton

Questionnaire data were collected from 411 univer-

sity employees at three job levels to test two hypotheses
relative to differences in the relationship between job
and life satisfaction for male and females. Comparisons
indicated strong differences, primarily for females, be-
tween an earlier study and this study for the life-job
satisfaction relationships.

Women's rights are receiving considerable attention in organizations

today. The various legal suits filed and won under the Civil Rights Act
of 1964, as well as the more active role of women's movement advocates
during the past decade, seem to have sensitized American industry. Smo-
lowe (1974) has succinctly described this historical development, and
Marine (1974) has provided a "guide" for businessmen to deal with wom-
en's liberation. In a related discussion, Stein and Bailey (1973) have
examined achievement motivation in females and concluded that "achieve-
ment-motivation theory was developed to explain the behavior of males ...
Not surprisingly, it does not work for females" (p. 362).
Societal norms have been frequently mentioned as a major factor in
role definitions for men and women. It is usually assumed that a man's
needs are fulfilled to a great extent in the work role, since societal norms
indicate that the male's job should be a significant part of his life. On the
other hand, society has expected the woman's need-fulfillment to come

Michael J. Kavanagh is Associate Professor, School of Management, State University of

New York at Binghamton,Binghamton,New York.
Michael Halpern is an attorney and former student, School of Management, State Uni-
versity of New York at Binghamton,Binghamton,New York.
1 This report is based in part on data collected in conjunction with an Honor's Thesis in
Organizational Psychology for the second author. A portion of this research was reported
at the 82nd Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association, New Orleans,
1974. The authors would like to thank Dr. Laurie Larwood for critically reading this paper.

66
1977 Kavanagh and Halpern 67

from the home, thus, career-versus-marriageand mother-versus-workerrole

conflicts may become operative in the lives of employed women. Job roles
have been assumed to satisfy different needs for males and females in terms
of their total life roles. However, if organizations are concerned with the
"whole" employee, then the integration of life and work roles becomes
important. Thus, the question of differences between sexes in job satisfac-
tion may be less important than examining the relationship between life
and job satisfaction for males and females.
The relationship between life and job satisfaction has been the subject of
several studies (Friend & Haggard, 1948; Herzberg, Mausner, Peterson
& Capwell, 1957; Iris & Barrett, 1972; Levitin & Quinn, 1974; Quinn,
Staines & McCullough, 1974), but most relevant for this research was a
study by Brayfield and Wells (1957). Collecting data from 41 male and
52 female civil service employees in general office occupations, they exam-
ined the relationships between life and job satisfaction. Their results in-
dicated that there were no significant relationships between job and life
satisfaction for the women, but these relationships were all significant in a
positive direction for the men.
Brayfield and Wells (1957) offered two possible explanations for the
striking discrepancy between the male and female results. First, the job
could have been more important to the men because they "were in higher
job classifications which entail some independent judgment and carry
higher salaries" (p. 202). Although job level has been identified as a fac-
tor in job satisfaction (Gurin, Verloff & Feld, 1960; Porter & Lawler,
1965), the level differences in the Brayfield and Wells (1957) study were
small, and considering the strong differences in the results between males
and females, this does not seem a satisfactory explanation.
The second explanation offered by Brayfield and Wells (1957) was that
"the job plays a more significant role in the lives of these men than it does
for the women" (p. 205). In fact, the women reported that their jobs were
"nothing more than a living" and at the same time they "were doing as
well at their jobs as their families expected" (p. 204). The societal norms
earlier discussed would support these results and responses by the women
in the 1950s; that is, prior to the more active role of the women's move-
ment, these seemed to be the prevailing opinions.
However, the women's movement has been working during the last de-
cade to change these feelings and attitudes of women, to alter the prevail-
ing stereotype which states that women can not do well in business and
should not try, i.e., a woman's work is not a central aspect of her life. More-
over, the women's movement has attempted to change societal norms and
expectations in terms of the attitudes of both women and men relative to a
woman's status in an organization. This job equality emphasis has serious
implications for employed women in terms of self-esteem and identity
(McPartland & Cummings, 1958), which should strongly affect the signif-
icance the work role plays in the lives of women.
68 Academy of Management Journal March

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between

life and job satisfaction for males and females to determine if the different
empirical relationships found by Brayfield and Wells (1957) would ap-
pear in current data. Specifically, the present study replicated the measure-
ments used in Brayfield and Wells' (1957) study but controlled job level
to account for their first explanation. Data were collected from several job
levels to test the hypothesis that job and life satisfaction will be positively
related for both males and females regardless of job level (Hypothesis 1).
In addition, it was hypothesized that the relationship between job and
life satisfaction should increase in magnitude with higher job levels (Hypo-
thesis 2). This hypothesis was based on the previously cited work on job
level differences as well as on the evidence suggesting that persons in higher
level jobs have greater opportunities to fulfill higher-level needs (Porter
& Lawler, 1965).

METHOD

Questionnaires containing the same four scales used by Brayfield and

Wells (1957) were distributed to approximately 1,000 university em-
ployees. Four hundred thirty-seven questionnaires were returned, of which
411 were usable. These included 141 females and 38 males from job
level one (nonsupervisory, nonprofessional, or clerical), 54 females and
129 males from job level two (faculty or professional), and 18 females
and 31 males from job level three (supervisory for faculty and professional
to include deans and vice presidents). Level three was a combination of
levels collapsed because of small n problems. All respondents remained
anonymous, and only sex and job level were identified.
The four measures used from the Brayfield and Wells (1957) study
were: (a) the Brayfield-Rothe Job Satisfaction Index (Brayfield & Rothe,
1951)-an overall measure of job satisfaction using general items; (b)
the SRA Employee Inventory (Dabas, 1958; SRA, 1952)-a measure
which is a summation of responses to specific job situation or content items;
(c) the Rundquist-Sletto Morale Scale (Rundquist & Sletto, 1936)-a
measure of general life satisfaction; and (d) the Weitz Test of General
Satisfaction (Weitz, 1952)-a summation of responses to specific life
situation items.
From the preceding paragraphs, it should be noted that this study rep-
licates the questionnaire methodology of Brayfield and Wells (1957),
but not exactly the subject sample. In this sense, the authors are also
examining the external validity or generalizability of Brayfield and Wells'
results. Even though job level one subjects in this study are similar to the
clerical employees in the 1957 study, the organizational context is markedly
different. Of course, level two and three subjects in this study are consider-
ably different from the earlier study. Thus, interpretations of changes be-
tween the two studies will take these facts into consideration.
1977 Kavanagl and Halpern6 69

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Hypothesis 1
The results of the correlational analysis for this study's data as well as
the results from the Brayfield and Wells (1957) study are presented in
Table 1. As a methodological note, the correlations between all four mea-
sures for the total sample are shown in Table 2. Although all these cor-
relations are significant, it is obvious that the magnitude of the relation-
ships is not strong enough to conclude they are all measuring the same
thing. For this reason, all four relationships for life and job satisfaction are
considered in Table 1, rather than, for example, combining the satisfac-
tion measures of each type into one for life satisfaction and one for job
satisfaction.
It is readily apparent from the results in Table 1 that Hypothesis 1 was
strongly supported, as the pattern of results present a sharp contrast to
those of Brayfield and Wells. No significant relationships between life and
job satisfaction for females were reported by Brayfield and Wells (1957),
whereas there are strong relationships in the university data, including job
level one, which is the closest to their female sample. The differences for
the males between this study and the Brayfield and Wells (1957) study
appear minor, except the correlations between the Weitz and the SRA,
for which there is no readily apparent explanation. Of more importance
is that all four correlations are significant and positive, as they were for
the 1957 results.
Why the dramatic change? It may be that in the 1950s we indeed lived,
to borrow some phraseology, in a "male chauvinistic" world. The woman's
primary role was seen to be in the home, and it may have been that the
common, and accepted, reason for a woman to take a job was to "wait for
or get a man." It is easy to understand the conclusion reached by Bray-
field and Wells (1957), reflecting their times and their sample, that the
work role may not have been terribly significant for the lives of their fe-
male respondents.
The 1960s appeared to be a sensitization period for Americans, with the
rise, among other things, of the demand for equality of the sexes. In fact,
the women's movement can best be conceptualized as an attitudinal and
behaviorial change effort, whose targets are every male and female in the
United States. It could be that this combination of sensitization and strong
publicity may have in part led to the results found here for the females.
However, it should be obvious that there have been other significant societal
changes since 1957, and these could have affected the results. More im-
portantly, it should be noted that there are several strong, competing ex-
planations for the differences in the results from 1957 and 1973.
It may be that the differences between the 1957 and the 1973 results
for women were a function of a kind of social desirability response set. It
simply may have been socially inappropriate for a woman to express
 TABLE 1
Correlations Between Life and Job Satisfaction for Females a

Brayfield
and Wellsb Total Samplec Job Level 1J Jo
Measure a Male Female Male Female Male Female Male
(N = 41) (N = 52) (N = 198) (N = 213) (N = 38) (N - 141) (N = 1
GLS versus SJS .67** .04 .49** .53** .68** .57** .47*
SLS versus SJS .68** .12 .42** .47** .39* .48** .44**
GLS versus GJS .49** .19 .27** .34** .61** .28** .23*
SLS versus GJS .32* .23 .21** .20** .34* .23** .18*
Average Inter-
scale rs .628 .145 .37 .413 .575 .423 .348
a The measures used were: GLS-general life satisfaction, Rundquist-Sletto;;(2) SJS-specific job sa
faction,, Brayfield-Rothe;(4) SLS-specific life satisfaction, Weitz. The average interscale correlations
b From Brayfieldand Wells (1957).
e From the universitysample.
*p < .05.
**p < .01.
1977 Kavanagh and Halpern7 71

TABLE 2
Correlations Between Measures of Job and Life Satisfaction
for Total Samplea

Specific Job General Life Specific Life

Satisfaction Satisfaction Satisfaction
General Job Satisfaction .44 .31 .20
Specific Job Satisfaction .51 .44
General Job Satisfaction .52
Specific Job Satisfaction
a For n = 411, correlations of .10 and .13 are significant at the .05 and .01 levels respec-
tively.

pleasure in her work during the 1950s. Two possible reasons for this might
be pressures from competitive males and self-concept. During the 1950s,
the pressures from male co-workers and sulpervisors against a woman ex-
pressing enjoyment of her work may have led most women to feel that their
job roles were not related to their outlook on life. Furthermore, what may
have changed over time is the ability of women to express pleasure with
their jobs as they relate to their self-concepts, and consequently, their lives.2
Another explanation for the contrasting results in Table 1 may be sam-
ple differences in terms of work environment. It could be that the organ-
izational climate and attitudes found in a university environment would
be more supportive of the women's movement than those found in many
other organizations. For example, had the authors chosen to replicate
exactly the organizational environment of the 1957 study, city govern-
ment office employees, decidedly different results may have been discov-
ered. The impact of these environmental differences simply cannot be tested
from these data. Obviously, the hypothesized impact of this environmental
variable needs more empirical investigation.
Finally, it should be noted that some recently reported results (Levitin
& Quinn, 1974) are relevant to this hypothesis. Six surveys conducted from
1958 to 1973 show increasing magnitudes of the correlation between life
and job satisfaction for females. The 1958 result, which was at least two
or three years after Brayfield and Wells collected their data, shows a cor-
relation for females of .15 (p < .01, two-tailed); while the correlation
for males was .16 (p < .01, two-tailed). Contrary to the Brayfield and
Wells (1957) results, the male-female difference did not appear in these
results. However, it should be noted that the 1958 survey results were based
on single-question measures of job satisfaction and general happiness, while
the Brayfield and Wells (1957) results were based on multiple-item life
and job satisfaction measures. Thus, this study more closely replicates the
methodology of Brayfield and Wells (1957).
2 The authors are most
appreciative to Dr. Laurie Larwood, who suggested this explanation
for the results.
72 Academy of Management Journal March

Hypothesis 2
Hypothesis 2 can be tested by examining the last row of Table 1 for the
three job levels. Calculating average interscale correlations for males and
females at each level indicates that Hypothesis 2 fails miserably. As evi-
denced in Table 1, and contrary to Hypothesis 2, the average interscale
correlation between life and job satisfaction decreases as one goes higher
in job level. Although none of these differences between job levels for
either males or females are statistically significant, the decreasing trend
is clearly there. The relationship between life and job satisfaction is lowest
for persons, male and female, at job level three.
Although one would expect increasingly close relationships between job
and life satisfaction at higher job levels because of the higher achievement
level, which usually includes higher pay and status, these results simply do
not support this notion. It was felt, given the achievement motivation litera-
ture (McClelland, 1961) and the popularized version of the assumption
that man strives to "get ahead" in organizations (Peter & Hull, 1969),
that persons at higher job levels in the organization would revel in having
"made it" and this would carry over to their life satisfaction.
How then does one interpret this clear tendency in the results contrary
to expectations? One explanation may be that as one goes up in an organ-
ization, the amount of pressures and stress on the individual increases. In
order to successfully deal with this added stress, one must be able to cope
or disengage from the work role (Singer, 1974). If this is true, it means
that persons at the higher job levels in this study, in order to survive psy-
chologically, may have simply done a good job of splitting their work from
their life outside their work. In fact, it may be this coping ability that al-
lowed these individuals to get to their present job level (Singer, 1974).
Obviously, these interpretationsare tentative and require empirical testing.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

The most overwhelming result of this research is the clear differences

between the Brayfield and Wells (1957) correlational results for males
and females and the results here. Their female respondents reported no
significant relationships between their attitudes about their job and their
life, whereas this female sample reported strong and significant relation-
ships. The importance of this finding is magnified when comparing the
patterns of correlations between males and females, since the authors
controlled for job level while job level remains an alternate explanation
for their results. In fact, regardless of job level, the results of this study
show significant changes compared to the Brayfield and Wells results.
The obvious question is why, and competing explanations were: (1)
attitudinal changes in females as a result of the women's movement; (2)
differences in organizational environments across samples; (3) differences
1977 Kavanagh and Halpern 73

in types of employees across samples; and (4) changes in mean life and
job satisfaction across samples. Obviously, these competing explanations
all need further empirical testing.
Finally, a finding that is somewhat disquieting is the downward trend
in the relationship between job and life satisfaction as job level increases.
If this were to hold true in other types of organizations, it should receive
serious research attention. Whether this is unhealthy, as the authors' per-
sonal biases would indicate, or healthy, as Singer (1974) argues, is open
to empirical investigation.

REFERENCES

1. Brayfield, A. H., and H. F. Rothe. "An Index of Job Satisfaction," Journal of Applied
Psychology, Vol. 35 (1951), 307-311.
2. Brayfield, A. H., and R. V. Wells. "Interrelationships Among Measures of Job Satis-
faction and General Satisfaction," Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 41 (1957), 201-
205.
3. Dabas, Z. "The Dimensions of Morale: An Item Factorization of the SRA Employee
Inventory," Personnel Psychology, Vol. 11 (1958), 217-234.
4. Friend, E., and B. T. Haggard. "Work Adjustment in Relation to Family Background,"
Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 31 (1948), 65-78.
5. Gurin, G., J. Verloff, and S. Feld. Americans View Their Mental Health (New York:
Basic Books, 1960).
6. Herzberg, F., B. Mausner, R. 0. Peterson, and D. F. Capwell. Job Attitudes: Review
of Research and Opinion (Pittsburgh, Pa.: Psychological Service of Pittsburgh, 1957).
7. Iris, B., and G. V. Barrett. "Some Relations Between Job and Life Satisfaction and Job
Importance," Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 56 (1972), 301-304.
8. Levitin, T. E., and R. P. Quinn. "Changes in Sex Roles and Attitudes Toward Work"
(Paper presented at the 1974 Conference of the American Association for Public
Opinion Research).
9. Marine, G. "A Businessman's Guide to Women's Liberation," Master in Business Ad-
ministration, Vol. 8, No. 2 (1974), 27-31.
10. McClelland, D. C. The Achieving Society (Princeton, N.J.: Van Nostrand, 1961).
11. McPartland, T. S., and J. H. Cummings. "Self-conception, Social Class and Mental
Health," Human Organization, Vol. 17 (1958), 319-325.
12. Peter, L. J., and R. Hull. The Peter Principle (New York: Bantam, 1969).
13. Porter, L. W., and E. E. Lawler. "Properties of Organization Structure in Relation to
Job Attitudes and Job Behavior," Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 64 (1965), 23-51.
14. Quinn, R. P., G. L. Staines, and M. R. McCullough. Job Satisfaction: Is There a Trend?
Manpower Administration, Monograph No. 30, (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department
of Labor, 1974).
15. Rundquist, E. A., and R. F. Sletto. Personiality in the Depression (Minneapolis, Minn.:
University of Minnesota Press, 1936).
16. Singer, M. T. "Presidential Address-Engagement-Involvement: A Central Phenomenon
in Psychophysiological Research," Psychosomatic Medicine, Vol. 36 (1974), 1-17.
17. Smolowe, C. "Corporations and Women: A Decade of Near-Ms.'s," Master in Business
Administration, Vol. 8, No. 2 (1974), 32-34.
18. SRA. General Manual for the SRA Employee Inventory, 3rd ed. (Chicago: Science
Research Associates, 1952).
19. Stein, A. H., and M. M. Bailey, "The Socialization of Achievement Orientation in Fe-
males," Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 80 (1973), 345-366.
20. Weitz, J. "A Neglected Concept in the Study of Job Satisfaction," Personnel Psychology,
Vol. 5 (1952), 201-205.