Job satisfaction and quality management: an empirical analysis

Purpose – Quality management requires increasing employee involvement that could empower employees, leading to employee and customer satisfaction. Although the literature describes a picture of increasing job demands and work intensification, the evidence of an association between employee job satisfaction and quality management remains mixed and narrow. The purpose of this paper is to investigate this link in the wider economy, and address the roles of human resource management practices that target direct employee participation (job enrichment and high involvement management) in this relationship. Design/methodology/approach – The Workplace Employment Relations Survey of 2004 (WERS2004) provides information on British workplaces including the use of specific quality and human resource management practices, employees' job satisfaction and other outcomes. Latent variable analysis identifies employers' approaches to quality management, job enrichment and high involvement management. Workplace‐level regression analyses illustrate the link between job satisfaction and various desired organizational outcomes. Hierarchical two‐level regression models are used to assess the link between quality management at workplaces and employee job satisfaction. Findings – Although job satisfaction is positively associated with desired workplace outcomes (organizational commitment, productivity and quality), no significant link between quality management and employee job satisfaction is found. By contrast, a positive association between job enrichment and job satisfaction is confirmed, which may be weakened in the presence of quality management. Practical implications – Given the potential impact of job satisfaction on organizational outcomes, job enrichment features should not be neglected when designing jobs so that an effective quality management strategy can be in place. Some weak positive association between high involvement and quality managements with perceived job demands is also observed, and this should be further investigated in more detailed studies of employee well‐being. Originality/value – This is a large empirical study on an economy‐wide sample of workplaces and their employees.