Job satisfaction is, without a doubt, one of the most heavily studied — Steve M. Jex

"Job satisfaction is typically defined as an employee’s level of positive affect toward his or her job or job situation... Along with positive affect, we can add both a cognitive and a behavioral component to this definition... The cognitive aspect of job satisfaction represents an employee’s beliefs about his or her job or job situation; that is, an employee may believe that his or her job is interesting, stimulating, dull, or demanding—to name a few options... The behavioral component represents an employee’s behaviors or, more often, behavioral tendencies toward his or her job. An employee’s level of job satisfaction may be revealed by the fact that he or she tries to attend work regularly, works hard, and intends to remain a member of the organization for a long period of time."

"’s work was undoubtedly pioneering, but it must be remembered that he focused primarily on physiological reactions to aversive physical stimuli. He was not focusing on stress in the workplace. The first large-scale program of research focusing exclusively on stress in the workplace was undertaken at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research in the early 1960s. What is particularly noteworthy about this research effort is that the focus was on psychosocial factors in the workplace that may be stressful to employees. Psychosocial factors represent aspects of the work environment having to do with interactions with other people. In particular, the Michigan researchers focused much of their attention on what they termed role stressors... which are aversive working conditions associated with behaviors expected of each employee in an organization."

"In the organizational sciences (e.g., organizational behavior, organizational psychology), one of the more misunderstood terms is “organizational theory.” To some, organizational theory is a field of study; to others, it is the process of using metaphors to describe organizational processes... or it represents an attempt to determine the best way to organize work organizations. The term is used to indicate all of these things, but an “organizational theory” is really just a way of organizing purposeful human action. Given the diversity of purposeful human endeavors, there are numerous ways to organize them, and, hence, a great many organizational theories."

"The investigation of job-related stress involves studying the relationship between stressful aspects of jobs (normally termed {[w|stressors}}) and the reputed results of stressor exposure (normally termed strains). Although several diverse theoretical models of the process by which stressors impact employees exist (e.g., Ivancevich & Matteson, 1980; Jex, in press; Jex & Beehr, 1991; Kahn & Byosiere, 1992), most models propose that employees are exposed to stressful working conditions, these conditions are perceived, and finally employees exhibit strains, which can include behaviors (e.g., increased smoking), physical illness, and psychological distress. On the job stressor side, there have been only a limited number of scales developed, which has tended to focus the field on a relatively small number of potential job stressors, for example, role ambiguity and role conflict. Yet research clearly suggests an important role for other job stressors that have received inadequate attention, such as interpersonal conflict in the workplace (Keenan & Newton, 1985) and organizational constraints on performance."

"Despite frequent criticism, the vast majority of job stress researchers continue to use subjective self-reports measures for both job stressors and job strains (Jex & Beehr, 1991). Part of the reason is undoubtedly because it makes data collection relatively easy, but ease alone has not made this approach so popular. First, there is a sound theoretical reason behind this choice. Serf-reports represent incumbent perceptions, and perceptions represent an important mediating process in the occupational stress process."

"Organizational constraints represent situations or things that prevent employees from translating ability and effort into high levels of job performance. The [Organizational Constraints Scale] OCS was based on the work of Peters and OConnor (1980), who listed 11 areas of constraints that interfered with job performance. These common situational constraints in organizations may include faulty equipment, incomplete or poor information, or perhaps interruptions by others."