Listening – the key to job satisfaction?

Listening – the key to job satisfaction?

Master’s Thesis

Graduate School of Communication

Master’s Programme Communication Science: Corporate Communication

Chantal R. Bieri

11834552

Supervisor: Dr. Claartje L. Ter Hoeven

Abstract

This study investigates the relationship between the perception of being listened to and job satisfaction and if feeling valued and having a good relationship with coworkers could be an underlying mechanism in that relationship. Listening is inevitable in our everyday life as also in organizations and it is an understudied topic. Therefore, this study aims to shed light on the relation effect of the perception of being listened to on job satisfaction. A self-administered online survey was used for the data collection. The results among 161 working people

confirmed that relationship quality strengthened the underlying process between perception of being listened to and job satisfaction but did not confirm feeling valued as an underlying process. Future research could include an additional outcome such as revenue of an organization.

Introduction

Listening to other people is one of the fundamental interpersonal communication skills (Murphy, 1991). In communication science one of the first models developed by Schuler (1979) was the sender and receiver model, which has been adjusted and expanded within the years. The original model is composed of just two elements namely the sender, who sends out the message and the receiver, who receives the message (Shannon & Weaver, 1949). The sending part (communicating) has received a great amount of scholarly attention as compared to the receiving part (listening). Over the years, a considerable amount of literature has been developed pertaining to the topic of listening within organization (Bodie et al., 2012; Gearhart & Bodie, 2011; Macnamara, 2016; Weger et al., 2014). This paper will focus on the

perception of being listened to. To understand this concept, it is important to distinguish the difference between the own perception of being listened to and judging others for their listening competency (Imhof, 2002). Hence, the former is of importance in this paper, since the focus relies on how the sender feels like the message actually is received. According to White, Vanc and Stafford (2010) when communicating information about something frequently, not the whole message is received and by measuring the perception of being listened to a certain part can be measured. Further, being listened to within a company can give the employee a feeling of being valued and, it can strengthen the relationship between the speaker and listener. In order to broaden the knowledge known on the topic of listening this paper will contribute to the findings involving the understanding and consequences of listening within an organization and what effect it can have on job satisfaction. Listening is multidimensional and therefore difficult to define (Bodie, 2012). The focus will not

necessarily be on listening to others; it is more precisely on the perception of being listened to, because by measuring the perception not the actual message is recorded but what the sender feels like has been acknowledged by the receiver. It is of importance to focus on this, because being listened to takes an angle of focusing on the sender instead of the receiver and

consequently, the main assumption is that a person is actually being listened to. Especially pertaining to the field of medicine, psychology and education there have been several

publications on the topic of being listened to (Biau & Soto-Faraco, 2013; Syrett & Kawahara, 2014; Napoles, 2014). In the theoretical framework the findings from the other disciplines will be implemented to communication science. While a lot of research has been conducted on the topic listening, there is still a lack of literature concerning the perception of being listened to. Therefore, the main idea of this study is to measure what effect the perception of being listened to has on job satisfaction through feeling valued by colleagues and relationship quality with coworkers. The main difference between feeling valued and supported by

employees is that the first, pays more attention to an individual level whereas the later focuses more on the importance within a group. Further, the differentiation between the two mediators could be made clearer by seeing feeling valued more as an intra perspective and relationship quality more as an inter perspective. This study aims to contribute to the literature in the following three ways. First, the understanding of the process of being listened to could benefit various organizations by minimizing misunderstandings among coworkers. Second, the effects of perception of being listened to on employee satisfaction are measured and the results could help organizations to focus on certain indicators. Third, the goal is to raise awareness on the topic of organizational listening among communication scientists and other interdisciplinary scholars could possibly benefit as well.

RQ: To what extent does the perception of being listened to have an effect on job satisfaction through feeling valued and relationship quality amongst co-workers?

Theoretical Framework Perception of being listened to

The perception of being listened to is defined as when a person secures the attention from the counterpart in the sense that the message is being received (Imhof, Välikoski, Laukkanen, & Orlob, 2014). In order to understand the idea of the perception of being listened to it is

important to include the concept of active listening. According to Weger, Bell, Minei and Robinson (2014) there are at least three stages needing to be passed in order to qualify as an active listener. The first stage establishes expressed interest in the speaker’s message by showing either verbal or nonverbal reaction (McNaughton et al., 2007; Levitt, 2001). Second, repeating or paraphrasing the speaker’s message by showing understanding of the current mood the speaker is in (Garland, 1981; Trenholm & Jensen, 2004). Finally, active listening requires asking questions to show the speaker that one has been paying due diligence (Paukert, Stagner, & Hope, 2004). It is important to distinguish at the beginning what differentiates a good listener as compared to a bad listener. While a good listener not only shares the attention with the counterpart (Ames, Naissen, & Brockner, 2012), they also try to make sense of the content that has been expressed and ask relevant questions (Wegner, Castle, & Emmett, 2010). Of course, the effort expenses a lot of energy and sometimes the opponent doesn’t give their whole attention, only a fraction of interest by, for example searching for eye contact (Argyle & Dean, 1965) or provide feedback in form of vocal expressions such as “mmm” or “aha” (Poppe, Truong, & Heylen, 2011). The aforementioned reactions are just a sample of how a listener can indicate to the counterpart that they are listening. Apart from that of course there is also a few reasons as to why the speaker cannot get their message

transferred. Moreover, for Buchli and Pearce (1974) one of many reasons why speakers are not understood is that the person they are speaking with simply is not listening or listening poorly. Furthermore, no eye contact or giving little-to-no feedback to the speaker is another indicator as to if the listener is judgmental and jumps to conclusions (Purdy, 2000). According to Itzchakov, Castro and Kluger (2016) a good listener does not necessarily only depend on the listener themselves but also the story, that is being told, needs to be taken into account. In addition, it can be said that a listener’s facial expression (for example, if the stories they are listening to are meaningful or just daily routines) makes the speaker receive more attention. Further, the relationship between the speaker and listener also needs to be taken into account.

Itzchakov et al. (2016) measured the relationship between the speaker’s narrative quality and perceived listening quality and what effect it could have on the speakers’ psychological safety or social anxiety with three different studies. The results showed that employees who

experience good listing, simultaneously improve their wellbeing. Studies (Graen & Uhl-Bien, 1995; Brewer & Gardner, 1996) have deduced that depending on the bond between two people the reactions towards each other are vastly different. For example, when two colleagues who are familiar with each other have a conversation they won’t pay as much attention as compared to when two new people are having a conversation. Mostly, this is logical, because the new people want to demonstrate respect, by being polite. The study of Wegner, Castle and Emmett (2010) measured the influence active listening has on the message by paraphrasing and the perception of feeling listened to by interviewing

undergraduate students. The results show, that message paraphrasing had an influence on the social attractiveness of the listener, but no association could be made in terms of the

participants conversational satisfaction or the perception of feeling understood. Therefore, the next section will focus on the definition of job satisfaction and discuss recent research on this topic.

Job satisfaction

Several definitions of job satisfaction have evolved. Most authors agree that job satisfaction can be seen as a multidimensional construct (Mobley & Locke, 1970; Rice, Gentile, & McFarlin, 1991; Law & Wong, 1999). Locke (1991) proposed the following definition: “job satisfaction as a pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one’s job or job experience.” Job satisfaction describes the level of happiness a worker experiences within the organization they are in. According to Chi and Gursoy (2009) satisfied employees are more likely to be motivated and work harder than dissatisfied ones. Moreover, Matzler and Rendl (2006) state that job satisfaction has a direct influence towards the process quality, meaning that satisfied employees have a positive effect on the quality of a good during the

production. According to Perrow (1961) the organizational goals can be divided into two major categories, the official and operative goals. The official goal can be described as the actual purpose of an organization for example the official goal of a newspaper is to inform people, whereas the operative goal is to make a profit or an adequate return on investment (Perrow, 1961). Further, Perrow (1961) states that organizations also have other goals: minor goals such as focusing on customer service, employee morale, competitive pricing and diversification. Therefore, it can be recommended that organizations focus not only on the turnover but also on their employees because they characterize an important and not to

underestimate asset of an organization (Shaw, Gupta, & Delery, 2005; Blader, 2007; Alniacik, Cigerim, Akcin, & Bayram, 2011). Additionally, Matzler et al. (2004) state that satisfied employees are more devoted to focus on continuous improvement and quality. Also,

employees are the flagship of an organization and therefore, it is essential for organizations to take care of their employees and make them feel comfortable at work. There are several subsections which employee satisfaction can be divided into for instance employee

compensation, offering career development, competence of supervisor, benefits, recognition, existing obstacles, relationship to coworkers, meaningfulness, communication (Spector, 1985). Moreover, employee satisfaction can also be a factor, which distinguishes companies from each other (Lam, Zhang, & Baum, 2001). If the employee has the choice of working for two different organizations of course the monetary factor will be taken into account but also the work ethic and the organizations philosophy and how they treat their employees is an important indicator for job-seekers (Chi & Gursoy, 2009). According to Lam, Zhang and Baum (2001) especially in the service industry and in the hotel industry the factor job

satisfaction is also of great importance. Certainly, job satisfaction is important in any industry but because the employees are in direct contact with the clients the awareness of job

satisfaction is fundamental in the two above mentioned industries. The results of the study (Lam, Zhang, & Baum, 2001) showed that well-educated hotel employees were not satisfied

with their job. In order to change the lack of satisfaction the organizations could start a job rotation program, where the employees would work in new environment and gain new knowledge, which would eventually lead to high motivation (Lam, Zhang, & Baum, 2001). Chi and Gursoy (2009) research the relationship between job satisfaction, customer

satisfaction, and the financial performance. Results from their study showed that job satisfaction only had an indirect effect on financial performance. Chi and Gursoy (2009) stated that satisfied employees have a special connection to the customers, which displays in higher sales and higher returns because of the loyalty of the customers towards the

organization over the time. Further, Rice, Gentile and McFarlin (1991) state that there is also a relation between job satisfaction and the level of importance on the job. In their study they show that employees who have high job status are more likely to be content with their work than employees with lower job status. Job satisfaction has been related to many other factors such as personality traits (Furnham et al., 2002), self-efficacy and effort (Karatepe et al. 2006), educational level and marital status (Lam et al., 2001), employee performance (Brown & Peterson, 1993) and so on. Nevertheless, research on the relationship between the

perception of being listened to and job satisfaction is relatively scarce. Furthermore, job satisfaction is essential so that the employee continues to share information they think could be relevant (Malik & Kanwal, 2018). Because according to Staples and Webster (2008) knowledge sharing is an important and challenging matter in order to motivate members of a group to build a team. Despite knowledge sharing, satisfied employees are easier to motivate and on average they work harder than not satisfied employees (Chi & Gursoy, 2009).

According to Hsu and Wang (2008) one of the benefits of job satisfaction is that long-term employees are able to form personal relationships not only with their co-workers but also with their clients, which has a positive effect on the job satisfaction. Therefore, the organization should try to keep the employees or replace the leaving employee with a comparable

but how the speaker feels. What effect this can have on job satisfaction will be explained in the following paragraph.

Perception of being listened to and job satisfaction

Perception of being listened to has been chosen as an independent variable because in comparison to the ability to listen to co-workers the perception is more accurate because the participants self-evaluate their degree of competence in listening. According to Jonas-Simpson, Mitchell, Fisher, Jones and Linscott (2006) if a person feels like they are being listened to, their self-esteem raises, and they feel more appreciated and useful. Since the employee cannot know what part of the information really arrives at the receiver and therefore, the communicator must rely on their own perception. According to Osugi and Kawahara (2018) when observing a computer-generated female that gives either nodding or shaking heads as communicative signals, the nodding head motion increases the likability acknowledgment of the opponent rather than the physical appearance. Therefore, Osugi and Kawahara (2018) conclude that head nodding can be seen as a sign that the information has been received by the listener and enhances perceived likeability. Further, Stivers (2008) also came to the same conclusion that nodding shows a sign of recognition as also vocal

expression can confirm that a person is paying attention. In addition, the perception of being happy is an important prerequisite of the employees’ satisfaction, because in order for the employee to be satisfied the person needs to be contempt with themselves (Bateman & Organ, 1983). Therefore, it can be said, that the truthfulness is relevant in order for the employee to reach full satisfaction (Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Moorman, & Fetter, 1990). Further, this relationship is important because when the listening function is well sustained the information flow within an organization works better (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997). The feeling of being valued and relationship quality among coworkers are possible underlying processes of the relationship between the perception of being listened to and job satisfaction.

Feeling valued is a certain state of a human, when they feel like they are contributing to something bigger. It is essential that the employee feels like the work they do has a purpose (Pontefract, 2016). According to Ellemers, Sleebos, Stam and Gilder (2013) value can be seen as the individual perception of the importance of themselves. Similarly, compared to the element mentioned above “perception of being listened to” is about the personal assessment of the value one has within an organization and not how the co-workers perceive them. Furthermore, Ellmers et al. (2013) state that the individual’s assessment does not necessarily have to match within the insight of the group. Several literature sources from various research fields (such as education, psychology, medicine etc.) conclude that serving for a greater good motivates the individual employees (White & Mackenzie-Davey, 2003; Chippendale, 2013; Hamstra, Van Yperen, Wisse, & Sassenberg, 2014; Shupp, Wilson, & Mccallum, 2018). Since the motivation is a key factor in order for the employee to be happy and satisfied the findings from cross-sectional studies could be implemented to communication science. Several studies share the emphasis that employee contribution is a key factor between organizations and their competitive advantages (Hsu & Wang, 2008; Chi & Gursoy, 2009; Constantin & Baias, 2015). Further, Rogers and Ashforth (2017) distinguish between

contributing the two different types of feeling valued as “we” and as “me”. The “me” is when the employee contributes with an idea or a suggestion with a particular attribute or behavior towards the company, whereas “we” is the efforts one provides as a group towards the organization. According to the study of Itzchakov, Kluger and Castro (2017), they realized that if you want to be listened to one has to tell a story. The results of the study show that it is not only about the content but also about the way one presents a message or in this case a story. They discovered that high quality listening decreased the social anxiety of the speaker. Feeling valued is not only a question of personal respect but also how much attention an employee receives by rewarding them (Galanou, Georgakopoulos, Sotiropoulos, &

with meaningful work. Several studies confirm this relation (Cartwright & Holmes, 2006; Brad Shuck, Rocco, & Albornoz, 2011; Berg, Dutton, & Wrzesniewski, 2013). The study of Spreitzer, Sutcliffe, Dutton, Sonenshein and Grant (2005) showed that thriving at work, which describes an individual’s experience of vitality and leaning, includes the perception of feeling valued and helps the employees adapt themselves inside the organization beyond traditional and formal mechanisms. Further, White and Mackenzie-Davey (2003) state that the

individuals’ contribution seems to be more important to feeling valued than the pay. Therefore, this study focuses on the own perception of feeling valued rather than the

monetary outcome of an organization and what relation that could have with job satisfaction. Combining the two elements perception of being listened to and feeling valued would

therefore signify that when the opponent shows some kind of gesture or inquiry then the person speaking would feel valued. Hence, focusing on the intra perspective leads to a stronger satisfaction outcome. Also, it is important to focus on the individual within a big organization and not underestimate the influence an individual can have on the whole organization. Therefore, the following hypothesis will be tested:

H1: The perception of being listened to is positively related to job satisfaction through feeling valued amongst co-workers.

Relationship quality

Relationship quality can be measured in how happy or satisfied an individual is within their relationship. Most research focuses on the relationship between spouses or other family members (Conroy et al., 2016; McClain & Brown, 2017). Even though it is a frequently studied aspect, there is little consensus in regard to the definition. In order to understand the theory of relationship quality this section will focus on the following concepts such as trust and the social identity theory. Trust is basic behavior expected in a relationship, social identity theory is important because it shows how groups arise and sustain. In a second step the relationship quality as the underlying mechanism in the relationship between being

listened to and job satisfaction will be exemplified. Because the perception of being listened to involves two people there is automatically an interaction between two people given. Further, where one can find an interaction, a relationship can also be identified. But first the concept of trust will be explained. According to Whitener et al. (1998) trust can be divided into three main facets. First, a sympathetic support is the basic level of trust that can be expected towards another person. Second, trust includes the willingness to be disappointed and to take the risk that the other person will not match the expectation. Third, trust implies a certain dependency on the consequence of another person’s actions. According to Matzler and Renzl (2006) trust is very important in workplace relationships because it comforts the

employees and makes them feel safer and more positive about their co-workers and

supervisors. Another study by Watrous, Huffman and Pritchard (2006) stated that there was no difference measured between the relationship among manager and coworkers and coworkers among each other. Employees with low level of trust in general do not feel

comfortable in their workspace, which can lead to stressful situations and therefore, trust can have a direct effect on job satisfaction (Matzler & Renzl, 2006). Social identity theory is a concept by Tajfel and Turner (1986) which tries to explain how a group develops and within that group how the members behave. They suggest that social identification leads the

individual’s perception and their behavior in a sense that the individual tends to think or act in a certain matter, which is accepted by the group they feel like they belong to. From the point of view of social psychologist’s humans have always had a fundamental urge to satisfy a need of belonging to some sort of group and therefore, studies (Baumeister, Leary, & Steinberg, 1995; Osterman, 2000) have shown that the feeling of belongingness to a group can have a positive influence on relationship quality. According to Losada and Heaphy (2004) people who feel a high connectivity with others are more open to new possibilities for creativity and trying out new things. Hence, the relationship quality is an important measurement when researching a relation between two people. Another reason why it is essential to focus on

relationship quality as an underlying mechanism is because all the connections made within an organization can be led back to the relationship between employees (Rousseau, 1989). Meaning, that any interaction within an organization whether it is through email or talking to each other in the cafeteria is considered as an interaction and simultaneously a relation between two people.

H2: The perception of being listened to is positively related to job satisfaction through relationship quality amongst co-workers.

Figure 1: Conceptual Model

Methodological Approach Procedure and sample

Data were collected with an online survey tool called Qualtrics and the link to the survey was acquired through e-mail, Facebook, and messaging applications (Whatsapp, iMessage). By clicking on the survey link, participants could participate immediately. A total of 231

participants started the survey but to ensure that the participants fit the measured criteria there were a few control questions such as if the organizations they work for consist of more than 20 employees or if they worked more than 8 hours a week that would indicate that their workload would be more than 20 percent. A total of 161 participants completed the survey

between May 21 and May 29, 2018. The response rate was 69.70%, because 70 cases did not meet the necessary requirements. The majority of the sample 59.0% were female, while 41.0% were male. The respondents indicated that they worked 37.09 hours per week (SD=11.93). A total of 26.7% of the participants held management positions.

Measures

Main variable

This study included perception of being listened to as the independent variable, job satisfaction as the dependent variable and feeling valued and relationship quality as mediators.

Perception of being listened to. The extent to which participants felt the sense of being

listened to was measured with three statements (Itzchakow & Kluger, 2014). These items were presented with a 1=strongly disagree to 7=strongly agree Likert scale. “To what extent do you feel your conversation partner listens to you?”; “To what extent do you feel your partner ignores you?”; “To what extent does your conversation partner show interest in what you have to say?”. Although the reliability of the scale used by Itzchakow and Kluger (2014) was acceptable, reliability in this study was poorer (= .67; see table A1.2). However, the scale was kept for analysis because of the centrality of this variable for this research as well as the acceptable reliability scores in previous research (Itzchakow & Kluger, 2014).

Job satisfaction. The following items were chosen from the original job satisfaction

scale (JSS) by Spector (1985) on a 5-point scales from 1=strongly disagree to 5=strongly

agree. The original scale has 36 items but since that would exceed the framework just one

subscale including 12 items was chosen. Because the other 24 items also measure the same, they were acceptable to exclude. “I feel I am being paid a fair amount for the work I do.”; “There is really too little chance for promotion on my job.”; “My supervisor is quite

competent in doing his/her job.”; “I am not satisfied with the benefits I receive.”; “When I do a good job, I receive the recognition for it that I should receive.”; “Many of our rules and

procedures make doing a good job difficult.”; “I like the people I work with.”; “I sometimes feel my job is meaningless.”; “Communications seem good within this organization.”. This scale was found to be reliable (= .70; see table A1.2).

Feeling valued. To measure how valued an employee felt within an organization six

items drawn from May et al. (2004) were chosen. These items were presented with a 1=strongly disagree to 5=strongly agree Likert scale. “The work I do on this job is very important to me.”; “My job activities are personally meaningful to me.”; “The work I do on this job is worthwhile.”; “My job activities are significant to me.”; “The work I do on this job is meaningful to me.”; “I feel that the work I do on my job is valuable.” This scale was found to be reliable (= .91; see table A1.2).

Relationship quality. The original scales by Ellemers et al. (2013) were on a 5-point

scales from 1=strongly disagree to 5=strongly agree the participants were asked to answer the nine items. “I have the feeling that my comrades in my team respect me for my ways of cooperation.”; “I have the feeling that my comrades in my team respect me for my qualities.”; “I have the feeling my comrades in my team respect me for the achievements I attain during work.”; “When I talk about my team, I usually say ‘we’ rather than ‘they’.”; “When someone praises this team, it feels like a personal compliment.”; “I contribute to the success of my team.”; “When I see that someone has problems doing the job, I will assist.”; “Although it is not required, I will do extra work if that can prevent others from having problems.”; “I will intervene unasked if that prevents others from making mistakes.” This scale was found to be reliable (= .81; see table A1.2).

The normality of the data was assed and the scores of skewness and kurtosis revealed that perception of being listened to, job satisfaction and feeling valued were within the

acceptable range (see table A1.2). Additionally, histograms of these variables look reasonably normally distributed. The only variable that may be problematic is relationship quality, which deviates significantly from normality and scores outside the acceptable range for kurtosis

(kurtosis = 2.11; see table A1.2). However, since the skewness was still acceptable (skewness = 1.14; see table A1.2) and this variable was central to this research, it was kept for further analyses.

Control variables

The gender was measured as a dichotomous variable (1=male; 2=female) and if the participant had a managerial position or not was also measured as a dichotomous variable (1=yes; 2=no). These variables were added to the analyses as control variable to ensure that potential effect found would hold true even when controlling for third variables.

Table A1: Means and Standard deviation and correlation

N = 161, ** p < .001, * p < 0.05

Results

The distribution among the main variables are the following: The perception of being listened to has a mean of 5.73 meaning that on average the participants somewhat agreed or agreed to

Measure M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 1. Listening 5.73 .83 — 2. Job Satisfaction 3.50 .61 .43** — 3. Feeling valued 5.60 .98 .09 .29** — 4. Relationship quality 4.34 .48 .31** .41** .43** — 5. Gender 1.59 .49 -.01 -.07 -.08 -.03 — 7. Manager position 1.73 .44 -.09 -.03 -.25** -.25** .18* —

the statement (SD = 0.83). Job satisfaction showed a mean of 3.5 (SD = 0.61), which is in between neither disagree or agree and somewhat agree. The mean of feeling valued had a similar outcome to the independent variable of 5.60 (SD = 0.98) and finally relationship quality was the variable the most participants nearly strongly agreed on with a mean of 4.34 (SD = .48).

A mediation analysis was conducted using Model 4 of PROCESS Macro to SPSS (Hayes, 2013) to investigate the research hypotheses. Hypothesis 1 stated that feeling valued will mediate the effect of the perception of being listened to and job satisfaction. The preliminary results indicated that in step 1 of the mediation model, the perception of being listened to was significantly related to the outcome job satisfaction; F(4, 156) = 12.70, p < .001, with the model explaining 24.6% (R2 = 0.246) of the variance in job satisfaction with the prediction of b* = 0.29, t(156) = 5.69, p < .001. Step 2 showed that the regression of perception of being

listened to on feeling valued was not significant, b* = 0.14, t(157) = 1.51, p = .133. Whereas, the gender was not significant, b* = -0.06, t(157) = -.38, p = .70, the manager position of the participant was significant, b* =-0.56, t(157) = 3.26, p < .001 on feeling valued. Step 3 showed that the overall model is significant; F(3, 157) = 4.39, p < .001, with the model explaining 7.7% (R2 = 0.077) of the variance in job satisfaction. Step 4 controlling for the

different prediction on job satisfaction showed, that feeling valued was significant, b* = 0.16,

t(156) = 3.46, p < .001, but not the two control variables gender, b* = -0.05, t(156) = -.64, p =

.52 and manger position, b* = 0.01, t(156) = .16, p = .87. Mediation analyses based on 5000 bootstrapped samples using bias-corrected and accelerated 95% confidence intervals

(Preacher & Hayes, 2004) showed that the perception of being listened to had a significant total effect on the employee satisfaction (c = 0.31, SE = .05, p < .001), a significant residual direct effect (c’ = .29, SE = .05, p < .001) and an insignificant indirect effect through feeling valued (c’ = .02, SE = .02), BCaCI[-.015, .075]). Therefore, hypothesis 1 is not supported.

Hypothesis 2 stated that relationship quality will mediate the effect of the perception of being listened to and job satisfaction. The preliminary results indicated that in step 1 of the

mediation model, the perception of being listened to was significantly related to the outcome job satisfaction; F(3, 157) = 10.76, p < .001, with the model explaining 17.1% (R2 = 0.171) of

the variance job satisfaction with the prediction of b* = 0.24, t(156) = 4.44. Step 2 showed that the regression of perception of being listened to on relationship quality was significant,

b* = 0.19, t(157) = 4.56, p < .001. Whereas, the gender was not significant, b* = 0.02, t(157)

= .30, p = .76, the manager position of the participant was significant, b* =0.30, t(157) = -3.74, p < .001 on relationship quality. Step 3 showed that the overall model was significant with F(4, 156) = 14.41, p < .001, with the model explaining 26.9% (R2= .269) of the variance of the job satisfaction. Step 4 controlling for the mediator relationship quality was significant,

b* = 0.39, t(156) = 4.19, p < .001, although the two control variable gender, b* = -0.07, t(156)

= -.86, p = .39 and manger position, b* = 0.05, t(156) = .49, p = .63 were not significant predictors of job satisfaction . Step 5 shows a direct effect of perception of being listened to on job satisfaction, b* = 0.24, t(158) = 4.61, p < .001. Mediation analyses based on 5000 bootstrapped samples using bias-corrected and accelerated 95% confidence intervals (Preacher & Hayes, 2004) showed that the perception of being listened to had a significant total effect on the job satisfaction (c = 0.31, SE = .05, p < .001), and a significant residual indirect effect through relationship quality (c’ = .09, SE = .03, p < .001), BCa CI[.037,.139]. Therefore, hypothesis 2 is supported.

To sum up the findings, the relationship between perception of being listened to and job satisfaction were reduced by including both mediator feeling valued and relationship quality. Nevertheless, the indirect effect and the confidence interval of feeling valued did contain zero and therefore, it cannot be confident that a genuine mediation effect exists. However, the indirect effect and the confidence interval of relationship quality did not contain zero, and therefore it can be concluded that the relationship between perception of being listened to and

job satisfaction is strengthened through relationship quality. In addition, all the relationships were found to be positive, besides the relation between perception of being listened to and feeling valued all the associations were significant. Further, in none of the cases above was gender a significant predictor for the outcome and having a manager position or not was only significant when predicting the opinion of participants feeling valued and their relationship quality at work.

In this model by using a mediation it was measured how much the perception of being listened to predicts job satisfaction. When measuring a mediation, the indirect path of feeling valued needs to be taken into account. By conducting a regression analysis, the level impact of the mediation can be measured, which in this case is 7.7%. Depending on how strong the mediation is how much the perception of being listened to matters. The same applies for the second analysis because the direct relationship between the perception of being listened to and job satisfaction in this case is diverted through relationship quality, which was markedly higher with 26.9%. The results show that the perception of being listened to is a better predictor for relationship quality (b* = 0.19) than for feeling valued (b* = 0.14). Moreover, when we look at the model as a whole, relationship quality (b* = 0.39) fares better than feeling valued (b* = 0.16) compared to the direct effect of perception of being listened to on job satisfaction through relationship value (b* = 0.24) or through feeling valued (b* = 0.29). The results showed that the whole model was significant with exception of the second step, perception of being listened to predicting feeling valued. One possible explanation could be that there are other variables that predict employees feeling valued by their coworkers for example comforting them or even cheering for them.

Perception of being listened to. Most of the participants on average choose to

somewhat agree or agree to the statements (M = 5.73; SD = 0.83) and there were no

listened to and all of the questions are pretty similar it is a good sign that the distribution is not ubiquitously.

Job satisfaction. When looking at the job satisfaction in more detailed manner a

surprising result is shown, which was not expected. The feeling that their job offers the participant career development is mostly disagreed with (M = 2.68; SD = 1.15) which is between somewhat disagree and neither disagree nor agree. On the other hand, most people strongly agree with the fact that they like the people they work with (M = 4.39; SD = 0.70). One of the outstanding results was the employee compensation, participants on average neither agreed nor disagreed (M = 3.35; SD = 1.21).

Feeling valued. The participants mostly somewhat agreed or agreed to the statements

of feeling valued (M = 5.60; SD = 0.98). But if we take a closer look then on average the participants mostly agree with the feeling that their job is valuable and the least they disagree on that the job activity is personally valuable to them.

Relationship quality. This variable was measured on a 5-point Likert scale and also

here most participant chose between somewhat agree and strongly agree (M = 4.34; SD = 0.48). With the statement if someone praises the team, it would feel like a personal

compliment most people somewhat agreed (M = 4.07; SD = 0.85) whereas the statement that the participant would assist, when seeing someone having problems with the job most people disagree (M = 4.66; SD = 0.57).

Discussion

This research investigated the relationship between the perception of being listened to and job satisfaction and if feeling valued and having a good relationship among coworkers would be an underlying mechanism in that relationship. First, it needs to be noted that employees, who took part in the survey felt like they are being listened to quite well at their workspace (see table A1.2). Results have shown that relationship quality among co-workers strengthens the relationship between the perception of being listened to and job satisfaction but because

perception of being listened to predicting feeling valued was not significant the first hypothesis was rejected. Nevertheless, feeling valued did predict job satisfaction and was significant. Understanding this relationship is important because a good listener is known to be effective and for most employees an unusual experience (Friedman, 2005). Hence, it can be said, that relationship quality consisting of trust and social identity theory predicts job satisfaction and perception of being listened to predicts relationship quality. The exact process of the perception of being listened to was not measured in this research and therefore, a

conclusion about the precise procedure, of how the speaker receives the confirmation of a message, cannot be made. According to the results stated above, in order to improve the job satisfaction, it is recommended to focus on the relationship quality among the coworkers. For example, an organization could invest in other after work activities such as “mix and mingle” or create sport teams within an organization, where people can meet and carry out their leisure activities together. Interestingly, the role of being a manager was only significant for feeling valued and relationship quality. Possible indicator for that outcome could be, that most of the participants of the survey work in an organization, where the hierarchy are flat and therefore, the differences between a manager and a non-managerial employee is not as high as one would have expect it. Further, the gender of the participants was not relevant to any of the variable. The goal of this paper was to add a small puzzle piece to the literature of

organizational listening and by determine, relationship quality as an important underlying mechanism between the perception of being listened to and job satisfaction the following theoretical and practical implications can be made.

Theoretical Implications

The finding in this study on the perception of being listened to contributes to the study of Wegner, Castle and Emmett (2010) by adding that the perception of being listened to was not tested on undergraduate students but on employees working in a bigger cooperation. Further, the results provided by Itzchakov et al. (2016) were not confirmed because they stated that

employees who experience good listening, simultaneously improve their wellbeing. The results of this study did not show a significant connection between perception of being listened to and feeling valued. A possible deviation from the other study could be that the setting was different in a sense that they were measuring in a different context or also because of the variable wellbeing they chose as an outcome is not the same as feeling valued. Because the participant number was similar to the current study conducted the amount of people cannot be a reason for the different outcomes. Further, the results confirmed as Matzler et al. (2004) stated before that more satisfied employees are profounder to focus on continuous improvement and quality. In order to interpret the results of the participants of feeling valued it has to be said that motivation is important regardless of whether it is intrinsic or extrinsic (Amabile, 1997) because without motivation at work nobody would feel valued. Additionally, it is important to make the best out of the work arrangement and the most ideal scenario would be if work is not really seen as work but fulfills the employee and can be seen as a fun activity which also shows in the productivity (Wright & Staw, 1999). While measuring the relationship quality the result that the participants were mostly not willing to assist their coworkers was pretty striking. One possible reason to explain why lots of the participants are not willing to assist could be explained through the social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1986). Because the people feel like they need to focus on their own team and their own tasks, therefore they rather not support their coworkers. Possibly by specifying the question for example: “Who are you more willing to help? a) somebody from your team or b) somebody from another team” could clarify why the finding was so negative. In addition, the results of the control variable confirmed the outcome of the theory of Matzler and Renzl (2006) as also Watrous, Huffman and Pritchard (2006) since they suggested that there is no difference between the relationship between coworker and supervisor. Nevertheless, this study can contribute a new aspect because it showed that the managerial position does play a role, since being a manager made the employees have better relationship among their coworkers.

Practical Implications

This study also has several important implications for employees within an organization and researchers. First of all, the results of perception of being listened to contributes to the scarce research in the field of organizational listening and the results show that overall it can be said that most participants feel like they are being heard in their organization. This shows that the foundation of actually being listened to exists in most of the organizations. As already stated above the results show, that while feeling valued does not strengthen the relationship between the perception of being listened to and job satisfaction, relationship quality does strengthen the relationship. Therefore, when employees within an organization claim to not be satisfied one possibility could be to see if the employee is feeling valued and if not, then work on that by talking to them about possible changes for example maybe giving them more

responsibility (White & Mackenzie-Davey, 2003). On the other hand, the employees could also be unsatisfied at work because they do not have any good relationships with their coworker. That been said it is important to take the two possible indication of employee’s satisfaction into account while hiring employees by providing a clear presentation of the future work tasks and also include the fit of the personality to the team (Neuman, Wagner, & Christiansen, 1999). An organization can save a lot of resources by making the right choice to employee a person or not at the beginning instead of ignoring those steps and noticing later on that the employee is unsatisfied and not the perfect fit.

Limitations and future research

A limitation of this study could be that the survey did specify the country the participants live in, which could have been an addition variable to measure and compare studies within a similar topic nationwide or also within the study for example by comparing the job

satisfaction among the different countries or testing if there is a significant difference between the perception of being listened to in relation to a culture of different organizations. A study by Sousa-Poza and Sousa-Poza (2000) found, that Denmark was the country with the highest

job satisfaction level. Another interesting finding of Sousa-Poza and Sousa-Poza (2000) is that having an interesting job and having good relations to manager are two important factors. Further, the participants in this study were not asked to state their age because the goal was to keep the survey as short as possible to obtain the drop-out rate from the survey as low as possible. According to Fitzpatrick (1991) it is common to include background variables such as age, sex, education, social class and marital status. Hence, future research should include the variable age, education, social class and marital status. Additionally, the general

questions, which were asked to measure the perception of being listened to seeks answers that may be strongly influenced by social stereotypes. Also, other outcome such as the turnover of an organization would be interesting to measure, because by including this variable a

comparison could be made with job satisfaction and how they could be associated to one another. Future studies should take active listening more into account and also measure other variables such as eye contact or vocal expression. In order to measure these proposed

measurements a laboratory experiment should be conducted since a self-evaluation would not capture the genuine behavior. In addition, there is a chance that the significant relationships between the variables are caused by a bias in the measuring instrument. Which affects the scores of both perception of being listened to and job satisfaction, making it look like there is a relationship between those when they are really independent from each other. A final limitation of this study is the cross-sectional design, which means that it is not possible to assess the causal relationship between the perception of being listened to and job satisfaction. Therefore, it cannot prove the direction of causality.

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Appendix 1: Reliability, descriptives and normality Table A1.1 Scores for normality tests

Skewness Kurtosis Perception of being listened to -.650 .170

Job satisfaction -.430 .231

Feeling valued -1.015 .930

Relationship quality -1.137 2.111

Notes. N = 161.

Table A1.2 Reliability and descriptives

M SD 

Perception of being listened to 5.73 .83 .67 Job satisfaction 3.50 .61 .70

Feeling valued 5.60 .98 .91

Relationship quality 4.34 .48 .81

Notes. N = 161. M = mean; SD = standard deviation;  = Cronbach’s alpha.

Table A1.3 Means and SDs of variable perception of being listened to

M SD

Conversation partner listens to you 5.98 .85 Conversation partner ignores you 5.39 1.39

Conversation partner shows interest 5.82 .90

Notes. N = 161. M = mean; SD = standard deviation

Table A1.4 Means and SDs of variable job satisfaction

M SD

I feel I am paid the fair amount for the work I do 3.35 1.21 There is too little chance for promotion on my job 2.68 1.15 My supervisor is quite competent in doing his/her job 4.09 1.05 I am not satisfied with the benefits I receive 3.18 1.21 When I do a good job, I receive the recognition for it, that I should receive 3.73 1.11 Many of our rules and procedures make doing a good job difficult 3.13 1.17

I like the people I work with 4.39 .70

I sometimes feel my hob is meaningless 3.48 1.23

Communications seem good within this organization 3.52 1.12

Notes. N = 161. M = mean; SD = standard deviation

Table A1.5 Means and SDs of variable feeling valued

M SD

Job is important to me 5.69 1.13

Job activities are personal meaningful to me 5.43 1.34

Job I do is worthwhile 5.63 1.15

Job activities are significant to me 5.56 1.22 Work I do is meaningful to me 5.55 1.20

I feel the work I do is valuable 5.76 .95

Notes. N = 161. M = mean; SD = standard deviation

Table A1.6 Means and SDs of variable relationship quality

M SD

My comrades respect me for my ways of cooperation 4.42 .76

My comrades respect me for my qualities 4.41 .75

My comrades respect me for the achievements I have made 4.24 .72 When talking about my team, I usually say ‘we’ rather than ‘they’ 4.42 .85 When someone praises this team, it feels like a personal compliment 4.07 .85

I contribute to the success of my team 4.36 .69

When seeing somebody has problems doing the job, I will assist 4.66 .57 Although it is not required, I will do extra work if it prevents others

from making mistakes

4.29 .87

I will intervene unasked if that prevents others from making mistakes 4.16 .85