Age effects on job satisfaction influenced by educational
level and working sector in mainland of China.
Liang Gao
Student Number: 2365642
E-mail:l.gao.1@student.rug.nl
Supervisor
P. H. van der Meer
Human Resource Management
Faculty of Economics and Business
University of Groningen
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Acknowledgements
First of all, I want to express my deep appreciation to my supervisor P. H. van der Meer who gave me a lot of help and instructions when I prepare my thesis. I could not finish this paper without his help. He guided my research orientation, corrected my inaccurate thinks, and solved the problems we came across. My supervisor Peter really paid a lot of painstaking efforts on my thesis, thanks for his help.
Furthermore, my friends also gave me a lot of help and supports, who helped me to analyze the data of my thesis, and even gave me constructive ideas about how to improve my thesis. I also want to give a sincere gratitude on my friends.
Finally, I want to express my feeling of gratitude to my parents who always trust me and give me a lot of encourage when I feel depressed, I love my parents so much.
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Abstract
Human resource plays an important role in organizations’ daily activity, job satisfaction as a main index of the effectiveness of business management plays a vital role in human resource management activities, furthermore job satisfaction is a crucial determine factor of the effectiveness of organization’s performance. Thus it is important to discuss employees’ job satisfaction and to study the discrepancies of job satisfaction among people with different demographic characteristics and different background.
China is a developing country which is dissimilar with most of the countries in the world. These rapid and tremendous changes in recent years in China may lead to different results about influential variables on job satisfaction compare with other countries.
In conclusion, this paper aimed at discussing the relationship between independent variables—age, educational level, and working sector; and dependent variable—job satisfaction based on the factual situation in China.
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Content
1. Introduction and problem description ... 5
2. The changes in China ... 7
3. Job satisfaction, dimensions of job satisfaction, and job characteristics model ... 11
3.1 The definition of job satisfaction ... 11
3.2 Dimensions of job satisfaction ... 11
3.2.1 The work itself ... 11
3.2.2 Payment ... 12
3.2.3 Supervisor ... 12
3.2.4 Promotion ... 13
3.2.5 Co-workers ... 13
3.2.6 Working Condition ... 14
3.3 The job characteristics model ... 14
4. Age and job satisfaction ... 16
5. Education and job satisfaction ... 18
6. Sector and job satisfaction ... 20
7. Cohort, sector, and job satisfaction ... 22
8. Methodology ... 25
9. Results ... 27
10. Discussion and Conclusion ... 31
11. Limitations and recommendations for future research ... 35
References: ... 36
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1. Introduction and problem description
The People’s Republic of China was established in 1949 and was led by Chairman Mao, since then China had experienced tremendous changes. After that, Chairman Mao launched a Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), which made China came across a huge regression. First of all, it distorted order of economy in China and slowed down the speed of economic development. In addition, China lost the opportunities to narrow down the gap with the developed countries during this period. Furthermore, it also destroyed the education system, which means intellectuals are persecuted and all schools were shut off, which had led to interruption of talents. This revolution ended up with the death of Chairman Mao.
The new leader, Deng Xiaoping, corrected this action, and focused on the economy reform. He put forward the reform and opening-up policy (1978), which not only pulled China out from the regression, but also promoted the development of China during the following 4 decades, the policy works to change the former planned economy system into socialist market economy system, increases the diversity of economy, especially promotes the emergency of private sectors. Furthermore, the new leaders of China gradually paid attention to the education reform, and people realized the importance of knowledge and education.
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age effects on job satisfaction, there may be exist cohort effects on job satisfaction based on the different between aged and educational background.
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2. The changes in China
To begin with, the biggest and strongest change was due to the instruction from Mao, China experienced the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976. The Cultural Revolution not only caused Chinese economy to collapse, but also destroyed the education system in China. To be specific, firstly, it led many citizens to lose their possessions, more citizens became peasants and worked in the farm in order to afford foods, and birth rates went up due to abandonment of the birth control programs. Secondly, students in China were not allowed to study during the Cultural Revolution, furthermore they were forced to do manual labor, thus many talented students were wasted. The other component of the Cultural Revolution is ―Red Guard‖, they gathered and worked to critique and struggle teachers, professions, and leaders, as a result, a great deal of talented and capable people suffered struggle session from the Cultural Revolution. The Cultural Revolution is a nightmare for people in China. And finally, the Cultural Revolution ended up with the death of Mao Zedong.
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Additionally, the population size is also a big problem in China, especially the periodical expansion of population, which challenged the capacity of accommodation and consumption of the labor market. Large number of people seems to be a sign of China, because of the problem of population size, China came across a lot of obstacles, such as resources shortage, labor redundancy, ageing, and pressure especially for education system.
The problem about population size was not accomplished all at once. It was caused by three rounds of baby boom. To be specific, the first round of baby boom was happened during 1949 after the war of liberation, population boom after war is a sound phenomenon. The second round was due to natural disaster between 1965 and 1973, natural disaster leads to fewer food that be used for people’s daily life, and an increasing number of people died from famine. Thus after the natural disaster China came across another round of incensement of population. The third round of baby boom was the result of the second one, which also had significant influence on the current labor force in China, namely those people who experienced the second round of baby boom have their own babies now, thus the babies who were born from 1986 to 1990were the children from the second round of baby boom. Right now, China is undergoing the challenge from the third round of baby boom. There are numerous younger workers now in the labor market, which leads to fierce competition among the workforces and may have influential functions on job satisfaction. The group of people who experienced the third round of baby boom is nearly 30 years old now and has already become the major part of current work force in China. Meanwhile, their parental generation whose age is around 50 years old also plays an important role in the work force market. Hence, it is meaningful to study the job satisfaction of these two groups of people.
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Recently our government works to repair and improve the education system, especially the college entrance examination system, which was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. Due to the educational reform, the generations born in 1980’s have more opportunities to access to higher education. To be specific, there are large numbers of people who receive elementary education for the people who was born in 1980’s compare with the generation who was born in 1960’s. Secondly, now China have more high-skilled workers due to the expansion of university enrollment, this group of people who was born after 1980s or experience the expansion of university enrollment received better education which confirms to the trend of technology development.
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3. Job satisfaction, dimensions of job
satisfaction, and job characteristics model
3.1 The definition of job satisfaction
Job satisfaction is a term used to describe how content an individual is with his or her job. There are a variety of factors that can influence a person’s job satisfaction: the level of pay and benefits, the perceived fairness of the promotion system within a company, the quality of the working conditions, leadership, social relationships and the job itself (M. M. Nurul Kabir, 2011).
Locke (1969, 1976) defined job satisfaction as a pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from his or her daily work and activities. To be short, job satisfaction explains what makes people want to come to work, what makes them happy about their job or not to quit their job (Ranayah, Muhamad, and Suresh, 2001).
3.2 Dimensions of job satisfaction
Locke (1976) pointed out that work itself, payment, promotion, approve, working condition, benefits, supervisor and coworkers have direct influence on employees’ job satisfaction. The concept and content of dimension of job satisfaction is wide and complicated, the commonly and most used dimensions are: the work itself, pay, promotion, recognition, working condition, benefits, supervisor, and co-workers.
3.2.1 The work itself
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Furthermore, similar to the job characteristics model, which we will discuss in the next part, the work itself also provide the attractive advantages such as task identity and high level job autonomy, which works to improve the overall satisfaction of employee.
Landy (1989) pointed out that work which is personally interesting to employees is likely to contribute to job satisfaction. Thus, the work itself has special meaning about employees’ job satisfaction and furthermore, employees’ job satisfaction about the work different from others.
3.2.2 Payment
According to Luthans (1998), salaries not only assisted people to attain their basic needs, but also satisfied the higher level needs from people.
Offering employees a fair and reasonable compensation, not only work as a monetary reward for their contribution, but also work as extrinsic influence factor to motivate employees to work hard. And from the employees’ perspective, they will be happier and be more active if they receive satisfactory compensation from their employers.
Lamber, Hogan, Barton and Lubbock (2001) found financial rewards have a significant impact on job satisfaction. The greater the financial reward, the more impression of their self-worth to the organization, and thereby will lead to better organizational performance (Ian, H. F. Bull, 2005). As a result, they will feel more satisfied about their current situation and about their work, and will be less intend to leave.
3.2.3 Supervisor
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Research indicated that employees are likely to have high levels of job satisfaction if supervisors provide support and cooperation with their followers when they completing their tasks (Ting, 1997). Researchers even recognize that dissatisfaction with management supervision is a significant predictor of job dissatisfaction (Billingsley and Cross, 1992).
3.2.4 Promotion
Promotion could be seen as the opportunities for employees to be put in a higher level, to be asked to implement more tasks, and to take more responsibilities for the organization. An employee’s opportunities for promotion are also have influential effects on job satisfaction (Landy, 1989). Robbins (1998) maintained that promotions provide opportunities for personal growth, increased responsibility, and increased social status.
Therefore, in general, opportunities for promotion appear to have a significant positive correlation with job satisfaction (Tolbert & Moen, 1998).
3.2.5 Co-workers
Comparing with implementing tasks alone, people eventually will work together to perform a task. They share information, discuss possible solution, and give feedback to colleagues. Hence a friendly co-worker is necessary for having a good mood during work.
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3.2.6 Working Condition
Working condition is another factor that has a moderate impact on job satisfaction (Luthans, 1992). According to Luthans (1998), if people work in a clean, friendly environment they will find it easier to come to work. Research found that working condition is extremely important towards job satisfaction, if the employers provide a quiet working environment, cleaning office, comfortable leisure working space, delicious afternoon snacks and efficient operation system, employees will feel more satisfied.
3.3 The job characteristics model
Hackman & Oldham (1980) proposed the Job Characteristics Model, which is widely used as a framework to study how particular job characteristics have impacts on job outcomes, including job satisfaction. The model states that there are five core job characteristics: skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and feedback, which impact three critical psychological states: experienced meaningfulness, experienced responsibility for outcomes, and knowledge of the actual results, in turn influencing work outcomes: job satisfaction, absenteeism, work motivation, etc. The five core job characteristics can be combined to form a motivating potential score for a job, which can be used as an index of how likely a job is to affect an employee's attitudes and behaviors.
To be specific, job characteristics can cater different people’s requirements. For instance, skill variety means the number of skills needed in a job or work, thus the higher level of education the worker has, the more skills one worker possesses, the more possibilities he or she will have the opportunities to perform special tasks, as a result, the employee will perform better compare with others, then they will get larger payment and will be more likely to be promoted; finally, employees will feel more satisfied about their jobs.
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trusted and confirmed, employees then will feel proud about them and have the sense of self-achievement, these will lead to higher level of job satisfaction.
Finally, as for the autonomy which has substantial influence on employees’ job satisfaction, especially in the private sector. The extent of autonomy has enormous impact on employees’ job satisfaction. Namely, followers or workers will absolutely feel be trusted if they have the autonomy to make decisions, and this will turn out to a higher level of employees’ satisfaction.
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4. Age and job satisfaction
Because of different backgrounds, values towards life, and expectations on the work, people have totally different emphasis. For instance, younger workers may value the training opportunities, development possibilities, and sense of achievement as the most important factors. While for those elder workers, they may regard the factors such as payment and benefit package, job security, and pension plan as the most important elements. Hence, based on different expectations from these two groups of people, there should be some discrepancies about job satisfaction between them. Therefore, it is meaningful to research the discrepancy about job satisfaction between the younger and older generations.
Recently, some scholars have attempted to investigate whether there is any systemic difference in job satisfaction among generations. A recent report on job satisfaction published by the Conference Board (2003), a New York–based research institute, found that Americans continue to experience more pressure in the workplace and a steady decline in job satisfaction. The report suggests that a generational shift from baby boomers has caused the changes, perhaps because members of younger generations are more individualistic, more interested in leisure time, and more geared toward flexible work schedules.
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group. Meanwhile, satisfaction started to rise at the age of 46 and maintained relative stability thereafter.
The second is a positive relationship between job satisfaction and age, which suggests that older employees may have more realistic expectations about their jobs and a stronger sense of achievement than younger employees do (DeSantis & Durst, 1996; Durst & DeSantis, 1997). In an analysis of data collected from the National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth, Durst and DeSantis found a positive relationship between job satisfaction and age for state government workers. According to a research about Generation of Talent Country Report, the result showed that older workers are most engaged, committed, and satisfied with their jobs (Marcie Pitt-Catspuphes, Natalia Sarkisian, Rene Carapinha, Rucha Bhate, Jungui Lee, and Chad Minnich, 2011).
Additionally, the third view suggests that older employees tend to be burned out and lose excitement about their jobs as they become used to their work (Bernal, Snyder, & McDaniel, 1998; Clark, Oswald, & Warr, 1996) and thus they become less satisfied with the job.
However, according to the changes and actual situation in China, there should be a special and unique relationship between age and job satisfaction.
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5. Education and job satisfaction
We have three types of educational categories in China: elementary education, secondary, and higher education. Furthermore, we have following degrees ordered from low to high: junior high graduates, senior high graduates (technical secondary degree), associate degree, bachelor, master, and doctor.
In our paper, we want to make a comparison between people with lower and higher level of education. Because of the changes in China and the actual situation, we cannot simply conclude an average level of educational degree among the whole workforce. Since for those people who experienced the Cultural Revolution, they were not allowed to study anymore because the education system was destroyed. Furthermore, the overall level of education during that period is incomparable with the level of education nowadays. Hence, we plan to use different criteria on these two generations only by our hypothesis—for the younger generation group, the lower degree of education can be defined as people only get bachelor degree and below, and those people who have master or doctor degree are highly educated; while among the older generation, especially for those 60hou, people with associate degree can be seen as have higher educational background. We think this kind of sorting will make our result more corresponded with the actual situation of China.
The existing empirical evidence about the link between the degree of education and job satisfaction are not conclusive, different institutions showed different results based on different nature and surveys they used. As we all know, workers with higher educational level are expected to find jobs with relatively high quality and more payment. Unfortunately, expectations cannot always be realized, and this disappointment is a source of dissatisfaction. Thus high educational background may have both a positive and a negative effect on job satisfaction.
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Secondly, education may have a negative direct effect on job satisfaction, because expectations about job rewards— which are negatively related to satisfaction—tend to increase with education, namely higher educated group found that additional education resulted in lower job satisfaction. If the education level increases expectations and these do not coincide with outcomes in the labor market the individual will finally feel dissatisfied and a negative relation between education and satisfaction will be observed (Cecilia Albert & María Angeles Davia, 2005). Dreher, Dougherty, and Whitely (1986) found that MBA were more dissatisfied with their work than those with BS or BA degrees. Obviously, dissatisfaction will lead to lower level of job satisfaction. So we want to discuss the relationship between educational level and job satisfaction, hence our second hypothesis is:
Hypothesis 2: The higher of educational level, the higher of employees’ job satisfaction.
Additionally, take the age effects into account, there should be some discrepancies about the interactive effect on these two variables, means age and educational background work together may have different results on job satisfaction. And because there is no direct research about the interactive effect of age and educational background on job satisfaction, then we decide to test what kind of relationship among them.
Hypothesis 2a: Older workers with high level of educational background are more satisfied than the younger workers with high level of educational background.
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6. Sector and job satisfaction
Because of the reform and opening-up policy, the economy system in China transited from planned economy to market economy. Under the market economy system, there are many types of firm, such as private enterprises, state-owned enterprises, and foreign-funded enterprises. Due to the transformation of the economy system, the economy system was transferred from planned economy system to market economy system. As a result, two types of working sector emerged—public and private sector. There are numerous advantages about the market economy: it can work to realize reasonable adjustment of resources, to maximize organizations’ profits, and to improve the development of our society (Zhiyuan Cui, 2008). Furthermore, we cannot ignore that different types of firm show distinctly different characteristics, such as organization culture, working environment, job autonomy, the character of supervisors and co-workers etc. These characteristics will work to influence employees’ job satisfaction. Thus, when we study employees’ job satisfaction, we should take the working sector into account. In this paper, we will classify firms into public ones and private ones.
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In recent years, many researchers have turned their attentions to comparing the differences on job satisfaction between the employees of public and private sector. Emmert and Taher(1992) suggested that ―direct comparisons between the public and private sectors may yield a better understanding of the public sector and how we can better manage those employees‖(P.47). Most existing research focus on the job satisfaction in the public sector, seldom of them investigated the job satisfaction in the private sector. Furthermore several studies have demonstrated that public sector employees are less satisfied than their counterparts in private sector. Thus we want to discuss the level of job satisfaction in private and public sector. We then came up with the third hypothesis:
Hypothesis 3: Employees who work in the private sector have relative higher level of job satisfaction when compared with employees from public sector.
It has been generally thought that private sectors can provide more payments,
tasks, interesting working environment, and promotion opportunities, whereas public sectors are famous as job security and sense of self-achievement (Rainey, 1979, 1983). It seems that people who have higher level of education work in the private sector show lower job satisfaction level, and the negative effect may be the result of higher differential levels between expectations and realities for young, private sector employees in rather unchallenging positions(Victor S. DeSantis and Samantha L. Durst, 1996).
Jung and Moon (2007) found a significantly negative discrepancy in job satisfaction among the employees from private sector and age, and younger worker’s job satisfaction will declines later. Based on this finding we want to do the further test to discuss the interactive effects of these variables on job satisfaction:
Hypothesis3a: For those workers in the private sector, younger workers have higher level of job satisfaction when compared with those older workers.
For the purpose of compare the degree of whole workforces’ job satisfaction, we also need to study what is the specific situation in the public sector, whether there is any discrepancy about job satisfaction among workers in the public sector:
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7. Cohort, sector, and job satisfaction
It is widely disputed that there is an obvious differences between the 60hou (Chinese who were born in the 1960’s), 70hou (Chinese who were born in the 1970’s) and 80hou (Chinese who were born in the 1980’s) in China, as these stereotypes serve as a radar that reflect shifting values. The go through turbulence 60hou, hard-working 70hou and the capitalist 80hou are the major components of current workforce. Generation gap is not a phenomenon endemic to China, but with the crucial changes in Chinese society over the past four decades, there is no wonder that there are some prominent value shifts between different generations. Owing to three rounds of baby boom, we can conclude that there are three groups of generations, correspondently there are three cohort groups—60hou, 70hou and 80hou. In our paper, the meaning of cohort group is people who were born within the same period, have similar background and experience.
Obviously, different cohort groups have different expectations on their job. For example, 80hou need more training and learning opportunities, they expect more developing spaces; while 60hou focus more on their family. As a result, they pay more attention to their benefit packages—both for themselves and for their family members. Therefore, these two groups of people show different expectations.
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priced housing and fierce competition. For this reason, in order to have a better life, their expectation from job is higher rewards. In conclusion, owing to the different between backgrounds and current social situation of these two cohort groups, group members have different expectations about their job, and then they may show different inclinations about job satisfaction.
As we discussed above, different cohort group show different needs and have different expectation on their jobs. So it is necessary to separate people into different cohort according to their characteristics. Besides that, when we study employees’ job satisfaction, it is necessary to take into account his or her working sector. Since the nature and characteristics of working sector will provide various conditions for employees, such as great autonomy which allow employees to make decisions on what they should do, how they perform the tasks and who they will work with; and lots of feedback from supervisor which is benefit for future developing. And these attractive conditions or characteristics will work to influence employees’ job satisfaction.
Finally, taking into account all the variables of our thesis, we made the final hypothesizes to discuss the interactive effects of these variables on job satisfaction:
Hypothesis 4a: There is a positive relationship for people who work in the public sector with lower level of educational background.
Hypothesis 4b: There is a positive relationship for people who work in the private sector with lower level of educational background.
Hypothesis 4c: There is a positive relationship for people who work in the public sector with high level of educational background
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Table 7.1 Age effect on job satisfaction by education and sector
Education Sector Expect Job Satisfaction
Lower Public
Lower Private
Higher Public
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8. Methodology
In this paper, we aimed to study the differences about job satisfaction among people who work in different sector with different age and educational level. Namely, what’s the relationship between the independent variables—age, educational level, and working sector, and the dependent variable—job satisfaction.
Owing to the lack of official social survey on Chinese people’s job satisfaction, we cannot find relevant official surveys or data about the relationship between age, educational level, working sector and job satisfaction, thus we cannot use the first hand data to analyze these variables directly by ourselves. Furthermore, considering about the limitation of time, we found it is unrealistic to use questionnaires, and collect data from workers in China; therefore, we decide to use the data collected by the scholars who conducted relevant research in China.
Fortunately, I got contact with my teachers and friends in China, my university teachers gave me a lot of information, such as where can I get these relevant articles and some dissertations about my topic from their students; my friends from university also helped me gather some related studies from periodicals. Thus we got 14 pieces of independent studies about the relationship between age, educational level, and sector and job satisfaction.
For the purpose of ensure reliability and validity of my results, we searched existing studies as many as possible. These data are reliable because all the surveys are either published in magazines or official version of dissertation. Hence we decided to use these data base and results directly and to make an overall conclusion and comparison. The research we selected all conducted relevant questionnaire surveys by the author, so these data can be representative in one special aspect.
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Table 8.1 Data base
Age Education Sector N Satisfaction (mean)
Younger 1544 2.5 Middle Lower Public 2910 2.37 Older 798 2.5
Younger 822 2.91 Middle Lower Private 169 2.9 Older 233 3.11
Younger 490 3.21 Middle Higher Public 326 3.31 Older 52 3.86
Younger 149 3.11 Middle Higher Private 252 3.44 Older 15 3.8
We have three components about the whole testing procedure. First of all, we will analyze the relationship between age, educational level, working sector, and job satisfaction separately, to test the general relationship between independent variables and dependent variable.
The second step is to test the interaction effect on job satisfaction between older and younger people with lower or higher level of education separately, and the interaction effect on job satisfaction between older and younger workers who work in the public or private sector. To discuss whether there is an age effect among people who have different educational background and who work in different working sector, we made a regression analysis which integrates these three variables together, to make an overall test and analysis about the relationship between all the independent variables and dependent variable.
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9. Results
The regression results about job satisfaction among these independent variables will be discussed separately in this chapter.
We have already classify the age group into three independent groups: the younger group, namely people who aged 30 years old and below, the middle aged group (who aged from 31 to 49 years old), and the older group (who aged 50 years old and above). Furthermore, as for the educational background, we will discuss the people with lower and higher level of education separately.
From the first column of the table below, we can see a U-shaped relationship on job satisfaction among different age groups. Age2 is the middle aged group whose job satisfaction is lower than the group age1—namely the younger group; while for the older group, their job satisfaction is higher than group age1. Then our hypothesis1 is not approved. In fact, there is a U-shaped relationship between age and job satisfaction in China. To be specific, older people have higher level of job satisfaction compared with the younger people. When we make a comparison between younger and middle aged workforce, we found that younger workers have relatively higher level of job satisfaction.
Next, to discuss the relationship between educational level and job satisfaction, hypothesis2 is accepted. The higher of educational level, the higher of employees’ job satisfaction.
The second column is about the interactive effects of age and educational on employees’ job satisfaction. To be specific, older people with higher educational background have the highest level of job satisfaction. In other words, people who were born during 1980’s with higher educational background have the lowest level of job satisfaction, then there is a negative relationship between age and job satisfaction especially for those highly educated people, thus hypothesis2a is accepted. While for those workers with lower level of educational background, younger workers have the highest level of job satisfaction among the whole age group, hence hypothesis 2b is not fully approved.
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Table 9.1 Regression results of different variables on job satisfaction
Coef. Robust Std. Err. Coef. Robust Std. Err. Coef. Robust Std. Err.
Age2 -0.0835 0.008634 Age3 0.101606 0.010501 Educh 0.728394 0.010707 Private 0.390608 0.009742 Constant 2.477925 0.00857 Age2 -0.13447 0.01027 Age3 0.03897 0.01047 Educh 0.58107 0.016247 Private 0.36915 0.010203 Age2eduh 0.243363 0.020373 Age3eduh 0.626207 0.048856 Constant 2.516186 0.0098 Age2 -0.10139 0.010498 Age3 0.043684 0.012899 Educh 0.72482 0.011702 Private 0.337216 0.017075 Age2priv 0.057253 0.020463 Age3priv 0.231057 0.018878 Constant 2.495937 0.010119 R2 0.5401 0.5579 0.5449 F 2169.53 2285.3 8284.94 N 7760 7760 7760
Note:Age2 denotes the group of people who aged from 30 to 50.Age3 denotes the group of people who aged 51 and above. Educh denotes highly educated people.
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those in the public sector, which goes against with our hypothesis.
The final column shows that the oldest group of people who works in the private sector has the highest level of job satisfaction, this is inconsistent with our
hypothesis3a, and then hypothesis3a is rejected. We also found a regular U-shaped relationship about age and sector from the last column, namely there is no obvious discrepancy of job satisfaction between the younger and older people who work in the public sector. Hypothesis 3b is rejected, because the result shows that within the public sector, the younger and older groups of people nearly have the same level of job satisfaction, which is higher than the middle aged group.
Table 9.2 Regression results interactive effects on job satisfaction of the three variables
Coef. Robust Std. Err. Age2 -0.1275835 0.009316 Age3 0.0003299 0.0129002 Educh 0.7054339 0.0153419 Private 0.4139915 0.0127754 Age2eduh 0.2330146 0.0231088 Age3eduh 0.6517115 0.0450414 Age2pri 0.113517 0.026671 Age3pri 0.195071 0.025469 Educhpriv -0.511375 0.0304871 Age2eduhpri 0.1114418 0.0457555 Age3eduhpri -0.1557703 0.0945262 Constant 2.500607 0.0075301 R2 0.5887 F 1007.97 N 7760
Note:Age2 denotes the group of people who aged from 30 to 50.Age3 denotes the group of people
who aged 51 and above. Educl denotes people with lower level of education. Priv denotes private sector.
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Table 9.3 Age effect on job satisfaction influenced by education and sector
Education Sector Actual Job Satisfaction
Lower Public
Lower Private
Higher Public
Higher Private
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10. Discussion and Conclusion
Because tremendous changes in China recently, either the reform and opening-up policy or educational reform contributes to bring new chances to China; furthermore, China has special characteristics different from the western countries, such as socialist market economy system, these lead to different relationship between age and job satisfaction compared with others.
We made a comparison of the relationship between age and job satisfaction among the whole work force, we found that there is a U-shaped relationship. Namely, in general the group of people who aged 30 years old and below and those aged 50 years old and above have higher level of job satisfaction compared with those middle aged people. And those older workforces have higher level of job satisfaction compared with younger generation. Since, for older workers, in general, most of them have realized their expectations already. They have higher level of payment, fewer workloads, more authorities and higher status, all these will lead to high level of job satisfaction. While for the younger workers, they are ―fresh blood‖ of the labor market, they tend to have more positive and brilliant expectations about their future. Finally, as for those middle aged workers, the first influential factor which lead to lower level of job satisfaction is pressure, they have more pressures than other age groups, such as the pressure on work (promotion, colleagues, and supervisors) and on life (expenses for their family, children and parents); the second factor is workload, this group of people functioned as the hard core of the whole society, they have more responsibilities and workloads compare with others. Hence, there is a U-shaped relationship between age and job satisfaction.
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likely he or she will be promoted compare with people who only receive lower education. Moreover, among highly educated people, the older workers have the higher level of job satisfaction compare with the younger generation. These result basically correspondent with the first one, the possible explanation of this result is: the government signed work to the older workforces (60hou) after they graduated from school, namely this group of people get a stable job with seniority-based payment; while due to the third round of baby boom, expansion of college, and the transition of social economic system, the younger generation (80hou) have to apply the job by themselves, even if they can establish a employment relationship with their employers, it does not means this is a permanent relationship, in other words, these worker may lose their job without any signs. Under the influence of this stress and insecure factor, they may show lower level of job satisfaction. Therefore, even though workers all equipped with the attribute of high educational background, people within different age group will show different level of job satisfaction.
Furthermore, as for the effect of working sector on job satisfaction, people who work in the private sector have higher level of job satisfaction. The reason may be as follows: first of all, jobs in the private sector have more autonomy. Workers in the private sector can not only make decisions about how to perform their works, but also have the sense of achievement according to that. Secondly, workers can get the benefits from their performance directly, because in the private sector, the determine factor of salary is performance rather than length of service. Next, the career planning in the private sector is more flexible, the influential factors about the decision who will be promoted depend on candidates’ skills, ability and performance which are really job- and capacity-related. For workers with capacity who are eager to get success in their business career, they will feel more satisfied in the private sector.
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stable and decent late-life, most privates organization intend to guarantee older people’s benefits at the expense of younger workers’ benefits. Thus, even if in the private sectors, the older age group shows the highest level of job satisfaction because of the protection from the whole organization and society.
While within the public working sector, younger and older groups have nearly the same level of job satisfaction, which is higher than the middle aged workforce. The result may owe to the characteristics of the job in public sector. We found that workers in the public sector always followed the orders of their supervisor, most of these orders are daily tasks without any challenges, and obviously most employees, no matter their age, can perform these tasks, thus people with diverse skills have no opportunities to show their extraordinary capacity. In other words, capacity and age play no influential role among workers in the public sector. According to the job characteristics model from Hackman & Oldham and the character we discussed above, thus younger and older workforce have the similar level of job satisfaction.
Taking all the variables—age, educational background, and working sector into account, within the private sector, older people with higher level of education are more satisfied about their job than the younger workers; while for those people with lower educational background who also working in the private sector, the older one has higher level of job satisfaction. This can be explained from two points, the first one is the factor of age effect. To be specific, people with high educational background always show high expectations on their job, but those younger workers have deadly weakness—lack of experience which lead to lower satisfaction. The younger workers are not allowed to implement tasks or make decisions independently, thus they will feel not as satisfied as those experienced older workers, who act as a leader or decision maker in the daily work. While as the march of time, younger workers will be equipped by job related experience and they will become knowledgeable enough to show their value, which can help them to realize their expectations. Thus, according to the age effect there is an increasing trend of job satisfaction.
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the rare graduates of that time, but also because they have ample experience. So employers treat them as the most valuable things, the older generation will definitely show higher level of job satisfaction. While for those younger people who were born in 1980’s, they experienced the third round of baby boom and the reform of educational system, therefore they have a lot of competitors right now which will stop them from finding a decent job; additionally, pressures for the younger workers are much heavier now than the 70s’, such as high expense of living. As a result, these two factors may worked together to influence employees’ job satisfaction, which lead to the younger cohort group have lower level of job satisfaction than the older cohort group.
Finally, to answer our research question, look back to our results, we found a cohort effects on job satisfaction due to age and educational background and working sector eventually plays a tiny role in this relationship. Specifically, people who were born in the same period and accept same level of education show the similar trend about job satisfaction.
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11. Limitations and recommendations for
future research
The major limitation of our study is that we use the existing data rather than design the specific survey and collect the data by ourselves. This may influence the reliability and validity of the outcomes of our thesis. These data may be out of date, making it hard to the current needs and characteristics of workers. Specifically, some of these surveys were conducted 8 years ago, as we all know, China is a developing country, the workers’ character changes rapidly according to the policy, technology, and the social value.
Next, some of these samples we selected are not totally fit with our research orientation. For instance, we classified 3 groups according to age, one group include the people who are below 30 years old, the second one is from 31 to 49, and the last one is 50 years old and above. But criteria of other surveys we selected are not perfectly fit with ours, thus this may somehow distort our results. Furthermore, the research we selected are very regionally which could not represent the whole situation in China. Finally, we cannot conduct a comparison between two different samples, thus it limits our research and conclusions.
Finally, we fail to detect the most important factors towards different people with different characteristics.
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Appendix:
1. Main factors influencing nurse job satisfaction—A cross-country study, Wang Haijuan, Ni Yongpin, and Xie Bibo
2. Yang Hai, Zhu Xia, Sun Yunfeng, Li Yunbo, and Miao Danmin (2007), Investigation on job satisfaction of junior military officers
3. Xiaohu Zhen (2007), An empirical study about influential factors of job satisfaction within the private sectors.
4. Hui Tang (2005), A study on factors influencing junior worker’s job satisfaction in Hotel.
5. Aimin Yan and Weiya Wang (2007), An empirical study on job stress and job satisfaction of firs-line employees in private enterprises in China.
6. Xiaoxia Song (2006), The study on the police’s job satisfaction and influential factos.
7. Zhengruo Liu & Yong Wang (2012), The research about job satisfaction of re-employ after retirement and influential factors.
8. Fufang Zhai (2009), The research is about young civil servants’ work values, job satisfaction and their relationship
9. Chong Yan (2010), Influential factors of employees’ job satisfaction is an empirical research.
10. Shanshan Wang (2011), A research about knowledge-based workers’ job satisfaction in private organization.
11. Xiaocheng Zeng (2010), An empirical study about employees’ job satisfaction in oil enterprise.
