Job satisfaction leads to increased job performance. This statement has supplanted earlier thought on how job performance doesn’t necessarily depend on job satisfaction. What has caused the shift in thought over the years, and do you agree with this assessment?


For the past 30 years or so, the debate has raged in the OB literature as to what causes what. Do happy employees perform better or do high performing employees cause increased job satisfaction? What's likely is new is that in the earlier line of thought (job sat improves job performance), the fact is that the rewards were not included in that analysis. We now understand that rewards (whether intrinsic or extrinsic) lead to job performance, and not the other way around. Performance is predicated on rewards, but the major issue today is how do we define performance in this globally-distributed world of work? Once that has been achieved, reward systems can be more easily developed and administered. Once that has occurred, we can more easily define performance, and thus the link between job satisfaction and performance can be more closely monitored.

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