Determining job satisfaction through the personal growth experience: the detrimental effects of supervisors who un-dignify the workplace

Abstract

In today’s competitive labor market, offering employees the highest general satisfaction experience with their jobs appears to be an important ingredient in retaining human capital. Numerous antecedents of this outcome have been disguised over the years, with ethical elements being nominated as influential. However, the role of human dignity in this process has been vaguely explored, and its examination could offer a new and clearer understanding of this relationship. Human dignity, which is more feasible to feel with work and in workplaces, has to do with a sense of self-worth, self-respect, and a fully realized life, which should increase employees’ feelings of good personal growth, and thereby, their general job satisfaction. Given that personal growth satisfaction might play an important role in fostering employees’ general job satisfaction, this study investigated how the presence of supervisors who undignify the workplace is detrimental to personal growth satisfaction before negatively affecting employees’ general job satisfaction. The results of a sample of 151 employees from a diverse set of Spanish industries revealed that personal growth satisfaction partially mediates the negative impact of undignifying supervisors on their employees’ general job satisfaction. Thus, novel information concerning the critical elements of human dignity and personal growth satisfaction is needed to spread general job satisfaction in the workplace.

Keywords

• Supervisor undignifying behavior
• human dignity
• personal growth satisfaction
• general job satisfaction
• work behavior
• Stress and Emotion in the Workplace