Job satisfaction is plummeting, along with workers’ fortunes.
By John Nirenberg
The Conference Board, a business sector research organization, reported in January 2010, that job satisfaction of Americans reached its lowest level in 20 years. Based on a survey of 5,000 households, it found only 45 percent of respondents said they were satisfied with their jobs. In 1987, that figure was 61.1 percent.
According to a spokesperson, “The drop in job satisfaction between 1987 and 2009 covers all categories in the survey, from interest in work (down 18.9 percentage points) to job security (down 17.5 percentage points) and crosses all four of the key drivers of employee engagement: job design, organizational health, managerial quality and extrinsic rewards.” This doesn’t speak well for either the state of work or the individuals who must spend an ever-lengthening workday on the job.
At least among the biggest companies, our hyper-competitive, globalized, 24/7 business environment requires the full utilization of human as well as material resources. Returning from a long workday only to answer emails or prepare for tomorrow’s presentation is de rigeur. Considering the corporate condition, which typically reduces life within to artificiality, mere politeness, and politics behind thinly veiled anxiety caused by incessant faux workplace evaluations, unilateral top down decision-making prerogatives, and the subordination of one’s humanity to the bottom line, it is a wonder we haven’t taken to the streets.
This may appear cynical to the devoted career professional who has enjoyed the comfort of practicing his or her trade unencumbered by unwelcome demands. Yet the organizational imperative, as identified by Scott & Hart, is still alive and well: “two value propositions and four rules comprise the dominant paradigm of organizational behavior. The two values are: ‘whatever is good for the individual can only come from the modern organization’ and ‘all behavior must enhance the health of such organizations.’”
The rules that buttress these two main propositions require employees “1) to be obedient to the decisions of superior managers, 2) to be technically rational, 3) to be good stewards of other people’s property, and 4) to be pragmatic. As the organizational imperative has matured, it has come to mean much more. It assumes the willingness of the individual to sacrifice for the good of an organization in which he or she is not a stakeholder beyond wages received. Traditionally, it also assumed that property rights as exercised by owners of organizations over their material wealth extends to the ownership of the employees who work for them. This reduces individuals to a state of virtual wage slavery stripping them of many of the qualities that make them unique human beings and their lives worth living.”
In this all too typical corporate environment it is difficult to aspire to individual self-actualization, much less fulfill a democratic aspiration when the individual is reduced to a mere hired hand serving “at will.” It’s critical to search for alternative forms of organizations and interpersonal ways of relating that are both personally fulfilling while also being effective in achieving organizational goals.
Unfortunately, we have arrived at a point where repressive corporate life is so pervasive it is now assumed to be inevitable in the same way we have been brainwashed into the presumption capitalism won the cold war and is therefore the best solution to our economic problems.
As Thomas Jefferson famously said in the Declaration of Independence, “…mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.” Soon, though, when the credit card bubble, commercial mortgage crisis, end of supplemental unemployment and increasing youth unemployment, a fruit seller (buddy, can you spare a dollar) will appear on a corner near you. By then, however, it may be too late for credible alternatives and cosmetic repairs to the system that has betrayed us.
About John Nirenberg
John Nirenberg is a professor of Leadership at Walden University. He has taught, consulted and lived on three continents and visited 125 countries. John’s books include The Living Organization: Transforming Teams Into Workplace Communities, Power Tools: A Leader’s Guide to the Latest Management Thinking and Global Leadership.
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