A study on
Perceived Over-Qualification, Job Satisfaction and Job Stress of Large Scale and
Medium Scale Industries Executives with Reference to Sangli
,Kolhapur and Satara M.I.D.C. Area.
V.V. Bidnur and R.D. Patil
Faculty, BVDU, Institute of
Management and Rural Development Administration-Sangli
*Corresponding Author E-mail: vsbidnur@gmail.com
ABSTRACT:
It has been
inferred from the statistical analysis that Perceived Over-qualification, was
found to be negatively related to Job Satisfaction. But Perceived
Over-qualification, was not found to have any relationship either with Health Status or the Job Stress of the
Executives. The study finds that women executives’ experience more Job Stress
than men, but men report poor Health Status than women.
KEYWORDS: Perceived Over-qualification, Job
Satisfaction, Job Stress.
All firms, whether they are directly involved
in foreign markets or not, are exposed to international competitive forces that
can have serious consequences for both survival and performance. To
successfully manage an international corporation, it requires an understanding
of complex economic, political and governmental issues and an appreciation for
the fact that there are differences in how these issues may affect a firm
across various nations (Glowinkowski and Copper,
1987). To serve this purpose the whole gamut of employees of industries need to
be well equipped and should have the zest and willingness to toil. Thus working
in a industry corporation brings in stress and consequently jaded bodies and
minds. Companies expect more from less and pressure inevitably falls on
employees. To figure out the factors that lead to better performance of the
employees, extensive research is needed. To better the performance, an
understanding of what factors affect the performance of the employees is
important. A number of studies have supported the impact of Job Satisfaction,
Job Stress and Somatization on the performance of
employees.
Perceived
Over qualification is also one of the factors that is expected to have an
impact on work life of people (Feldan, Doennghaus and Jurnley, 1995)
Perceived Over qualification is defined as the extent to which an employed
individual perceives that he or she possesses surplus job qualification or has
limited opportunities to acquire and use new job related skills. Perceived Over
qualification is said to exist when individuals perceive that they possess
education, experience or skill that exceed the required job requirements. It
may stem froma lack of promotional opportunities
associated with the job, which leads to dead ends (Green, Intosh
and Vignoles, 1999). In everyday language it is
common to state that a certain occupation requires a certain level of
education. In such a simple picture of such a relationship between education
and work it is implicitly assumed that jobs of a worker with lower
qualification: the productivity of the latter is zero. On the other hand people
with higher qualifications than required for the job they have are thought to
fully waste their abundant qualification: their productivity in a job below
their educational level equals the productivity of worker with an adequate
educational background for this kind of job (Feldman, 1996). Job satisfaction
is defined as a positive feeling about one’s job resulting from an evaluation
of its characteristics (Robins and Timothy, 2007). Jude, Thoresen
and Bono conducted a study job performance and job satisfaction and they found
out that both are highly correlated. The dimensions of job satisfaction
identified by the researchers are nature of the work, pay, promotion
opportunities, supervision and coworkers (Smith, Kentall
and Hullin, 1969). Studies on job satisfaction has
found that job characteristics and job complexity mediates the relationship
between personality and job satisfaction (Timothy, Bono and Edvin,
2000). Wages and salaries are recognized to be a significant but cognitively
complex (Shawn and Ronald, 1996)) and multi dimensional factor in job
satisfaction (Timoty, 1993). There is considerable
empirical evidence that one of the major reasons employee give for quitting a
company is that their supervisor does not care about them (Marcus and Coffman,
1999). There is also evidence of a positive relationship between job
satisfaction and life satisfaction (Tait, Padgett and
Baldwin, 1989), and that the conditions of the causality is that the people who
are satisfied with their lives tend to find more satisfaction in their work
(Jude and Wantanabe, 1993) Somatizaton
is the presence of at least four medically unexplained somatic symptoms during
the past 6 months. Somatization by definition has two
components:1) an absence of underlying pathology for which a specific treatment
that can be administered, and 2)a conviction by the patient that there must be
a specific treatment that can and should be recommended. Typically, there are
underlying feelings of depression, anxiety or other feelings, which are not
recognized or acknowledge by the person instead, what the person may be aware
is all the physical correlates of these underlying difficulties. Anxiety and
depression had direct effects on somatic symptoms in somatoform disordered
patients (Koh 2008). Stress is a dynamic condition in
which an individual is confronted with an opportunity, demand, or resource
related to what the individual desires and for which the outcome is perceived
to be both uncertain and important (Shuler,1980). The stimulus causing the
stress is said to be the stressor. Job Stress is a chronic state caused by a
condition in the work place that negatively affects an individual’s performance
and overall well being of the body and mind (Ahmad and James, 1991). One or
more of a host of physical and mental illness manifests Job Stress. In some
cases Job Stress can be disabling. In the early stages Job Stress can ‘rev up’
the body and enhance performance in the work place, thus the term ‘I perform
better under pressure’. However if this condition is allowed to go unchecked
and the body is revved up further, the performance ultimately declines and the
persons health degenerates. Studies by / organizational psychologist found that
job performance is at its highest when employees under a medium level of stress
(Branthwaite and Ross, 1988). The sign of Job Stress
vary from person to person, depending on the particular situation, how long the
individual has been subjected to the stressors, and the intensity of the stress
itself. In a study on IT professionals, it has found that women experienced
higher levels of stress and being overworked. Women professionals appeared to
be more sensitive to the total number of elements in the work environment that
were changing (total amount of change) as a precursor to stress. (Gallivant,
2003). The most visible causes of work place stress are: Task demands, physical
demands of a job, role demands, workplace culture, interpersonal demands,
personal or family problems (Robbins and Timothy, 2007). Another important
factor which leads to job stress is job instability and other job
characteristics like job demand, job control etc. Job demand is positively
correlated with job stress (Wallgren 2007). The study
focuses on various factors that play a major role in the work life of
executives of various MNCs. Many a time the employers find it difficult to keep
the employees satisfied. This is one of the serious problems faced by the
Organizational Behavior Researches. Hence arises the importance of relating
certain factors that hampers the work life of employees. The expansion of
educational provision in the last few decades has left too many highly
qualified people. Thus the labor market has entrants who are over educated for
the jobs they hold. Since over education is one of the determinants of Perceived Over-qualification, the study gains importance. The impact of
Perceived Over-qualification, on Job Satisfaction, health status and Job Stress
is assessed in the study.
i. There will be
a significant relationship between Perceived Over-qualification, Job
Satisfaction, and Job Stress.
ii. Men and
Women executives of MNCs may not differ in terms of Perceived
Over-qualification,, Job Satisfaction, and Job Stress.
Fifty-two
executives working in MNCs of which
twenty-six were Men and twenty-six were women. They were taken on a random order from the large scale and
medium scale Industries Executives with reference to Sangli,
Kolhapur and Satara M.I.D.C. area.
Perceived
Over-qualification, questionnaire developed by Morrow (1991) was used to
measure Perceived Over-qualification. The questionnaire consists of both
positively and negatively phrased statements. The Job Satisfaction Scale
designed by Gayatridevi and Velayudhan.
A (2008) was used to measure Job Satisfaction. The scale consists of 75 items,
positively and negatively phrased statements pertaining to Self-Esteem,
Work-Schedule and Interpersonal Relationship. The reliability of Self-Esteem,
Work-Schedule and Interpersonal Relationship are .72, .79, 81 and .84
respectively. The Job stress variable was measured with the 19 items checklist
developed by Derogatis, Lipman,
Rickels, Uhlenhuth, and Covi (1974) the check list reflects a psychological
self-report on symptoms of depression. The 19 items pertained to the frequency
of problems or complaints, such as headaches, feelings of low energies, and
worrying too much about things. The response ranged from 1 (not at all) to 5 (a
great deal) .The check list has a reliability of .90. The workplace stress
scale was used to measure Job Stress. The scale was developed by the Martin
Company and the American Institute (2001) which consists of 8 items. The
response was given on a 5-point scale that ranges from ‘Never’ to ‘Very Often’.
Table 1 show
that Perceived Over-qualification, is found to have a negative correlation with
all the four variables of Job Satisfaction. The present job scenario gives the
picture that getting into a job is not an easy task, and against this backdrop
the relevance of Perceived Over-qualification, seems to diminish. But once in a
job one may perceive that his education, experience or skill exceed the job
requirement or he or she may see new career prospects ahead that makes present
job less satisfying.
Table-1:
Relationship between Perceived Over-qualification and Job Satisfaction
|
Variable |
‘r’ |
|
Perceived Over-qualification, Self - esteem |
0.53* |
|
Perceived Over-qualification, Work schedule |
0.52* |
|
Perceived Over-qualification, Security |
0.46* |
|
Perceived Over-qualification, Interpersonal relationship |
0.48* |
A study
conducted by Kaiser (2002) revealed that higher education attainment is
negatively correlated with Job satisfaction which is relevant to the present
finding. Another study conducted by Feldan,Doennghaus
and Jurnley (1995) found Perceived
Over-qualification, as a factor
affecting work life of people. Even though today’s organizations try to make
the best out of their men, the employees are found to experience a significant
amount of Perceived Over-qualification and this in turn influences Job
Satisfaction. The perception of Over-qualification may be attributed to over education. As the
government policies have made higher education cheaper and more available, it
is being availed by a large number. So the number of highly qualified goes on
increasing and this indeed makes it difficult for them to find jobs that suit
their qualification and may finally end up in a job that requires less skill. Hartog (2000) found that Overeducation
is generally regarded as the special indicator of the imperfect allocation on
the labor market. Perceived Over-qualification,
may also stem from lack of promotional opportunities associated with the
job, which leads to dead end, which indeed leads to low Job Satisfaction. In a
study conducted by Smith,Kendall andHullin
(1969) have identified nature of the work, pay, promotion opportunities,
supervision and co-workers as a various dimension of Job Satisfaction. Warr (1987) proposed that people are likely to perceive
opportunities for skill utilization when they encourage using skills they have
and acquire new skills.
|
Variable |
‘r’ |
|
Perceived Over-qualification, |
0.21 |
|
Perceived Over-qualification, Job Stress |
0.21 |
Table-2
shows the correlation of Perceived Over-qualification and Job Stress. The
result shows that Perceived Over-qualification, is not related to and also Job
Stress. Depression and anxiety play a major role in stress, the fact that perceived over-qualification
doesn’t have a role in making a person anxious or depressed seems to back up
the above finding. Koh (2008) examined the
relationship between depressions, anxiety in somatic disordered patients and
found that both anxiety and depression had direct effects on somatic symptoms
in somatoform disordered patients. One of the factors that lead to Job Stress
is the high demand for performance; since Over-qualification, is one of the determinants of Perceived
Over-qualification, and the perception
that one is overqualified reduce the pressure on ones performance. Perceived
Over-qualification, may not add to Job
Stress. Job instability is another factor that leads to Job Stress, Perceived
Over-qualification, makes a person shift
from one job to another, and thus job stability no longer puts them in stress. Wallgren (2007) conducted a study to test the relationship
between job characteristics (job demand, job control) and job stress. The
results show that job demand was positively related to job stress. Perceived
Over-qualification, gives a person the
feeling that the job he holds is a meager one; this makes the person least
bothered about his performance. Thus the hypothesis 1 is partially accepted.
Table-3: Mean, SD and ‘t’ value of Perceived
Over-qualification, , and Job Stress of executives.
|
Variable |
Group |
Mean |
S.D. |
‘t’ value |
|
Perceived
Over-qualification, |
Male Female |
25.24 27.75 |
6.53 6.29 |
1.40 |
|
Job
Satisfaction Self esteem |
Male Female |
61.52 54.40 |
12.87 16.53 |
1.72 |
|
Work
schedule |
Male Female |
118.84 109.29 |
14.94 14.52 |
2.33* |
|
Security |
Male Female |
36.04 33.37 |
7.109 6.55 |
1.40 |
|
Inter-personal
Relationship |
Male Female |
53.92 47.22 |
13.73 11.17 |
1.93 |
|
Job
Stress |
Male Female |
15.96 18.44 |
4.58 3.58 |
2.18* |
Table 3
shows that men and women do not differ in the Perception of Over-qualification
but differ in other variables such as Job Satisfaction, and Job Stress. This
findings reveal that Sex difference do not bring a change in the perception of
Over-qualification. It may also attribute that since men and women can avail
the same kind of education they may perceive over qualification to the same
extent. The‘t’ test results from the table 3 shows
that there is a significant difference between the men and women with regard to
their satisfaction with work schedules they have. This finding leaves room to
think that men differ from women in the way they like their jobs in terms of
schedule. This difference may be attributed to the marked difference between
the sexes’ perception of hours of work, extended working condition etc.
CONCLUSION:
The results
also indicate that Self-esteem, Security, Interpersonal Relationship was not
found to show any significant difference among male and female executives. It
is a well known fact that working in industries enhances Self esteem for both
men and women, similarly male and female executives feel secure as working in a
industries. India gives more security than in any western country.
Interpersonal Relationship is one of the significant factors which industries thrust
on its executives, thus the satisfaction derived through Interpersonal
Relationship could be of the same level for both male and female executives.
The table also indicates that men and women differ in terms of job stress.
Women‘s health status is found to be better than that of men. This shows that
men are having more frequent temper outburst, headaches, feeling of being
trapped, low energy and other health related problems. Men holding more
responsibilities in their work settings may affect their health. In the group
women are found to experience more Job Stress than men. It may be due to their
dual role between family and work commitments, role conflict, and lack of
emotional ventilation, job instability, technology and physical demands and
sensitivity. In a study by Gallivan, 2003 it has been
found that women professionals appeared to be more sensitive to the total
number of elements in the work environment that were changing (total amount of
change) as a precursor to stress. But men seem to have more chances to refresh
themselves and to share their emotions and also comparatively more free than
women in household involvements in an India. The perceived over qualification
negatively affects Job Satisfaction of MNC Executives. It affects neither health
status nor the Job Stress of the Executives. Women executives experience more
Job Stress than men, but men report poor health status than women.
Received on 08.04.2011
Accepted on 07.05.2011
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Asian J. Management 2(3): July-Sept., 2011 page 104-107