An Examination of Need-Satisfaction Models of Job Attitudes

TLDR

Need‑satisfaction theory has long dominated research on job attitudes, motivation, and organizational performance. The study shows that need‑satisfaction models are largely untestable, plagued by artifacts, lack empirical support, and ignore the interplay of needs, job characteristics, and attitudes, yet persist because of perceptual biases, consistency with rational choice theory, and perceived behavioral implications, while overlooking individuals’ ability to self‑satisfy through cognitive reconstruction.

Abstract

September 1977, volume 22 A need-satisfaction theoretical model has been ubiquitous in studies and writings on job attitudes and, by extension, motivation, job design, and other organizational performance improvement issues. An examination of such need models indicates that they are frequently formulated so as to be almost impossible to refute, and the research testing them has been beset with consistency and priming artifacts. Furthermore, available empirical data fails to support many of the crucial elements of need-satisfaction theories. An examination of the components of need-satisfaction models needs, job characteristics, and job attitudes indicates that all three have been incompletely considered. Need models may have persisted in part because of perceptual biases, their consistency with other theories of rational choice behavior, and because of what they seem to imply about human behavior. The models appear to deny, however, that people have the capacity to provide their own satisfactions by cognitively reconstructing situations.