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Research Article

The Effect of Job Fit on Job Satisfaction and Conflict Management Methods

Lee, Jaegyu · Cho, Yeongdae

Published: January 1994 · Vol. 23, No. 3 · pp. 313-338
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Abstract

Efforts to enhance workers' intrinsic motivation and job satisfaction through the organic fit between specific jobs and individual job holders have a long history. However, existing studies on improving job satisfaction have generally focused on extrinsic motivational factors such as wages, work environment, and job redesign, rather than on maintaining the fit between jobs and individuals. This study aimed to analyze the relationship between job characteristics and individual characteristics of organizational members, to determine whether there exist individual characteristics optimally suited to specific jobs, and to investigate how person-job fit affects job satisfaction and conflict management methods. The purpose of studying organizational behavior is to predict the behavior of organizational members and utilize it in alignment with organizational objectives. The reason person-job fit has emerged as an important concept for integrating jobs and individuals today lies in practical difficulties including the structural challenges of job redesign, excessive expenditures on education and training, and skepticism about effectiveness commensurate with such expenditures. Furthermore, if job redesign and employee retraining are implemented after placing workers suited to specific jobs through person-job fit analysis, the outcomes can be even more effective. Additionally, conflict always exists in organizations, and the results of handling existing conflicts generate new conflicts. That conflict can be managed implies that conflict is a dynamic social process that moves from an initial latent stage to a mature and terminal stage, and further implies that conflict can exert serious influence not only on the parties involved but also on the surrounding environment. Therefore, the primary concern of conflict management lies in increasing functional outcomes and reducing dysfunctional ones. Hence, if person-job fit is linked to specific conflict management methods, it can significantly contribute to organizational conflict resolution. This study targeted teachers, whose job characteristics are relatively clear and whose educational level is sufficiently high to understand the questionnaire. Questionnaires were distributed to and collected from 406 kindergarten, elementary, and secondary school teachers working in the Gyeongbuk region. The internal reliability coefficient exceeded 0.6, and chi-square tests, binomial tests, and t-tests were used for hypothesis testing. The results showed that teachers in the job-fit group had significantly higher job satisfaction levels than those in the non-fit group at the p<0.01 significance level. Furthermore, at the p<0.01 significance level, teachers in the job-fit group were found to prefer adaptive methods in conflict management compared to those in the non-fit group.