The social responsibility and the positive emotions explaining the job satisfaction: An empirical study applied to private social solidarity institutions

Abstract

This paper tests empirically how the social responsibility perceptions and the emotions (positive and negative) explain job satisfaction. It also tests the mediating effect of emotions in the relationship between perceptions of social responsibility and job satisfaction.

The study has been applied to employees from 17 private social solidarity institutions of Santarém county (Portugal). The sample encompasses 370 employees (of which 94,3% are female; 56% have nine years of schooling, 23% have twelve years of schooling, and 21% have a university degree; 12% occupy positions of leadership). The respondents are, on average, 42,76 years old (sd: 10,12) and they have worked in the institution, on average, for 9,39 years (sd: 7,69).

The social responsibility scale has been adapted from Rego, Leal and Cunha (2011), some items having been deleted because they do not apply to the reality of social economy sector (Leal, Ribeiro & Jorge, 2013). The scale of positive and negative emotions is from the PANAS scale (Positive and Negative Affect Schedule; Watson, Clark & Tellegen, 1988). The job satisfaction has been measured with two items from Valentine and Fleischman (2008) and one item from Nascimento (2011). The social responsibility and satisfaction scales have been submitted for exploratory factor analysis. In all statistical analyses the effect of gender, age, education, seniority, and positions of leadership has been controlled.

The data suggest: (a) the positive emotions are positively influenced by perceptions of global social responsibility (mean of the five social responsibility factors), (b) the negative emotions are negatively influenced by perceptions of global social responsibility; (c) the job satisfaction is positively influenced by perceptions of global social responsibility and by positive emotions; (d) the negative emotions do not significantly influence the job satisfaction; (e) the positive emotions mediate the relation between the perceptions of social responsibility and job satisfaction, the same not occurring with negative emotions. Job satisfaction is influenced by the following social responsibility factors: responsibility to employees, economic responsibility and legal responsibility.

The results could be applied to the human resources management policy, namely: to improve the conciliation between employee’s private and working life; to support the employees who wish to acquire additional education; to motivate employees to develop skills and careers; to develop a work environment that increases the positive emotions and mitigates the negative ones. On the other hand, the fulfilment of the law namely in human relations topics, providing superior service and keeping the customer's needs first could also improve the positive emotions at work and the job satisfaction.