ABSTRACT
What happens when people are dissatisfied at work? That question has led to thousands of studies of job satisfaction, including investigations of job satisfaction measures in relation to other internal constructs, such as commitment, loyalty, and intentions, as well as with more observable constructs, such as turnover, absence, tardiness, and voice (Locke, 1976; Rosse, 1991). In this chapter, we discuss how people adapt to dissatisfying work conditions, building on a model of employee adaptation (Rosse & Miller, 1984). Our original model had been developed for a conference on absence to help organize our thinking about how people respond to dissatisfaction at work. There have been substantial theoretical and empirical developments reported in the research literature since our work adaptation model was published. We offer an update on our model in this chapter, reflecting key changes in our understanding of adaptation based on recent research developments. We hypothesize that three constructs, emotional arousability, emotional reserve, and emotional control may play important roles in how low job satisfaction manifests behaviorally in the work place. We also discuss measurement and research design issues for conducting empirical tests of relations among measures of adaptation behaviors and job satisfaction.
