Employee Fit and Job Satisfaction in Bureaucratic and Entrepreneurial Work Environments

Job satisfaction has long proved an elusive construct in public management research. Typically, research investigating job satisfaction in the public sector has emphasized a direct link between work environment and individual attitudes. But, some argue that the interaction between work environment and employee attitudes is a more accurate starting point for understanding satisfaction. This analysis investigates the effect that bureaucratic and entrepreneurial work environments have on job satisfaction when employee–organization value congruence is introduced as a mediating factor. The results indicate that job satisfaction has a direct negative relationship with centralized work environments and an indirect positive relationship with entrepreneurial ones, and thus highlight a more complex relationship between work environment and job satisfaction than previously thought. While some environmental reforms may directly influence satisfaction, these findings indicate that value congruence is an important individual-level mechanism that can transform the relationship between the external environment and individual attitudes at work.