Knowledge Workers’ Job Satisfaction: Assessing the Role of Organizational Culture

Purpose – The objective of the research is twofold: first to develop a framework of relationship and ties in place between satisfaction of knowledge workers and its theoretical satisfaction-related antecedents, specifically, the organizational culture; second: to provide operationalization of the constructs that constitute such a framework. Design/methodology/approach – The former objective shall be pursued through collective brainstorming sessions, individual interviews to a panel of experts, evidences from literature review. The latter objective will be pursued through a careful scanning of specialized literature on psychometrics and organizational scales in order to verify that ad hoc scales have been developed, suitable for knowledge workers. Originality/value –This methodology puts in evidence the importance of knowledge workers in the Knowledge Age, and which aspects of their job satisfaction may be influenced by the organizational culture, since only few studies have investigated this link. On the basis of this consideration, the paper, and the framework developed in particular, add elements of discussion to the debate about the evaluation of the organizational culture as antecedents of job satisfaction of knowledge workers. Practical implications – The outcomes of the study, that is the research framework developed, shall be used in order to test the relationships between the constructs hypothesised (job satisfaction and organizational culture) in several industry.