Employee satisfaction: Does Kano's model apply?

Employee satisfaction has become one of the critical issues in total quality management. Numerous studies investigate the antecedences and consequences of the construct. It has been found that employee satisfaction drives productivity and customer satisfaction. In order to better understand the drivers of employee satisfaction, the authors investigate whether Kano's model of customer satisfaction also applies to employee satisfaction. Kano's model distinguishes three categories of factors that have a different impact on the formation of customer satisfaction: basic factors (dissatisfiers), excitement factors (satisfiers) and performance factors (hybrid factors). In the first part of the paper, the authors review the literature on Kano's model of customer satisfaction. Next, they discuss whether and how it applies to employee satisfaction. The authors then report the findings of an empirical study in a pharmaceutical company. Using a regression analysis with dummy variables, the authors find an asymmetric relationship between the satisfaction with different factors and overall employee satisfaction, thereby confirming Kano's model in the context of employee satisfaction. In the final section of the paper, the theoretical and managerial implications of these findings are discussed.