Effects of Job Alternatives, Extrinsic Rewards, and Behavioral Commitment on Attitude toward the Organization: A Field Test of the Insufficient Justification Paradigm.

The effects of salary, the availability of job alternatives, tenure, and the length of time in the organization on satisfaction with the organization and on intention to leave were investigated for a random sample of 4,058 respondents drawn from the Carnegie Council's 1969 survey of college and university faculty. Satisfaction with the organization, and tenure, and were negatively related to the availability of job alternatives. An interaction between behavioral commitment, operationalized as either length of time in the organization or tenure, and the amount of salary was observed. Respondents not behaviorally committed showed a positive relationship between salary and satisfaction. Committed respondents did not show this relationship, and the interaction between behavioral commitment and sufficiency of reward was observed to be stronger in those who had recently had job alternatives. The data indicate that a weak form of the insufficient justification hypothesis can be supported from field studies, but there was no support for the strong form of the hypothesis of a negative relationship between satisfaction and sufficiency of justification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]