The main aim of the study was to investigate whether job satisfaction was more strongly associated with congruency between desired and perceived job attributes than with job attributes alone. The perceived and desired job attributes of skill‐utilization, influence, variety, pressure and social interaction were measured for a cluster sample of 1383 employees in metropolitan Adelaide. The sample was a representative one with respect to occupation, sex and national origin. The congruency hypothesis was supported for the attributes of skill‐utilization and variety but not for influence, pressure or social interaction. Perceived job attributes accounted for up to 38 per cent of the variance in job satisfaction whereas the product term between perceived and desired attributes accounted for less than 3 per cent of variance. If job values are defined as desired attributes of an employee's job system, the results indicated that the importance of job values as predictors of job satisfaction has been overestimated in theories of work values. Implications of the findings for job redesign were briefly discussed.
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O’Brien et al. (1980) studied this question.