The Role of Professionalism in Determining Job Satisfaction in Professional Services

The services literature extols the importance of the link between satisfied customers and satisfied employees. In this study, the authors develop and test a job satisfaction model that examines the role of rewarding professionalism. Specifically, they examine whether rewards for professional behavior foster professionalism and esprit de corps (a set of enthusiastically shared feelings, beliefs, and values about group membership and performance) in order to further understanding of job satisfaction for professional service providers. Using surveys from marketing researchers, the authors assess the importance of rewarding professional service providers for professional behavior by examining the links between reward structures, esprit de corps, and job satisfaction. Research findings indicate that as organizations reward professional behavior they help foster the development of key aspects of professionalism. The findings are that a reward structure favoring professional behavior directly leads to higher esprit de corps and employee job satisfaction.