Understanding the Relationships Between Decentralized Organizational Decision Structure, Job Context, and Job Satisfaction—A Survey of Danish Public Managers

Job satisfaction is frequent studied, yet few studies are concerned with how the organizational decision structure influences job satisfaction. This is despite the major trend of employing more decentralized organizational decision structures, for example, because of New Public Management (NPM). We investigate how the organizational decision structure influences the job context (role clarity and job complexity) and which influence this then has on job satisfaction. We propose a hypothesized theoretical model which we investigate by estimating a structural equation model (using LISREL) on questionnaire data from 400 Danish managers. Based on the results, we had to modify our model. The results indicate that decentralized organizational decision structures influence role clarity which in turn influences job satisfaction positively, although an alternative model indicates a direct relationship from decentralized organizational decision structure to job satisfaction. Moreover, an important factor is work pressure which influences the relationship from job complexity to job satisfaction negatively.