Interpersonal relations and job satisfaction: some empirical results in social and community care services

The paper is included in a book dealing with the importance of interpersonal relations on job satisfaction. More specifically the paper studies the effects of relational aspirations and satisfaction on overall worker satisfaction and quit intentions, drawing from a large data set on Italian social service providers. The authors find a double indication that workers really value the relational goods they “consume” on the job: the opportunity to create new relations is an important element in decisions concerning jobs; and, above a threshold wage, workers’ satisfaction and intentions to quit are significantly affected by indicators of the quality of interpersonal relations on the job – with clients, colleagues, managers and volunteers – but not by the wage level. The paper also shows interesting results by comparing for-profit, non-profit and public service providers, finding the non-profit providers have a competitive advantage in their ability to provide relational incentives. Despite the fact that the survey was limited to a very specific sector, some results allow to conclude that work environment is probably the most promising field for students of interpersonal relations.