Fits, misfits and interactions: learning at work, job satisfaction and job-related well-being

The resource-based view (RBV) of the firm has focused attention on the importance of aligning employees’ needs with the requirements of the jobs they do. This article focuses on how these needs and requirements interact in terms of learning. It does so in two ways. First, it develops new survey instruments to capture the learning demands of jobs and the learning dispositions of workers and uses them for the first time in a survey of 2,810 employees. Second, it examines how these person and job characteristics correlate with specific aspects of job satisfaction and job-related well-being. The results show that although learning alignment is associated with high levels of satisfaction and well-being, not all learning misalignments are associated with the reverse.