Job Satisfaction among Academic Staff : A Comparative Analysis between Public and Private Sector Universities of Punjab , Pakistan

PurposeThe purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between various facets of job satisfaction among university academicians in Punjab Province, Pakistan, and how these differences affect overall job satisfaction of academicians in selected universities of Province Punjab. Design/ methodology/approachThe Population for this study comprised of academicians working in universities chartered by Higher Education Commission (HEC) of Pakistan. A total of 150 questionnaires were sent to potential respondents chosen from 4 universities. A total of 108 usable questionnaires were returned giving a response rate of 72 percent. FindingsResults of this study indicate that a pay differential does exist between private and public universities in Pakistan. Academicians in private sector universities were more satisfied with their pay, supervision, and promotional opportunities than the academicians of public university. On the other hand, academicians in public sector universities were found more satisfied with co-worker’s behavior and job security. Research LimitationsThis research is limited to the educational sector. Thus, the results cannot be generalized to other industrial sector of the economy. This study needs to be replicated in other industries using the same method. Practical implicationsThe study offers practical suggestions to the educational institutions and human resource manager on how to pay, promote, retain and maintain equity in the organizations.


Introduction
Education is most important institutional organization of a nation; it plays a significant role in the development of any country.It enables a country to stand on her feet.The importance of education sector has been recognized even in the developing countries like Pakistan.In this era of competition government is also willing to make investments in this sector.The structural reforms of educational institutions are under the process at all levels.At primary level, the provincial and local bodies have launched different schemes for the growth and improvement of this sector, on other hand Federal government has established an autonomous body named Higher Education Commission (HEC) of Pakistan, a regulatory body that oversees the quality of education and working of Universities.Today there are 128 Universities/ Degree Awarding Institution in Pakistan, of which 72 belongs to Public sector universities, and remaining 56 are privately-operated (www.hec.gov.pk).In Pakistan, private institutions generally have a good reputation, well are equipped, and have helped the government to avoid an outflow of local currency that would have occurred from the departure of young people for overseas studies (Ardic & Bas, 2002).
Many researchers and HR consultants have acknowledged the importance of manpower in smooth operation of any organization.Universities are considered as highest source of knowledge and awareness production institutions, and which train the specialist manpower in different fields of life.A high quality academic staff is the cornerstone of successful educational system.Therefore, it is important to pay attention to job satisfaction of the teaching staff.A positive and healthy university structure results into increased academic staff's job satisfaction.A healthy university environment will not only increase the job satisfaction of academic staff but it will at the same time improve the learning environment and increase the productivity of the university.
The level of individual's job satisfaction is affected by intrinsic and extrinsic motivating factors, the quality of supervision, social relationships within the working group and the degree to which individual success or failure in their work (Daft, 2005).As is the case with academic staff both intrinsic and extrinsic factors affect their satisfaction.Most studies (Wu & short, 1996;Place 1997) suggest that teachers put more emphasis on intrinsic satisfiers, but other studies suggest a mix findings of intrinsic and extrinsic satisfier are the best predictors of teacher job satisfaction (Dvorak & Philips, 2001).Their intrinsic satisfaction can come from teaching activities, whereas, extrinsic factors have been associated with academic staff's satisfaction, including salary, perceived support from supervisors and co-workers, university safety, and availability of university recourse, among others.
When academic staffs perceive lack of support for their work, they are not well motivated to perform their job best in the class room, and that when lecturers are not satisfied with their working conditions, they prefer to change institution or leave the profession at once.It is important to study the facets of job satisfaction because it effects on teacher's retention and conditions development.Teachers who were planning to leave the profession reported less satisfaction and a more negative attitude toward teaching as a career (Smith, 2007).
There are numerous publications existing on the topic of job satisfaction and this grows daily.Locke (1976) estimated that, about 3,350 articles and dissertations had been written on this topic.Cranny et al. (1992) indicated that more than 5,000 studies on job satisfaction have been published.According to Oshagbemi (1996), suggested that if a count of relevant publications (articles and dissertations) were made, estimate would probably be doubled by Locke's.As a result of many decades of effort by researchers and HR practitioner, there appears to be a high level of agreement among scholars on the meaning of the job satisfaction.Typically job satisfaction is conceptualized as a general attitude toward on object, the job (Okpara, 2006).Locke (1976) defined job satisfaction as "a pleasurable or positive emotional state, resulting from the appraisal of one's job experiences."An employee with a high level of job satisfaction holds positive feelings about his or her job, whereas a dissatisfied holds negative feeling.It refers general aspects of employee's satisfaction like work situation, pay, job itself, supervision, relations with co-workers, and the firm as a whole.Evans (1997) defined job satisfaction of lecturer as a "state of mind determined by the extent to which the individual perceives his/her job related needs being met".

Objectives of the present study
Job satisfaction has been an important topic over the years (Akfopure et al., 2006).A number of studies available on job satisfaction in the last 80 years have focused on organizational and industrial settings (Platsidou & Diamantopoulou, 2009).Job satisfaction is frequently studied variable both in primary and secondary education.However, empirical evidence regarding job satisfaction of higher education teachers is scare in the international literature (Oshagbemi, 2003).The vast majority of research on different facets of job satisfaction has been undertaken in the USA and UK (Koustelios, 2001).Findings in these countries can be applied to the Pakistan's context has not been widely tested.Hence, the objectives of the present study are: Examine the level of job satisfaction among university academicians, and Explore the extent to which certain organizational characteristics predict academician's job satisfaction.

Literature Review
Job satisfaction is one of the top issues for management and organization researchers (Locke & Latham, 2000); many research studies have been conducted on different dimensions of job satisfaction because it has been closely linked with organizational phenomena such as leadership, morale, motivation, performance etc.The researchers have pinpointed a set of predicators for job satisfaction, which include pay, work, promotion, supervision, environment, and co-workers (Sokoya, 2000).The literature survey reveals that the factors which contribute to the job satisfaction of any employee or officer are: pay, work, co-workers, and environment (Decenzo & Robbins, 1998;p.152).On other hand the study of Ellickson & Logsdon (2001), revealed that adequate equipment, required resources, training opportunities and an equitable workload all affect teachers job satisfaction.A majority of researcher's measure job satisfaction on the basis of employee's or workers: attitude to the job, relations with co-workers, supervision, company policy and support, promotion, and pay (DeVane & Sandy, 2003).Kusku (2003) measured the job satisfaction of academics in a university in Turkey by using the seven factors general satisfaction, management satisfaction, other group satisfaction, colleagues, job satisfaction, work environment and salary satisfaction.Chen et al., (2006) measured the job satisfaction of the teachers in private university in China by using six satisfaction determinants, namely respect, organization vision, management system, result feedback and motivation, pay, benefits and work environment.Sseganga & Garrett (2005) measured the job satisfaction of academicians among the universities of Uganda by using nine general element of their work comprising research, teaching, remuneration, governance, opportunities for promotion, supervision, working environment co-worker's behavior and the job in general.The study of Luthans (2005: p.212) suggests that pay, promotion, work, supervision and fellow workers are the main determinants of the job satisfaction.

Pay and job satisfaction
Pay is very primary factor of satisfaction for almost every type of employee in private, public, small, medium and large organization.Research appears to be unclear regarding the influence of pay on job satisfaction.According to Bassett (1994), a lack of empirical evidence exists in literature to indicate that pay alone improves employee's satisfaction or reduces dissatisfaction.Whereas, a study conducted by Oshagbemi (2000) amongst UK academics, found a statistically significant relationship between pay, rank of employees and their level of job satisfaction.The study of Grace and Khalsa (2003), at Massachusetts higher education institution identified professional development and salary packages as the most important job satisfaction factors.
However, a survey conducted by Young et al., (1998) in the public sector failed to identify any significant relationship between pay and satisfaction.Similarly, the study by Brainard (2005) amongst postdoctoral researchers found pay and benefits to be weakly associated with job satisfaction.

Supervision and job satisfaction
Literature suggested that a positive relationship exists between job satisfaction and supervision (Peterson et al., 2003).Supervision forms a pivotal role relating to job satisfaction in terms of the ability of the supervisor to provide emotional support and technical guidance with job related tasks (Robbins et al., 2003).According to Ramsey (1997), supervisors contribute to high or low morale of employees in the workplace.High relationship behavior of supervisors strongly impact on job satisfaction (Graham & Messner, 1998).
A research conducted by Packard & Kauppi (1999) found that employees with supervisors having democratic management styles experienced higher level of satisfaction than with autocratic leadership style.Bassett (1994) maintains that supervisors bringing the humanistic part to the job and contribute towards increasing the employee's level of job satisfaction.

Promotional opportunities and job satisfaction
A number of researchers are in the opinion that job satisfaction is strongly related to opportunities for promotion (Peterson et al., 2003).This view is supported in the study conducted by Ellickson & Logsdon (2002) where satisfaction with promotional opportunities was found to be positively and significantly related to the job satisfaction of employees.The study of David & Wesson (2001), suggested that limited opportunities for promotion were common in public sector organizations thereby discouraging the qualified employees from remaining in the job.

Co-workers and job satisfaction
A number of authors are in opinion that having friendly and supportive colleagues contribute to increased job satisfaction (Kreitner & Kinicki, 2001).According to Madison (2000), participants who lacked support from fellow workers, were more likely to suffer from job dissatisfaction.Another survey found that positive relationships with fellow workers enhance job satisfaction (Berta, 2005).
Empirical evidence indicates that relationships with co-workers have consistently yielding significant effects on job satisfaction (Ting, 1997).A study conducted by Viswesvaran, Deshpande and Joseph (1998), supported pervious findings that there is a highly positive correlation between job satisfaction and co-workers.

Job security and job satisfaction
The study of Khalid & Irshad (2010) revealed that employees of public sector organizations are more satisfied with job security as compared to their counterpart (Private sector organizations).Morris et al., (1993) reported that increases in job security will result in greater organizational commitment.Iverson (1996) reached similar conclusion.Rosenblatt & Ruvio (1996) also studied the effect of job insecurity on work attitudes of employees.Results revealed that job insecurity had adverse affect on organizational commitment and employee's performance.Furthermore, Ashford et al., (1989) examined the impact of job insecurity on job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and job performance.They found that job insecurity leads to reduces job satisfaction and reduced organizational commitment, but it has no significant impact on job performance.

Methodology
To investigate the impact of pay, promotion, supervision, relationship with co-workers, and job security on the job satisfaction of academicians in Punjab Province, the following research methodology was employed in this paper.

Sample
A questionnaire survey was conducted from September 2010 up to December 2010.The sample for this study comprises full-time academic staff including lecturers, assistant professor, associate professors and professors (not other employees such as peons, guards, drivers, cleaners, clerks etc).The data were collected from four universities; two belong to the private sector (The University of Faisalabad, and The University of Central Punjab), other two belonging to the public sector.One of public sector university (University of Engineering and Technology) was provincially (Punjab) chartered whereas other (National Textile University) was federally chartered university.To achieve the objectives of the study 150 surveys were sent in four universities (2 public and 2 private).In all, 122 returned (a response rate of 81.3 percent) which is quite enormous.Of the 122 returned questionnaires, 14 were incomplete and therefore discarded; leaving 108 giving a response rate of 72 percent for analysis.All employees are aged between 25 to 65 years.

Questionnaire
To measure the job satisfaction levels of academicians, a questionnaire comprising of five basic job elements and some demographic questions was constructed.The job related elements are: Permission to carry out the study was obtained from the campus Director of the concerned universities.The questionnaire was sent to different departments with a brief explanation of the questionnaire, with a copy of permission letter from the campus director.The respondents were also given a written guarantee of confidentiality for information.Respondents (academicians) were asked to indicate the level of satisfaction or dissatisfaction which they derived from each of the four aspects of their job.The scale ranged from 1 to 5 representing : 1 = "Highly satisfied": 2 = "Satisfied": 3 = "Somewhat satisfied" : 4 = "Dissatisfied" : 5 = "Highly dissatisfied".The questionnaire consisted of 27 items.The questionnaire was split into two sections: demographics and job satisfaction.The demographic questions in the survey included age, marital status, rank (Lecturer, Assistant Professor, Associate Professor or Professor), education, gender, monthly income, and length of service in higher education in present university.Answers to these questions provide a good picture of respondent's background.The job satisfaction questions covers job facets such as, promotional opportunities, pay, supervision, opportunities for learning, skill level and opportunities for growth, benefits, and relationship with co-workers.The collected data was analyzed with the help of computer program statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) version 18. 130

Research variable
A dependent variable is a criterion or variable that is to be predicted or explain (Zikmund, 2003;p.106).In this study overall job satisfaction has been identified as the dependent variable.The study of literate also reveals job satisfaction as the major dependent variable.According to McCook (2002), the overall job satisfaction is an employee's positive state of emotions towards the job.
An independent variable is a variable that is expected to influence the dependent variable (Zikmund, 2003;p. 107).Independent variables used in the study are satisfaction with, pay, promotion, relationship with co-workers, supervision, and satisfaction with job security.The study of McCook (2002) identified these independent variables as major determinants of job satisfaction.1 shows the breakdown of university teachers who responded to our questionnaire.The table I shows the distribution of respondents by gender, education, rank, length of service in present university, and area of academic discipline.The distribution of gender shows that 75.9% of respondent were male and 24.1% female.

Table
Most respondent held MS/M.philldegree, while 34.3% held Masters degree, and nearly 22.2% had Ph.D in their relevant field of discipline.
The results shows that respondents included relative newcomers who had spent less than five years which account to 43.5%, and who had spent more than ten years in the university system is about 11.1%.The discussion in this study is focused on differences between private and public sector university academicians on job satisfaction.The group designated as private university academicians were 54: 44 males, 10 females.The group comprised 30 lecturers, 17 assistant professors, 3 associate professors and 4 professors.The average pay per month of this group was Rs. 43,000, and their average length of service in their current university was 3.8 years.The group designated as public university academicians were in total 54: 38 males, 16 females.The group consisted of 32 lecturers, 14 assistant professor, 4 associate professors, and 4 professors.The average pay per month of this group was Rs. 40,777, and their average length of service in their current university was 5.4 years.
In Table 2 the results show that for the number of variables the value of Cronbach's Alpha comes to 0.711.Cronbach's alpha coefficient is a statistical tool, to find out the internal consistency of the instrument used for data collection.The value for Cronbach's alpha reliability coefficient normally ranges between 0.00 and 1.00.George & Mallery (2003) provide the following rules of thumb: "α > 0.9 -Excellent", "α > 0.8 -Good", "α >0 .7 -Acceptable", "α > 0.6-Questionable", "α > 0.5 -poor" and "α < 0.5 -Unacceptable".The value 0.711 shows that the variables measure the concepts of the tool acceptably.The tested tool is hence reliable.
Table 3 , 4, 5, 6, and 7 shows the responses on the questions concerned with attitudes of academicians towards pay, relationship with co-workers, supervision, promotional opportunities, and job security.A five-point Likert scale was initially used but in Table 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 the extremes of "Highly satisfied" and "Highly dissatisfied" have been aggregated with "Satisfied" and "Dissatisfied" to form a three-point scale.
Table 3 presents the percentage of showing satisfied, somewhat satisfied and dissatisfied of university academicians towards pay.35.2% of public university academicians are satisfied, highly satisfied with their pay and this reveals the seriousness of the degree of pay dissatisfaction in Pakistan public universities.Over 33.3% of academicians indicate that they are dissatisfied or highly dissatisfied with their pay.While about 31.5% reported that they are somewhat satisfied with their pay.However, it is not surprising to know that the private university academicians reported 83.3% satisfaction with their pay.Public university academicians, since their pay are considerable lower than their private sector counterpart.This result confirms the earlier findings of Kinaki (2000), and zdayl (1990) that teachers working in public sector schools are less satisfied with their pay compared with teachers working in private schools.
Table 4 presents the percentage of showing satisfied, somewhat satisfied and dissatisfied of university academicians with co-worker's behavior.It can be observed from the table that almost 50% of private university academicians were satisfied, highly satisfied with their co-worker's behavior.About 37% of the respondents were somewhat satisfied, i.e. neither satisfied nor dissatisfied while about 13 % indicated dissatisfied or highly dissatisfied with co-worker's behavior.Whereas, the academicians of public university were 57.4% satisfied highly satisfied with co-workers relations.Generally, political and ideological grouping, in public universities are higher as compared to private universities.33.3% reported somewhat satisfied and 9.2% of academicians were dissatisfied or highly dissatisfied with the behavior of co-workers.This level of dissatisfaction is common in any organization.
Data in Table 5 show that academicians of private university are more satisfied or highly satisfied with the supervision they get (53.7%)compared to public university (51.8 %.).The academicians in public universities may see their managers as ignorant because of heavy paper work and procedural responsibilities resulting from the bureaucratic structure.
Table 6 shows responses to questionnaire items exploring attitudes of academicians towards promotion policy.Academicians of private university reported 70.3% satisfaction with promotion policy of university, whereas in public university respondent feel that opportunity for promotion are limited and reported only 38.9% satisfaction.
From the results of Table 7 academicians in public sector universities feel a greater level of satisfaction or highly satisfaction (66.7%) from "Job security" compared with their private (16.7%) sector university counterpart.This finding is consistent with zdayl's (1990) findings.The fear job insecurity may be due to the uncertain, frequently changing personal policies and contractual nature of job in both sectors.
The table 8 shows the correlation between overall job satisfaction, pay, promotional opportunities, and relationship with co-workers and job security.Correlation is a statistical tool used to measure the relation between two or more variables.The value of correlation coefficient ranges from -1.00 to +1.00.The value of +1.00 represents a perfect positive correlation, while a value -1.00 represents a perfect negative correlation.A value of 0.00 represents no relationship.The value of correlation coefficient for relationship with co-worker is 0.298, which shows a weak to moderate but positive relationship with job satisfaction among the five variables.This relationship is significant at α 0.01.The table shows that overall job satisfaction and job security (0. 462 at 0.01) are significantly associated.Other significant associations are found between overall job satisfaction and promotional opportunities (0.450 at 0.01).
Table 9 shows the results of least square regression analysis.Regression analysis is a statistical technique used for the modeling and analysis of numerical data consisting of values of dependent variables (response variable) and of one or more independent variables (explanatory variables) (Yasir and Fawad, 2009).The value of R squares ranges from 0.00 and 1.00, where 0.00 means no variance explained by the independent variable(s) (explanatory variable(s)) and value 1 means 100% variance explained by the variable(s).The value of R in the Table 9 is 0.641, and R square is 0.410.The value of R shows a moderate to strong positive relationship between five variables and overall job satisfaction.The value of R square shows that model 1 explains 41% variance in overall job satisfaction.

Conclusion
The findings of this research show that private university academicians are more satisfied with most facets of their jobs than public university academicians.However, both private and public university academicians showed significant differences in the level of overall job satisfaction that they derived from the following facets of their jobs: Pay, relationship with co-workers, supervision behavior, promotional opportunities and job security.
The result of this research showed that private university academicians were more satisfied with pay, supervision and promotional.However, expect for the two facets i.e. relationship with co-worker and job security, majority of academicians in public university reported dissatisfied attitude for other facets.This study also found moderate but positive relationship between co-workers behavior and job satisfaction (r = .298).On the other hand the relationship between job security and overall job satisfaction is significant (r = .462).

Future implications
There are numerous directions in which future research could develop based upon these prior findings (Carrahner, 2006).Thousands of studies have investigated job satisfaction and its consequences with managerial and non-managerial employees in large, small and medium sized business (Judge et al., 2001).However, a few studies have examined the relationship between benefits and employee's turnover.One area for future research is replicating this research with other samples, within these and other cultures, and other countries (Bhanugopan & Fish 2006, Richardson, 2006).A second area for research would focus on the relationship between turnover and satisfaction with pay level.This research could seek to explain why employees satisfied with their pay, and reasons to leave job.Previous research has found negative relationship between turnover and pay (Williams et al., 2006).
This research will provide a platform to researchers to investigate the relationship between job satisfaction and personal determinants, which includes, age gender, educational level, tenure, race, and marital status.There are several organizational factors which aids job satisfaction of employees, i.e. work itself, pay, supervision, promotional opportunities, relationship with coworkers, job status, job level, benefits etc.The further research could consider some organizational and some personal facets to explore relationship with overall job satisfaction.

Recommendation
Academicians should be provided with proper guidance and counseling by the institutions in which they work, so they will be aware of their duties, and working conditions in the university.By knowing this can adjust the university conditions effectively.To reduce the conflicts, with co-workers and with leaders the authorities should provide clear cut guidelines, so that academicians will be aware of their role and there will no ambiguity in understanding of what he or she have to do.
Based on the findings of this study, it is recommended that management of public universities should ensure that performance evaluations are fair and unbiased.Therefore, promotions based on merits and performance evaluation will be perceived by academicians as equitable and fair, and result in a greater degree of job satisfaction and higher degree of productivity.It is in the best interests of public universities to retain and promote the best qualified employees.Predictors: (Constant), Job Security, Salary, Supervision, relationship with co-worker, promotional opportunities

Table 1 .
Background of respondents

Table 2 .
Reliability statistics

Table 3 .
Respondents attitudes towards pay

Table 4 .
Respondents attitudes towards relationship with co-workers

Table 5 .
Respondents attitudes towards supervision

Table 6 .
Respondents attitudes towards promotional opportunities

Table 7 .
Respondents attitudes towards job security * Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). *