29-08-2014, 03:07 PM
AN EMPIRICAL STUDY OF JOB SATISFACTION LEVELS AMONG BANK MANAGERS IN NIGERIA PROJECT REPORT
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Introduction
Job satisfaction is an affective or emotional response towards various facets of one's job. This definition means job satisfaction is not a unitary concept rather, a person can be relatively satisfied with one aspect of his job and dissatisfied with one or more other aspects.
Job satisfaction is the same as job attitudes, that is, the way an employee feels about a job outcome (pleasant or unpleasant plus future expectations). It involves an individual's evaluation of different aspects of the job. For instance, organisational policies and practices, co-workers and the work itself.
Employee job satisfaction has long been one of the management's most difficult and important tasks. Success in this endeavour is becoming a more difficult challenge in light of managing a diverse work force. Anecdotal reports suggest managers are not adequately meeting this challenge and the reason for this is attributable to controversy issue surrounding satisfaction - performance relationship. Several research findings have indicated that satisfaction and performance are casually related while the performance causes satisfaction is a more recent development, the contention that satisfaction causes performance
J. O. OLUJIDE & A. L. BADMUS
remains widely held. Research findings tend to give moderate support for the former view and found that the job-satisfaction -performance relationship to be less than clear-cut. The evidence indicates that the relationship is more complex and that rewards constitute a more direct cause of satisfaction than does performance. Nonetheless, one of the most commonly accepted convictions of management is that productivity will increase if employee job satisfaction is increased. Quite unfortunately, empirical findings nave not supported this assertion but some significant predictive relationships have been identified between job satisfaction and employee turnout and absentee levels (Lawler 1973; Green, 1972). As such, employee job satisfaction has remained a pragmatic managerial issue. Despite the avalanche of empirical works concerning job satisfaction, analyses within certain key occupations and professions have not yet been given serious attention.
The objective of this research study therefore, was to fill this vacuum partially for banking profession. Specifically, the purpose was to ascertain if there was a significant difference in job satisfaction across managerial levels
Research Methodology
For the purpose of this study, each respondent was classified into one of three categories:
(a) Top Management
(b) Middle Management and;
© Lower Management
In all, 120 managers were included from randomly selected banks in Lagos. The sample included a broad spectrum of managerial personnel from all hierarchical levels responsible for lending, operations, trusts, marketing, cashiers etc. Managers with less than two years service with their banks were excluded from consideration.
The classification for individual manager was based upon four variables: .(a) Job title
Measurement Instrument
Maslow need theory (1954) is one of the most commonly accepted of the theoretical satisfaction framework Maslow s need construct proposed that motivation is a function of five basic needs. These five basic need categories are arranged in a proponent hierarchy. The basic needs categorises include psychological (food, shelter, clothing); safety (requirement of protection); love or social (the opportunity to develop close associations with other people); esteem (the prestige from both within and outside the organisation) and self-actualization through personal growth and development. Maslow believed that human needs generally
Analysis and Discussions
Figure 1 shows the mean satisfaction scores for upper, middle and lower-level managers. Social need items were the most satisfied as indicated by the executives while the self-actualization need items were found to be the most wanting. In addition, the executives need for autonomy tended to be more gratified than their esteem need. On the other hand, middle and lower managers generally perceived their jobs as less satisfying than their counterparts at the upper-echelon.
In order to determine if there was a significant difference in the satisfaction per job facet across managerial strata, a parametric analysis of variance procedure and a non parametric Kruskai-Wallis test were performed. A conservative posture was adopted for interpreting the test result; that is, the samples were deemed to have been drawn from the same or identical populations unless both tests indicated rejection of the null hypothesis.
Our analysis indicated that there were no significant statistical differences in satisfaction with the opportunity to develop close friendships (item 1B), the prestige they perceived from person
CONCLUSIONS
Several studies exploring job satisfaction of managerial personnel from different professions have tended to support the assertion that the needs of upper-level management are more satisfied than those of their lower-level counterparts and for any given level in the management hierarchy, the social and esteem needs will be more satiated than the autonomy and self-actualization needs.
In respect of the first assertion, executives perceived significantly more job satisfaction than reported by middle and lower-level managers. However, there was no difference in the managers' perception of external prestige, worthwhile accomplishment and social contact derived from their respective positions. It is possible that the study setting gave rise to the first of these latter phenomena. The choice of the banks surveyed were relatively small and located in urban areas. Hence, one would expect all bank management positions to be well respected within such communities.
With regard to the first assertion, data from the study only gave tentative support to the second assertion- that the lower - order needs were generally more satiated then the higher- level needs.