A Study of the Relationship between the Job Satisfaction and Organizational Commitment of Academic Staff in Private Higher Education Institutes in Sri Lanka

Abstract

As a developing country in Asian region, Sri Lankan higher education sector consists with government universities, private higher education institutes and semi-government universities. Irrespective of the sector, higher education institutes strongly believe about quality of their degree programmes. Higher quality of education can be achieved only by having a academic staff who are motivated, committed and satisfied to what they do. It is the usual perception that when the staff is committed to what they do, it will positively impact on their job performance, service quality and the success of the organization. Hence, it is vital to identify the importance of employees’ organizational commitment achieved through job satisfaction in private higher education sector in Sri Lanka. Therefore the primary objective of this study is to study the relationship between the job Satisfaction and organizational commitment of academic staff in private higher education institutes in Sri Lanka. The independent variable is job satisfaction and the dependent variable was organizational commitment. . This study utilized a questionnaire to collect the data which needed to achieve the research objectives. Also researchers have used standard questionnaires to measure job satisfaction which is known as Minnesota Job Satisfaction Scale and organizational commitment was measured through Allen and Mayer Organizational Commitment Scale. Current study was conducted in a natural setting where the work proceeds normally. No any artificial or contrived setting was created where none of the variables were controlled by the researchers in this study. The data was collected from the individual lecturers of five reputed academic institutions in Colombo District and unit of analysis of this study is individual.