Introduction
In the modern business world, job satisfaction of public sector employees is one of the key issues affecting the government department and agencies performance. Thus, the primary goal of the research is to identify what factors have the greatest impact on employees’ satisfaction in the public sector and how job satisfaction of government-run organizations can be used in order to boost organizational performance.
The significance of this study is proved by the fact that in many countries, the public sector is still larger and more influential than the private one. However, governments often fail to provide the necessary financial incentives for ensuring employees’ commitment. It means that some other factors (not connected with money) should be found to motivate workers, whose satisfaction directly predetermines the overall organizational performance.
The proposal of the research includes the following sections:
- an introduction explaining the significance of the issue of job satisfaction in the context of the public sector;
- the literature review that contains a brief overview of the articles addressing the job satisfaction problem;
- methodology aimed to clarify the steps of data collection (including methods and timeframe);
- conclusion, in which limitations and future directions of the research are identified.
Literature Review
Employee satisfaction can be defined as a positive state of mind that is caused by employees’ realization of their commitment to the government that is making a valuable contribution to its success that goes in hand with the achievement of personal goals (Guillon & Cezanne, 2014). This indicator is predetermined by both internal and external factors, including employees’ attitude towards their organization and its leaders, relationships with other employees, potential promotion, workplace environment, the organizations image, resources, training opportunities, security level, etc. (Shahzad, Khan, & Khan, 2015).
The main themes of the studies on the topic include a) the investigation of key incentives for workers of the public sector; b) the constituents of employees’ motivation and their ability to boost organizational performance; c) dependent (salary, working environment, loyalty to the organization, relations with co-workers and managers, possibilities for improvements, etc.) and independent (gender, age, ethnicity) factors predetermining job satisfaction and their comparative significance.
The concept of job satisfaction is especially applicable to the public sector. Some researchers assume that there are particular aspects that make the issue more complex in government agencies because of great influence from external factors exert on employees (Ellickson & Logsdon, 2002). However, this conclusion is questionable and requires closer examination. Others believe that financial incentives are less important for public workers than such an essential factor as being proud of the company, having common goals, and showing mutual loyalty (Caillier, 2011).
Finally, there also exists an assumption that it is impossible to identify which factors are predominant for such employees because of a huge number of diversified bodies that form the public sector (Blonski & Jefmanski, 2013). Almost all the researchers agree that the complexity of the issue accounts for the greater influence of job satisfaction in government-owned organizations. The methods used for data collection include literature reviews (Ellickson & Logsdon), survey questionnaires (Blonski & Jefmanski), and focus group studies (Caillier, 2011). No specific theories are represented as the authors mostly highlight the empirical results of the research.
No matter how different government-run organizations may seem, they still share a set of common conditions that predetermine job satisfaction. The most common are commitment to the organization and motivation, successful performance, relations with leaders, salary, working environment, promotion, and status (Kazan & Gumus, 2013). However, some studies also indicated that ability utilization, collaboration, independence, and creativity (Mafini & Pooe, 2013). Most researches agree on the conclusion that all the factors contribute positively to organizational performance.
Despite this, the role of loyalty is questioned as in some cases it proves to be dysfunctional which means not operating as it should (Guillon & Cezanne, 2014). There is also an opinion that job satisfaction does not have any influence on organizational performance whatsoever. The methods used are mostly quantitative and include factor analysis, statistical correlation analysis, job diagnostic survey, etc. (Ibrahim, Al Sejini, & Al Qassimi, 2004).
All the above-mentioned factors refer to dependent factors, which implies they vary across enterprises and are subject to changes. Among them, a clear definition of work duties is considered to be the basic factor of job satisfaction among public sector employees (Caillier, 2011). Along with these factors, there are also exist demographic factors including age, gender, ethnicity. As compared with the previous set, they have no connection with productivity (Guillon & Cezanne, 2014). However, some researchers conclude that even potential factors cannot be overlooked as they also affect the ultimate result (Bastari, Maarif, Puspitawati, & Baga, 2014). The multi-case study approach is implemented to collect the data. The methods used are predominantly quantitative (statistical analysis).
There are two main gaps based on all the investigated studies. The first one is connected with the negative effects of the factors identified on job satisfaction as all the researches focus on the positive impact. The second is the absence of practical offers about how to ensure the enhancement of organizational performance taking into account all the components of job satisfaction. Therefore, the question my study will try to answer is: how can government-run organizations use employee satisfaction as a working method of boosting their performance?
Methodology
As it has already been stated primary the research will try to identify how job satisfaction can be implemented in practice by government-run organizations with the purpose of boosting organizational performance. Thus, the research will attempt to address the following hypothesis: the working environment, relations with co-workers and leaders, salary, and other factors that vary across the public sector have a direct visible impact on job satisfaction and can improve organizational performance whereas the influence of such factors as gender, ethnicity, and age of employees is indirect and complimentary.
Dependent variables will include:
- employees’ attitude towards their organization (conceptually defined as positive or negative perception; operationally demonstrated in the scores given to the organization in the employees’ feedback analyzed in various studies);
- relationships with other employees and the workplace environment (conceptually – the ability to establish connections with people and environment; operationally – the level of satisfaction with the working conditions indicated by employees);
- resources, training, security level (conceptually – opportunities for improvement provided by the employer; operationally – statistical data showing what the organization can actually offer).
However, independent variables (such as employees’ age, gender, and ethnicity conceptually defined as personal indispensible characteristics of an employee and operationally represented in organisational statistics) that are believed to have less evident connection with job satisfaction and productivity will also be touched upon as potentially complementing the research data.
In order to investigate the key incentives for workers of the public sector accurately, the researcher will have to collect various secondary data, which will give a holistic picture of the problem. The analysis of multiple cases recorded in the existing literature will provide statistical data measuring the correlation of job satisfaction and organizational performance whereas research containing the results of interviews conducted in person or questionnaires given to employees in public organizations will help obtain the most reliable information about the issue under study. Thus, quantitative and qualitative research approaches will be combined to get a deeper insight into the problem.
The task is to choose the secondary studies that feature the analysis of various focus groups selected from the public sector. The selection is better not to be random: the accuracy of the study depends on how well focus groups were chosen by researchers. The most demonstrative are those studies that address employees of different age, gender, and nationality having different working experience, salary, and working conditions. The research will be more reliable if it will use the materials that reflect employees’ opinion on what can be improved in the organizational structure and working environment.
All the mentioned data can be collected from books and articles on the topic or on the Internet in press releases, on governmental sites, business magazines, etc. Requests will be made to the libraries and official sites in order to gain access to the restricted content. The results will be compares with the opinions of the leaders of different organizations in order to find out how general job satisfaction affects the performance of their organization.
The emphasis will be made on negative influences (e.g. if the increase in salary has ever led to worse performance). This approach is aimed to identify what factors are considered influential by different groups of employees and which of them really boost organizational performance according to the leaders. Afterwards, the received data will be compared with the results obtained by other researchers.
In order to ensure that the research had validity and reliability, I will use the data from other studies collected anonymously to be sure that participants answered honesty without being afraid of losing their jobs. I will not use standardized tests that offer to choose from the offered variants – it is more trustworthy to study employees own opinions.
This will make the research valid and relevant as it will reflect the real situation. Both empirical results (sources containing statistics) and theoretical data (relevant theories examined in literature reviews) will be accurately accumulated to give an evidenced-based confirmation of the hypothesis. Organizational leaders will be able to implement them in practice, which will make the study applicable.
Conclusion
Thus, the research will be based upon the data obtained from the secondary sources including qualitative and quantitative research of the factors influencing the levels of satisfaction. The major limitation will be the scope of the study: the restricted amount of the materials selected may cover the problem as it is presented in the organizations analyzed by the authors of these studies but may fail to address some issues that are organization-specific (or even country-specific as public sectors of different countries are not alike).
A lot of researchers tend to analyze organizations that are similar (e.g. that hire people of similar age and background) or make a random choices of study objects. Therefore, it will be impossible to get the holistic picture and to find a universal algorithm how to achieve job satisfaction. The second limitation will be connected with a short period of time that each research covers making it impossible to track the progress of practical implementation of the data obtained. Thus, if the study is successful, further research (larger in scale) will be required. It should be aimed at finding repetitive problems across the public sector and suggest solutions how to eliminate factors hindering job satisfaction and organizational performance.
References
Bastari, I., Maarif, M. S., Puspitawati, H., & Baga, L. M. (2014). The mapping of the strategic issues that affect the local governments’ performance. Bisnis & Birokrasi, 21(3), 180-189.
Blonski, K., & Jefmanski, B. (2013). Determinants of satisfaction of the employees of local government units. Economics & Sociology, 6(2), 158-170.
Caillier, J. G. (2011). Are state government workers satisfied with their jobs when the organsation is effective? Public Administration Quarterly, 35(1), 93-127.
Ellickson, M. C. (2002). Determinants of job satisfaction of municipal government employees. Public Personnel Management, 31(3), 343-358.
Guillon, O., & Cezanne, C. (2014). Employee loyalty and organizational performance: a critical survey. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 27(5), 839-850.
Ibrahim, M. E., Al Sejini, S., & Al Qassimi, O. A. A. (2004). Job satisfaction and performance of government employees in UAE. Journal of Management Research, 4(1), 1-12.
Kazan, H., & Gumus, S. (2013). Measurement of employees’ performance: A state bank application. International Review of Management and Business Research, 2(2), 429-441.
Mafini, C., & Pooe, D. R. (2013). The relationship between employee satisfaction and organisational performance: Evidence from a South African government department. SA Journal of Industrial Psychology, 39(1), 1-9.
Shahzad, S., Khan S., & Khan Z. (2015). Contributing factors of employee’s performance: A case study of local NGOs in Peshawar City. UTMS Journal of Economics, 6 (1), 127–134.