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Work environment as a driver to university academic staff levels of job satisfaction in a selected public and private universities in Kenya
Barasa Samson Omachar
Eunice Majanga
Philip Mukonyi
Abstract
The issue of academic staff levels of job satisfaction has become a major issue of concern globally based on the fact that the academic staff play a significant role in the day-to-day affairs of the university. Both external and internally generated drivers determine the levels of job satisfaction. However, several studies have pointed out remuneration as the most critical driver to the academic staff's levels of job satisfaction falling short of examining the same issue with related issues in the light of a comparative analysis between private and public universities. This study, therefore, is determined to bring out a clear cross-cutting discussion in public and private universities and recommend possible policy action to improve on the academic staff levels of job satisfaction and consequently output. Guided by the pragmatism research paradigm and the Herzberg two-factor theory, the study employed a concurrent mixed research method design. The target population for this study was the members of the academic staff in a selected private and public university. Participants were purposively identified and selected; therefore, the sample size for public university was 115 participants, while that of private university was 60. Data was collected, evaluated, and analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively, giving an in-depth examination into the subject matter. The study found out that there is a strong relationship between work environment and the academic staff levels of job satisfaction; further, it discovered that there is a strong difference in the levels of job satisfaction between the academic staff in public and private universities in relation to the levels of academic staff job satisfaction. The study therefore proposes policy reforms in both public and private universities to ensure a favorable working environment is created for the members of the academic staff in order to increase staff output. For ethical consideration, the selected public university is referred to as University Alpha, while the private university is University Beta.
