LINK OF SATISFACTION COMMITMENT AND PERFORMANCE ON FACULTY MEMBERS’ PERFORMANCE AT HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS IN PAKISTAN
PhD Scholar S. M. Arsalan SHOEBY
Hamdard University, Pakistan

PhD Scholar Faisal SALEEM
KASBIT, Pakistan

MS Graduate Ambreen RAZZAQ
Institute of Business and Technology – Biztek, Pakistan

Naveed R. KHAN
Universiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris – UPSI, Malaysia Email: naveed.r.khan@gmail.com Abstract: The contribution of faculty members in producing scholars and economy building can’t be rule out in any country. The faculty member’s satisfaction, commitment and performance are the points to investigate in higher education sector of Pakistan, especially in private sector universities. This study is conducted in Pakistan to investigate the relationship of satisfaction with commitment and performance, and commitment association with performance. The tools were adopted from the studies of Rice & Schneider (1994) and Smeenk et al. (2008). The top five, private sector universities of Karachi, as per HEC criteria, were taken as target sample to conduct the survey. This research affirmed that satisfaction is positively correlated with commitment and performance, and commitment also correlated with performance of faculty members of private sector universities in Pakistan. Keywords: satisfaction, commitment, performance, faculty members, universities, degree awarding institutions, higher education, private sector.

Introduction
The growth of higher education is prolific since past decade. Every passing generation is more receptive to education in Pakistan. Thousands of candidates have applied and pass-out from Undergraduate and Postgraduate programs every year. With this growing trend it has been noticed that education sector has also become a desired employment sector, where individuals with high credentials applied by choice. According to Hyder & Reilly (2005) private sector universities and degree awarding institutions are paying handsome remuneration and good career path align with the policies of

Higher Education Commission. Hence, many faculty members are now focusing to pursue this career seriously. Moreover, it has been noticed that HEC remuneration and career policies are clearly defined. Faculty members are willing to develop and update themselves for their career growth. According to Federal Bureau of Statistics (2008) report Karachi city have 77% literacy rate, rank third in Pakistan. Moreover, Higher Education Commission (HEC) of Pakistan reported 23 private sector universities/degree awarding institutes chartered by Government of Sindh in Karachi. It generates more than 10,000 academic

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Management&Marketing, volume X, issue 2/2012 this study aims to determine the effects of satisfaction on faculty members’ commitment and performance in the private universities of Karachi, Pakistan. Moreover, the study analyzed the commitment sequel on performance of the faculty members. This study goes through the pivotal aspects of the resources of private sector universities of Pakistan and analyzed their impact on sensitive aspects of faculty members’ overall motivation. Hence, consistent with the discussion following research questions have been framed. 1. Does faculty members’ satisfaction effect on their level of performance? 2. Does faculty members’ commitment effect on their level of performance? Significance of the Study This study helps HEC to find the evidences of impact of satisfaction on commitment and performance. This evidence provides that faculty members’ performance shall make effect on university’s reputation and goodwill and student’s performance. This study also provides the future guideline for HEC to increase the level of education in private sector universities. It may give the insight for their HR practices & policies and shall also give a brief answer that why HEC should focus on private sector universities. In perspective of private institutes, this study is also beneficial to make HR policies and procedures for retaining the faculty members who shows their performance and commitment, related to academic and research activities and creates values for them. This study can also give a road map to private sector universities to develop their existing faculty members and encourage them by using pay for performance reward. Conceptualization of Literature and Hypotheses Development The linkage between Satisfaction and Performance

and non-academic employment opportunities. In consistent with the discussion, the growing employment trends in education sector (Hussain, 2005) also promote competition among faculty members to maintain their social and economic status. Most of the faculty members are now pursuing their MS and PhD studies, in Pakistan and abroad, to achieve the highest satisfaction and performance level. Likewise, faculty members are now taking interest in research activities, and hundreds of research publications have been published nationally and internationally every year. The performance of faculty members has been evaluated by his/her research output and teaching abilities (Smeenk et al., 2008). The higher academic performance, in terms of research output and teaching abilities during the year, brings higher monetary and nonmonetary outcome for the faculty members. Alternatively satisfied and high performance lecturers bring educational service quality in higher education institutions (Yusof et al., 2012). In this context, it is assumed that satisfaction with the level of work and environment, and commitment with profession has been directly related with job performance. Moreover, job performance may also vary with the gender, level of experience and qualification (Yussof et al., 2011). This study aims to measure the relationship of satisfaction, commitment and performance. There have been many studies on education in Pakistan however this study is unique in nature. This study will empirically explore the relationship of above mentioned variables in private sector universities and DAI operating in Karachi with especial focus on business and computer science faculty members.

Objectives and Research Questions of the Study
The motivation of the study is the rising demand of this profession. Hence

Management&Marketing, volume X, issue 2/2012 The idea that satisfied employees are more productive held through the 1970s (Christen et al., 2006). The previous studies on job satisfaction and performance showed a strong relationship and have a significant impact on individual and organizational performance (Skibba, 2002). Previous literature evident that seven different models can be used to describe the job satisfaction and job performance relationship, and are considered as unidirectional (Judge et al., 2001). In organizations job satisfaction is now become an influential factor and can play a significant role toward the achievements of organization goals (Alzaidi, 2008). Ostroff (1992) define job satisfaction as a common approach towards a job that is directly connected to the employee desires. Hence employee attitude is reflected in their job performance (Isen and Baron, 1991). Organizations that provide equity in rewards, challenging work and supportive working environment, may satisfied their employees well as compare to others organizations that are not practicing these satisfaction factors (Ostroff, 1992). In this case the relationship between employees’ job satisfaction and job performance is validated as satisfaction is an attitude to doing the job. Fisher et al. (2006) found a causal relationship between job satisfaction and job performance. Hence the relationship between these two is considered as an attitude about their job (Zembylas and Papanastasiou, 2004). It is also found true that employees who are involved in their jobs are good performers as compared to the employees whose attitude towards their job is not good (Rotenberry & Moberg, 2007). Hence it is a clear notion now that better attitude towards job resulted in enhancing the performance of an employee (Ahmad et al., 2010). Similar with other studies Mathis and Jackson (2005) also noticed the impact of job satisfaction on employee performance.

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The contention that job satisfaction is related to employee performance has been proved widely (Tella et al., 2007; Pettijohn, et al., 2007). Hence employees those have high job satisfaction level care more about the quality of their work (Long and Swortzel, 2007). Organizations considered that employee with higher levels of job satisfaction have higher levels of performance (Warsi et al., 2009). The rationales behind, why satisfaction will lead to the better performance is that perhaps it lead to good working life and reduce work-related stress (Christen et al., 2006). Warsi et al. (2009) found the positive and significant relationship between job satisfaction and organizational commitment and job performance conducted on private sector employees of Pakistan. On the basis of the foregoing literature review linking between job satisfaction and job performance, it is hypothesized that: H1: Satisfaction of faculty members with their organization shows higher job performance in private universities of Karachi. The linkage between Commitment and Performance Mowday et al (1979) did the pioneering work in organizational commitment and consider affective commitment as the strong predictor of commitment construct which is based on 15 items. However later work of Allen and Meyer (1990) and Meyer and Allen (1991; 1997) further contributes the normative and continues commitment scales to the organizational commitment literature. Organizational commitment is now become one of the significant measures to examine the performance on work, intention to stay and loyalty of an employee. Hence organizational commitment is considered as the most important construct of employee attachment and performance (Sommer et al., 1996). Organizational commitment measure enable employers

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Management&Marketing, volume X, issue 2/2012 progress based upon job performance would let employee more committed than those who do not have career progress. Employees who have stronger commitment to an organization will be stronger guided in actions by organizational values and procedures (Randall, 1987) and have higher performance (Romzek, 1989). It is believed that employee commitment is one of determinant factors for job performance and has become main concern in organizational behavior (Breaux, 2004). Hence, it is hypothesized as follows: H2: Commitment of faculty members with their organization shows higher job performance in private universities of Karachi.

to make decision to persist employees, predict employee involvement, absence, turnover, and had a positive effect on organizational competitive advantage (Mowday, 1998). Organizational commitment is referred to as an attitude that is characterized by three interrelated dimensions which include; acceptance of the organization's values, willingness to exert effort on behalf of the organization and desire to remain an employee of the organization (Yousef, 2000). Studies conducted on the educational institutes found that lecturers who are loyal to the organization demonstrate a strong acceptance of the institution’s values, tasks, and working manner (Park et al., 2005; Suraya and Yunus, 2012). Career

Conceptual schema

Work Satisfaction

Lecturer Performance
Job Commitment
Figure 1. Model depicting the relationship among WS, JC and LP

Research Methodology
The top five private sector universities of Karachi, as ranked by the HEC, were taken as target sample to conduct the survey. The data was collected from the faculty members of two disciplines of the universities i.e. management sciences and computer sciences, the reason is that these disciplines are very progressive and developed. The data collection was done through email survey, permanent and visiting faculty members were contacted to get the responses. Through several email reminders and contact attempts, via peers, researchers were successfully collected 82 filled

survey questionnaires out of 139, with the response rate of 59%. To measure the variables tool was adapted from two studies. Job satisfaction items adopted from the study of Rice & Schneider (1994). And commitment and job performance items were adapted from Smeenk et al. (2008). Furthermore lecturer satisfaction has nine items, lecturer commitment has 18 items and the job performance construct include four items to measure the variable. Job satisfaction items rated on five point Likert scale, 1= strongly dissatisfying to 5=strongly satisfying, and organizational commitment and job performance items judge on five point Likert scale, 1=

Management&Marketing, volume X, issue 2/2012 never to 5= always, and 1= very poor to 5= very good respectively. The Pearson’s correlation was employed to test the hypotheses. SPSS 17 was used to compute the statistical results. Findings of the Study Measures of Reliability

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To examine the reliability of the items Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient was employed. The alpha scores, presented in the table below, indicating that the instrument is reliable, hence open for the further analysis.

Construct Lecturer Satisfaction Lecturer Commitment Lecturer Performance Demographic Results The demographic analysis showed that 65 (79%) respondents were male and 17 (21%) respondents were female. The 51 (62%) faculty members are working as permanent faculty members in the universities however, 31 (37%) were visiting faculty members. The analysis found that majority of faculty members (65; 79%) hold the Master’s

No of items 9 18 4

Table 1 Alpha Score 0.898 0.885 0.874

degree in their respective discipline and only 17 (21%) had the PhD degree. Research participants mainly came from two backgrounds of knowledge. About 43 (52%) respondents were from the business management discipline and 39 (48%) were from computer science discipline. The graphical representation is given in figure 2:

Figure 2. Demographic results

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The table 2 summarized the respondent’s information. Table 2 Demographic Analysis Description Items F Gender Job Status Education Male Female Permanent Faculty Visiting Faculty Master Degree PhD Business Management Computer Sciences 65 17 51 31 65 17 43 39

Discipline

Descriptive Results Faculty members’ satisfaction construct has the mean score of 3.26, faculty members’ commitment construct has the mean score of 3.59, and faculty members’ performance has the mean score of 3.58. The descriptive results showed the moderate level of satisfaction, commitment and

performance among lecturers. The moderate level indicates that universities have taken initiatives to improve the satisfaction, commitment and performance of lecturers. However substantial improvements have to be taken to improve the level. A comparison of the mean scores of the variable is presented in the figure 3.

Figure 3. Descriptive results

Table 3 summarized the mean and standard deviation of the independent and dependent variables’ items.

Management&Marketing, volume X, issue 2/2012 Table 3 Descriptive Analysis of Variables Variables Mean S.D Lecturer 3.26 0.557 Satisfaction Lecturer 3.59 0.615 Commitment Lecturer 3.58 0.572 Performance Correlation Analysis Table 4 shows the results of correlation analysis. Both variables “satisfaction” (correlation coefficient value .681) and “commitment”

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(correlation coefficient value .597) were found positively correlated with lecturer performance. The statistical results showed significance relationship between the variables. Table 4

Correlation Analysis Variables Lecturer Satisfaction Lecturer Commitment *Pearson Correlation Sig. (2-tailed). Regression Analysis Statistical analysis of the data showed that 82.7% (adjusted R2 = 0.827) of the variance in faculty

Faculty Retention .681 .000 .597 .000

performance had been explained by “lecturer satisfaction” and “lecturer commitment”. Table 5

Model Faculty Performance

R .859

Model Summary Adjusted R Square R Square .827 .827

Std. Error of the Estimate .76559

Results of Hypotheses The computation for hypotheses are comprehensively depicts the results. The P value of all hypotheses is 0.001 which shows the significant relationship. However, the data for analysis is small i.e. only 82 respondents, hence, it may effects on statistical computations. Standardized coefficients score is also acceptable. Hence both hypotheses of this study are accepted. Both “satisfaction” (p-

value .001) and “commitment” (p-value .001) were found significant in explaining faculty performance. Among two independent variables “satisfaction” was found to be the most significant factor in explaining faculty performance (SC = .212) followed by “commitment” (SC = .182). According to estimated model a positive and significant impact of the independent variables was empirically obtained.

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Conclusions
This research supported that satisfaction effect on commitment as found in the studies of Mathis & Jackson, (2005) and Ostroff, (1992). The more satisfied the personnel the more committed s/he will be to the organization. Azeem (2010) proposed that the organization success not only dependents on how it makes the most of human competencies, but also how it stimulates commitment to an organization. This study also affirmed the relationship between satisfaction and performance of the lecturers of private universities; the findings of this study validate the researches of Abdullah et al (2011) Alzaidi (2008) and Judge et al (2001). The verification of hypothesis showed that, the satisfaction level of employee impact on willingness to put in his best in the job thereby could reach the highest level of productivity in the industry as a whole. Commitment is very important for organization and plays a pivotal role in organizational success and becomes the main element of human resources management (Mowday, 1998) which

affecting job performance (Breaux, 2004). This study found positive relationship between commitment and performance which confirms the results of the studies of Fredberg et al. (2008) Michelet et al. (2007) and Park et al, (2005). The high satisfaction and commitment level in faculty members lead them to achieve better job tasks, acceptance of organization values, low absenteeism, more input in decision making, increase tenure, loyalty and organization goal. HEC and private sector universities should take initiatives for the faculty members and try to bridge the gap between the faculty members and performance. They should also build a sophisticated knowledge based culture in private sector universities to create, communicate and spread the knowledge between and among the faculty members and the universities. Lastly, it is suggested that the universities should take initiatives regarding their faculty member’s satisfaction and commitment level and maintain the level of job performance outcomes.

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