What is the state of job satisfaction among academic staff at Malaysian Universities?

• Main Authors: Abdullah Hashim, Raemah, Mahmood, Rosli
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Universiti Tun Abdul Razak 2011
• Subjects: HD28 Management. Industrial Management
• Online Access: http://repo.uum.edu.my/9565/1/journal.pdf; http://repo.uum.edu.my/9565/; http://ejournal.unirazak.edu.my/

This paper aims to discuss the state of job satisfaction among the academic staff in public and private Malaysian Universities.Academic staff turnover at universities was reported to be at an alarming rate especially at the Private Higher Education Institutes (PHEIs) and past studies have found that the reason for leaving was the result of low job satisfaction.The total useable questionnaires were 387 with a response rate of 36 percent. The result revealed that the academic staff from both the public universities and private universities was satisfied with the overall job contents and contexts of their job. Ho wever, academic staff of both these universities have ranked “salary” as being “least satisfied”.This study implies that policy makers and academic leaders at the universities should seriously consider benchmarking their compensation system and practices with the best practices of other educational institutions or with other service industries. Other considerations would be the availability of research grants, funds for attending conferences, sabbatical leave and close relationships with peers and superiors and favorable working conditions which would also enhance the job satisfaction among the academic staff. Future studies should consider alternative modes of enquires such as employing the longitudinal method of data collection design and a nationwide survey covering samples from the whole population of the higher institutions of learning in Malaysia that would be more significant in making generalizations.