Factors affecting job satisfaction of Turkish special education professionals: predictors of turnover

Research has documented higher turnover among professionals working with children with special needs and has suggested a number of reasons for this phenomenon. This study investigated factors affecting job satisfaction of Turkish social professionals working in special education, in terms of work conditions and their work experiences in Turkish special education institutions. Some 245 professionals participated in the study. A questionnaire developed by the authors was administered. The main body of the questionnaire consists of two sections concerning professional background, work status and a Likert-type scale on factors affecting special education professionals’ job satisfaction. Results show the factors affecting special education professionals’ job satisfaction to include lack of printed material, lack of support, lack of audio-visual material, insufficient assessment, pupil attitudes in the classroom, paperwork overload, lack of professional development opportunities, conflicts with colleagues, secondary duties and insufficient salary. Besides, maintenance of lack of administrative support, paperwork overload, after school hours and insufficient salary affect the job satisfaction of professionals and lead them to leave the job. The relationship between work status and planning to leave the job remained insignificant statistically.     

How pension accrual affects job satisfaction

Using a sample of 429 employees in a large, unionized public utility company in Canada, we examine the incentive effects of a final-earnings pension plan on employees’ job satisfaction. Contrary to rational economic expectations, job satisfaction is found negatively related to expected accruals under the pension plan. Satisfaction was also lower among those who perceived a higher likelihood of being declared redundant, had better nonmarket alternatives, and who viewed conflictual approaches as most effective in resolving prior disputes at work. Conversely, employees who perceived greater support for employer-sponsored training, perceived such training to be effective, and believed cooperative approaches to dispute resolution worked best, were more satisfied. Implications for pension theory, research, and policy are discussed.     

Retention and job satisfaction of child welfare supervisors

Supervisors play a vital role in workplace productivity and organizational health, and are at the forefront of improving the capacity of the child welfare workforce. Yet there is limited research about their organizational longevity and satisfaction compared with child welfare caseworkers. This study uses data from 85% of supervisors statewide in a child welfare organization to describe intent to leave, supervision provided and received, and job qualities. Questions are: (1) what are the personal and job qualities of child welfare supervisors? (2) To what extent do supervisors report receiving and providing supervision, and (3) what personal and job qualities predict intent to leave among supervisors? Using bivariate and multivariate analyses, results showed that supervisors who receive more frequent supervision report lower levels of job stress and time pressure and more positive perceptions of organization leadership. These supervisors also reported providing more supervision to caseworkers. Greater time pressure predicted intent to leave among supervisors, indicating that there is an important balance between workload and resources in efforts to maintain quality supervisors.     

The importance of job training to job satisfaction of older workers

If job training has positive impacts on worker satisfaction, then job training can have desirable consequences for an organization that result both directly through its effects on productivity and indirectly through its effects on job satisfaction. Furthermore, the aging of the workforce implies that older workers will become increasingly important to firms and to the economy. This study, therefore, seeks to examine the relationship between job training and job satisfaction, focusing in particular on U.S. workers born in 1964 or earlier. The results of ordered logit regression analysis indicate that availability and quality of training received directly affect job satisfaction.     

The impact of internal communication satisfaction dimensions on job satisfaction dimensions and the moderating role of LMX

This paper presents the results of the research on the predictive role of internal communication satisfaction dimensions on job satisfaction dimensions of middle managers from 131 companies in Serbia and the moderating influence of the leader member exchange relationship between middle managers and their supervisors (LMX) on that role. The research has shown that some internal communication satisfaction dimensions have statistically positive impact on job satisfaction dimensions and the moderating effect of LMX has also been noticed.     

Ethical conflict and job satisfaction of public relations practitioners

This study attempted to explore the linkage between ethical conflict and job satisfaction, causes of ethical conflicts, and consequences of job dissatisfaction of public relations practitioners. The findings show that many practitioners confirmed the existence of ethical conflict in their workplace and suggest that ethical challenges are largely triggered by top management's ethical standard. Although practitioners resolved conflicts by leaving their companies, they also recognized the hope in resolving the ethical challenges that they had faced. Participants emphasized the importance of an open communication environment, the support of internal stakeholders, and a high professional standard.     

Graduate education and the academic job market

This article reviews actual and projected college enrollments, and demand for faculty, during the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. Although new PhDs were finding satisfying employment in government, business and industry, many graduate programs in sociology were slow to expand their academically-oriented curricula to include a concern with sociological practice when the academic job market contracted in the late 1970s. This suggests that departments may quickly reestablish narrowly focused curricula once the academic market expands again in the late 1990s. As a result, the multiple career options currently available to graduate students again may be replaced by an exclusive focus on research careers in academia.     

The impact of unions on job satisfaction,organizational commitment,and turnover

Conclusion The research on the exit-voice hypothesis, both in the United States and abroad, shows convincingly that most of the variance in the negative union effect on job satisfaction can be accounted for by job quality, industrial relation climate, and wages. Union members see their jobs as less attractive than do nonunion workers in terms of skill requirements, task complexity, the amount of autonomy or discretion available, and opportunities for promotion. Union members also perceive the supervision they receive and the labor-management relations they experience as less satisfactory. They are, however, clearly better off with respect to wages, benefits, and pensions. But when it comes to job satisfaction, the economic advantages of union jobs are not sufficient to compensate for job content and work environment factors. It comes as no surprise to the job satisfaction researcher that job content — the nature of the tasks people are given to do — weighs heavily in overall job satisfaction scores. While there are individual differences in the degree to which people prefer intrinsically interesting jobs, there is ample empirical evidence showing that autonomy, skill variety, complexity, challenge, and advancement are important determinants of people's affective reactions to their jobs (Deci, 1975; Hackman and Oldham, 1980; Kanfer, 1990). The relative importance of job content factors to overall job satisfaction is also mirrored in the most commonly used measures of job satisfaction (Weiss et al., 1967).     

Differences in the job satisfaction of high-paid and low-paid workers across Europe

Data from six waves of the European Community Household Panel (1996–2001) in 11 countries suggest that low-paid employees are significantly less satisfied with their job than the high-paid in southern Europe, but not in the northern countries. Proxying job satisfaction for job quality, the authors show that while low-paid employment does not necessarily mean low-quality employment, workers in some countries suffer the double penalty of low pay and low job quality. Such dualism across European labour markets, they argue, reflects different country-level approaches to the trade-off between flexibility and security, calling for a policy focus on the latter to enhance job quality.     

Further evidence of automatic reinforcement effects on verbal form

The Analysis of Verbal Behavior - The form of a verbal response allows for reinforcement mediation and language transmission across cultures. Reinforcement, in turn, plays a decisive role in...     

Call centres and job satisfaction in Italy: employment conditions and socio-biographical patterns

ABSTRACT

The article examines job satisfaction in 21 Italian call centres. The results of research carried out on 1715 handlers indicate how dissatisfaction prevails among call centre representatives (CCRs) and how it is influenced by aspects related to some organisational characteristics (service delivered, size and organisational typology), on one side, and to different aspects of working conditions (contract, wage and tenure) and participants’ biographical and working profiles of CCRs (gender, age, educational attainment), on the others. However, the most interesting finding emerges by distinguishing different dimensions of job satisfaction (extrinsic and intrinsic-relational). In particular, the relationship between type of contract and job satisfaction is rather interesting. For non-permanent workers, in fact, the probability of being dissatisfied is decidedly greater if we consider the extrinsic dimension of job satisfaction. Instead, when the intrinsic-relational dimension is taking into account, atypical workers are no more dissatisfied than the permanent ones. Job insecurity and limited perspectives in terms of work alternatives, safeguards and rewards, seem to be the source of greatest dissatisfaction for Italian CCRs. This certainly does not surprise considering the Italian development model and its dualistic labour market, highly segmented between insiders and outsiders.