| Abstract: | This study was conducted to apprehend the overall job satisfaction of
non-PhD academic staff in universities in Tanzania. The study was based
on Herzberg’s Two-Factor (motivators and hygiene) theory. As
organizations undertake measures to ensure employee retention,
employee job satisfaction to the organization has now become more
critical than ever due to the fact it is an essential determinant of
employee job performance which ultimately translated into realization of
organizational core functions. The study is motivated by the situation of
Tanzanian universities, whereby universities as critical institutions which
were tasked to prepare corps of educated elite to serve the community
and entire nation.
Over the last three decades, for instance, public universities have been
facing numerous challenges which have affected their ability to motivate
and retain their academic staff. This has been as a result of the economic
crisis the country has been experiencing since late 1970’s. Consequently,
physical facilities are run down, student riots are on increase while
academic staff are dissatisfied due to variety of factors including
inadequate and non-competitive salaries and non-monetary factors led
into high turnover of academic staff in many universities to other
seemingly promising economic sectors while those who remained are
actively seeking alternative activities to supplement their income.
Crumbling situations in public universities is further characterized by
limited capacity to absorb all the qualifying applicants, and has
necessitated the increase number of private universities. Although rapid
increase of private universities within a short period of time, stiff
competition among major religious denominations to establish private
universities amid acute shortage of highly qualified, international-acclaimed and well-experienced academic staff, hence, old and new
universities resort to recruit junior academic staff, the majority with
Master or Bachelor degrees, some are fresh graduates. The study
employed cross-sectional survey design in collecting data from non-PhD
academic staff in both public and private universities in Tanzania. The
data for this study was collected using questionnaire which were
distributed to 150 non-PhD academic staff from two universities (one
private and one public university). In addition, semi-structured
interviews were conducted to Deputy Vice Chancellors with the aim of
validating the data collected from the questionnaires. |
