Measuring the Motivating Potential Score of Academic Staff at the Lebanese International University

Ever since jobs have been found, motivation remains one of the most important contributors to performance. To measure employees’ perceptions of their jobs, in the mid 1970’s Hackman and Oldham developed the Job Diagnostic Survey based on the Job Characteristics Theory (JCT). The JCT remains one of the most suitable and widely accepted theories in the field of organizational behavior since it provides a model to perform work design through a set of implementing principles for enriching jobs. The model was tested for the first time ever in a Lebanese university by conducting the standard job diagnostic survey on 294 academic faculty members who work at the Lebanese International University (LIU), Lebanon’s largest private university. A standardized scale that assesses the motivating potential score of the job was used and the scores of different academic staff occupying various jobs across several schools varied significantly on all the job characteristics.