THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN JOB SATISFACTION AND ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT IN PUBLIC HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTION: THE CASE OF ARBA MINCH UNIVERSITY, ETHIOPIA

For any organization the most important challenge is to retain the talented work force. In order to retain talented work force it is very important to identify factors that affect commitment levels of employees. This study investigates the relationship between job satisfaction and organizational commitment in terms of academic staff at Arba Minch University. In addition, this study sought to determine level of job satisfaction and organizational commitment as well as difference of employees’ score on organizational commitment based on demographics. Data was collected through self administered questionnaire from a sample of 100 academic staff. These respondents were selected using both stratified and simple random sampling technique. Organizational commitment questionnaire (OCQ), job satisfaction survey(JSS) and demographic questionnaire were administered to the respondents and the data collected were analyzed statistical analysis such as descriptive, Pearson product moment correlation coefficient, and independent T-test and ANOVA. Findings of the study indicate that, employees were fund to be most satisfied the relationship that they have with their coworkers, nature of the work and communication and lest satisfied with pay they receive and promotion; and they enjoy average level of overall job satisfaction. The result of descriptive result indicates that employees score more on affective commitment, normative commitment and continuance commitment respectively. The result of correlation analysis revealed that there exist positive significant relationship between all facts of job satisfaction (promotion, supervision, fringe benefits, contingent rewards, relationship with coworkers, nature of the work and communication) except pay with organizational commitment. Moreover, strong positive and significant relationship was found between job satisfaction with affective and normative commitment, however no significant relationship was found with continuance commitment. Findings also suggested that, employees having longer tenures, married, higher educational qualification, and older aged show more commitment than the employees having smaller tenures with the organizations, single, lower qualified and younger in age respectively.