organizational culture and employee’s job satisfaction: the case of employees in seventh-day adventist church educational institutions in western kenya

Abstract

This study was motivated by the observed continued high turnover of employees from the Seventh-day Adventist (S.D.A) Church Education institutions. The purpose of this study was to determine the level of employee’s job satisfaction and the relationship between the organizational culture dimensions (institutional dominant characteristics, institutional leadership styles, management of employees, strategic emphasis, institutional glue and the criteria for measuring success in the institutions) and employee’s job satisfaction among the employees of Seventh-day Adventist (S.D.A) church maintained education institutions in Western Kenya region. In spite of there being many studies that had been carried out on the relationship between organizational culture and employee’s job satisfaction in Kenya and the world at large, there was so far no documented study that had specifically studied the relationship between the organizational culture dimensions in this study and specifically in the (S.D.A) Church maintained education institutions in Kenya. Therefore, this study forms a basis for reference not only to the managers of the S.D.A Church education institutions but also to prospective researchers. This study employed an explanatory research design and specifically survey. This approach was adopted owing to the fact that the study aimed at explaining the phenomena of the study rather than just describing them. Furthermore, an explanatory research is useful when a study aims at testing hypotheses as the case was with this study. Data was collected using a self constructed structured questionnaire administered to the teaching and support staff. A total of 380 questionnaires were distributed to the respondents. However, the usable questionnaires were 308. Data collected was presented in form of tables. The Statistical Package for Social Scientists (SPSS) was used to analyze the data. Data analysis was done at two levels. At the first level, data was analyzed using descriptive statistics that included frequencies, percentages, the mean, and the standard deviation. At the second level, multiple regression analysis was conducted to test the study hypotheses. Study findings from the descriptive statistics indicated that the level of employee’s job satisfaction in the institutions was generally low indicated by a high employee turnover. The inferential statics led to the findings that: institutional dominant characteristics, leadership style, management of employees and strategic emphases are significant and positive predictors of employee’s job satisfaction. However, the study findings indicated that institutional glue and the criteria used by the institutions to measure their success were not strong predictors of employee’s job satisfaction in the S.D.A Church Maintained education institutions. On the overall the study established that the prevailing organizational culture dimensions could account for up to 73.4% of the variance in employee’s job satisfaction in the S.D.A Church maintained education institutions. The researcher recommends that the institutions should redefine the glue that holds the employees together and redefine their criteria for measuring success because the study findings indicated that the current measures do not contribute to employee’s job satisfaction. Further, the institutions should work to improve the level of employee’s job satisfaction because the study findings pointed to a low employee’s job satisfaction.