Dimensions of Kenyan University Academic Staff’s Job Satisfaction in View of Various Managerial Leadership Practices

Abstract

Attaining high levels of academic staff job satisfaction has proved to be challenging for university management. This paper is an excerpt of a study that investigated the magnitude of Kenyan University academic staff’s job satisfaction based on various managerial leadership practices.  The study focused on the Rift Valley Region (RVR) of Kenya. The study targeted 2,773 members of university management and lecturers in the chartered public and private universities with their main campuses in Rift Valley Region (RVR) with a sample of 605 participants. Convergent parallel mixed methods design was employed with census, random and systematic sampling used to select the respondents. Purposive sampling was also used to select information-rich cases. Questionnaires, interview and document analysis guides were the main data collection instruments. Data analysis was done by coding and categorizing qualitative data into themes while quantitative data was analysed using descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation coefficient, independent-samples t-test, One-way ANOVA and regression coefficients, with the use of the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 20. The study established some managerial leadership practices that had strong association with lecturers’ job satisfaction in Kenyan universities.

Keywords: Dimension, Managerial leadership practices, Job satisfaction, Academic staff, University.