Antecedents of Job Satisfaction and Its Progressive Intertwinement with Organizational Commitment: From a Higher Education Perspective

As higher education institutions assume an ever-increasing role in the global shift to a knowledge-based economy, the requirement for a sufficient number of skilled academic staff as knowledge producers and disseminators at each institution becomes critical. In spite of this, schools and universities, like many other organizations, are seeing a major exodus of staff owing to poor job satisfaction and organizational commitment. To overcome these critical concerns, a thorough grasp of the factors acting as the driving force behind job satisfaction and its intertwinement with organizational commitment is vital. This study is conducted utilizing a PLS-SEM approach in order to achieve the stated objective. This research demonstrates the favorable influence of job rewards, job attributes, job stress, dispositional affects, job responsibility, and profession attractiveness on employee work satisfaction, as well as the negative effect of job stress. In addition, this study demonstrates the reciprocal nature of the relationship between job satisfaction and organizational commitment, with the influence of organizational commitment on job satisfaction predominating over the influence of job satisfaction on organizational commitment. This research not only contributes to the enrichment of the relevant literature and the resolution of the associated academic debate, but it also gives evidence-based policy suggestions that can be implemented to increase employee job satisfaction and organizational commitment.