A Dissertation Submitted to SOPAM as a Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Human Resource Management of Mzumbe University
Job enrichment has become an important aspect to employee’s job satisfaction through a joint logic for skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy and feedback. Public organizations in the developing world are faced with recurring performance constraints which leads to delayed and poor service delivery. Job enrichment is suggested to be among ways to improve efficiency in service delivery or attainment of organizational goals as it satisfies employees’ psychological and social needs thus improving job satisfaction. This study aimed to investigate if job enrichment improve job satisfaction to academic staff, a case of Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA)-Morogoro. The study specific objectives were:- determine the existence of job enrichment practices to academic staff at SUA, explore the effects of job enrichment to employee’s psychological state among member’s academic staff at SUA, examine the link between job enrichment and job satisfaction of academic staff at SUA, and assess the extent to which members of academic staff feel about their Growth-Need Strength. A case study research design was adopted and a total sample size of 104 respondents was selected through quota and judgmental sampling techniques. Data were collected through questionnaire, interview and documents review. Quantitative data were analysed by Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) while the qualitative data were analysed by content analysis. Results revealed that job enrichment exists to the academic staff (M=3.84; SD=1.05) and has positive influence to employee’s ways of thinking about their job (M=3.8; SD= 1.16). There is a link between core job characteristics (task variety, task identity, task significance, task autonomy and feedback) which are elements of the job enrichment and workers job satisfaction (M=3.68; SD= 1.12). Growth needs strength (GNS) on the other hand, was found to be weak (55%) in moderating relationship between job enrichment and job satisfaction. The study recommended on improvement of job characteristics, enhancing recognition of academic staff, improvement distribution of task variety, provision of enough resources, empowerment of junior staff, job enrichment and job pay and other incentives and area for further research.