The Influence of Personality on the Relationship between Quality of Work Life and Job Satisfaction among Academic Staff in Kenyan Public Universities

A range of factors can influence the performance of employees and hence success of any organisation. Some of these factors include quality of work life, job satisfaction and dispositional factors like personality of employees. This study explored the influence of personality on relationship between quality of work life and job satisfaction of lecturers in Kenyan Public Universities. The population of the study consisted of all lecturers in the public universities. The study selected a sample of 356 respondents from the population using proportionate stratified sampling based on numbers of lecturers and their levels in each university. A descriptive crosssectional survey was used. The study used primary data collected using structured questionnaires. Descriptive statistics was used to analyze the characteristics of the respondents. Correlation analysis was done to determine the strength of the relationship between variables. Multiple regression technique was used to test the hypothesis. The study showed that personality characteristics of lecturers in public universities is more tuned towards agreeable, openness and conscientious. Lecturers were also seen to have high levels of job satisfaction. The study also showed that the relationship between quality of work life and job satisfaction is significant and that personality as a significant influence on the relationship between n quality of work life and job Original Research Article Muindi; BJEMT, 15(2): 1-11, 2016; Article no.BJEMT.28334 2 satisfaction. The results of this study can be used by policy makers in human resources management, practitioners of human resource management and scholars of human resources management. The study offers a new insight into how personality can affect the relationship between quality of work life and job satisfaction.


INTRODUCTION
The modern organizations in the 21 st century continue to face competitive pressures which require them to continuously identify and address factors that can increase organizational effectiveness for competitive advantage. Human resources is key to this effectiveness and competitive advantage [1]. This view is supported by Barney [2] in the resource based view which states that for organizations to have competitive advantage, they must have resources which are rare, valuable, rare, inimitable, and nonsubstitutable. Human resources is one such organizational resource which needs to have these characteristics for an organization to succeed. To optimize on the competitive value of human resources organization need to address aspects such as quality of work life and employee job satisfaction. Organizations need to also appreciate that employee dispositional factors like personality and job satisfaction can influence their performance. Individual characteristics [manifested in personality] and the way they perceive the environment may influence their behavior and job satisfaction [3]. Every organization would be interested satisfied employees.
Quality of work life programmes are expected to be associated job satisfaction [4]. But Vroom's expectancy theory states that an employee's behavior can also be affected by individual dispositional factors such as personality, skills, knowledge, experience and abilities [5]. Personality determines how individuals react to the environment. Behavior is influenced by how individuals perceive and react to the environment provided by the organization [3], which in this research can mean quality of work life environment. Several authors have established that personality and job satisfaction are related and that personality characteristic affects job satisfaction in various ways [6,7] and [8].
Oshagbemi studied the effects of gender on job satisfaction of UK academics and found that gender does not affect the job satisfaction of university teachers directly [9]. Toker conducted a study on job satisfaction of academic staff in Turkey and found that job satisfaction levels of the academicians were found to be moderately high [10]. Previous studies have not considered the role of these moderating role personality on the relationship between QWL and employee job satisfaction. The objective of this study was to determine whether personality affects the relationship between QWL and job satisfaction in among academic staff in Kenyan public universities.

Quality of Work Life
Quality of work life is important for organizations that want to attract and retain best talents. In the 21st century, the need to balance increasing job demands and employee family demands are becoming more and more important [11]. In order to attract and retain talents therefore, attention needs to be given to quality of work life. Good QWL is defined as a favorable work conditions and environments that encourages and promote employees' satisfaction, provides employees with job security and adequate and fair compensation [12]. Heskett, Jones, Loveman, Sasser and Schlesinger [13] define QWL as a feeling that employees have towards their jobs, colleagues and the organization This means that if employees feel good about their work, fellow colleagues and the organization as a whole, then they are happy doing their work and consequently the QWL is good. QWL is influenced by financial and non financial factors [14,15,16,17,18,19].
According to Islam and Siengthai and Lawler [17,18] QWL is the employee perceptions of the favorableness or unfavourableness of their physical and mental wellbeing at work arising from the working conditions, occupation health and safety, pay, job security, participation in decision making, management support and hours of work. Hart [15] states that psychological distress and employee morale has an effect on employee perception on QWL. Employee participation in decision making either as individuals or work groups benefits both employers and employees and impacts on QWL [20]. In the case of Walton [14] QWL is influenced by the employee's perception about the adequacy and fairness of compensation, the working conditions, health and safety, opportunities for growth and development, job security, social integration, constitutionalism in the work place and work life balance.
Mishra [16] states that QWL is a related to employees income and education of the employees. Employees with higher education and higher income perceive higher levels of QWL. Poor working conditions, heavy workload, lack of work family balance, lack of involvement in decision making, relationship with supervisors and peers contribute to quality of work life [19].

Job Satisfaction
Worker morale and job satisfaction is important for organizational performance. Job satisfaction is a pleasurable emotional state resulting from how one feels about their job and job experiences [21]. Schneider and Snyder [22] argues that job satisfaction arises from the way a person evaluates work conditions. Further, Spector [23] asserts that job satisfaction is the extent to which people like [satisfaction] or dislike [dissatisfaction] their jobs. Additionally, job satisfaction is related to the extent to which one attains advancement, achievement, team work, job enhancement and job enrichment from the job. From these definitions therefore, job satisfaction has to do with how individuals perceive or evaluate the job and this perception is dependent on individual unique circumstances, values and expectations.
There are three ways of explaining job satisfaction from the perspective of various authors. Job satisfaction can be explained using job characteristics, organizational characteristics or employee characteristics [employee disposition] [24,25]. Research has shown that the nature of the job, individual's disposition and the characteristics of the organization that the individual works for have a significant influence on job satisfaction. Hackman and Oldham [26] who developed the job characteristics model held this same view by asserting that job characteristics generates ideal condition for high levels of motivation, satisfaction, and performance. Secondly, Jex [25] states that the ways an employee processes social information from the organization [organizational characteristics] will influence job satisfaction. Employees look to their colleagues to make sense of and develop positive or negative attitudes about their work environment leading to satisfaction. In other words, if employees see that their colleagues as being satisfied then they will most likely be satisfied. This is supported by research on social information processing theory that states that social environment affects the workers attitudes and behaviors and hence job satisfaction [27]. Lastly, the workers characteristics [disposition] scholars argues that the basis of explaining job satisfaction is the employees internal disposition and that some employees will be satisfied or dissatisfied with their work no matter the nature of the job or the organizational environment. This is because some people are genetically positive in their disposition while others are negative in disposition [25].
There are several factors that cause either satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the job. These are both intrinsic and extrinsic factors and include opportunity for growth, job related stress, quality of supervision, relationship with work groups, work standards, degree of success in the job, salary, benefits and level of authority [28,29]. Other factors include job security, and the ability to retire within the organization.

Personality
Personality is one of the individual disposition factors. Personality can be described as the individual pattern of psychological processes arising from individual characteristics. Different individuals have different emotions, behaviors, feeling and patterns of thought [30] and hence different personality. Individuals possess unique and dynamic set of characteristics that uniquely influences his or her motivation, cognitions, and behaviors in different situations [31]. Personality is an individual's characteristic patterns of emotions, thought, and behavior, together with the psychological mechanisms which arises from those patterns [32]. The entire mental organization of a human being at any stage of his development forms individual personality. Every stage of human character which is built up in the course of one's life, be it temperament, morality, attitude, intellect or skill, is part of personality [33]. Personality is influenced by the environment in which the individual lives. The environment leads individuals to be different in dimensions such as intelligence, talent, friendship, education, responsibility, and nervousness.
There are various personality theorist who look at personality in different perspectives. The psychoanalytic see personality from a biological perspective while other theorists use the individual traits and characteristics [disposition] perspectives.
The existential perspective postulates the individuals have an innate need that moves them toward realization of their potentialities if environmental conditions are right. Lastly, the social behaviorist perspective assumes that most of our behavior is learned and guided by our motives.

QWL and Job Satisfaction
Several researchers have done studies relating to quality of work life and job satisfaction. QWL is an attitudinal response to the prevailing work environment. Work environment such as job roles, supervisors and organizational characteristics directly and indirectly shape employees experiences, attitudes and behavior [34]. Wooden and Warren [35], research suggests that job satisfaction is closely related to QWL. When employees enjoy the environment in which they work, they tend to be more satisfied [36]. Job satisfaction is strongly associated with work attributes including different aspects of work contents [as task significance, variety, and use of skill], job security, pay and other benefits, recognition, work conditions, promotion opportunities, effective communication structures in the firms, relations with coworkers and supervisors and participation in managerial decision making.
In a study which examined QWL and job satisfaction among professionals, clerical, sales and service workers in Australia, Bearfield [4] found that there are distinct causes of dissatisfaction among different the groups of employees. The study found level of job satisfaction to differ in aspects such as salary, work load, work pressure, the type of job, relations among coworkers, and other aspects. This implies that different group of employees have different concerns and attitudes and react differently to different aspects of work. In their study on employee affective reactions to organizational quality efforts, Gardner and Carlopio [37] found out that employee who perceive greater organizational quality effort are likely to show more positive affective reactions. Ganguly [38] in a study of quality of work life and job satisfaction of university employees in India concluded that employee's positive or negative perception of quality of work life significantly contribute towards satisfaction or dissatisfaction.

Personality and Job Satisfaction
Scholars have showed that there could be a relationship between personality and job satisfaction. Staw and Ross [39] study showed that people with positive emotions are more satisfied with their jobs. Greenberg and Baron [40] assert that some personality factors could have more effect on job satisfaction than others. This assertion is supported by Barrick and Mount [41] who found that people who are conscientiousness are likely to perform better in their job. Scheider & Dachler [7] argue that over time, job satisfaction is stable and that individual personality causes satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the job. In a meta-analysis focusing on personality and job satisfaction, Judge, Heller and Mount [8] concluded that neuroticism, conscientiousness and extraversion are more associated with job satisfaction than agreeableness and openness to experience. People who are high on neuroticism are more likely to be dissatisfied than others with low neuroticism while people who are conscientious are more likely to be satisfied. Spector [23] asserts that there are many different personality factors that have been correlated to job satisfaction, but overall, locus of control [LOC] has been correlated with job performance as well as job satisfaction. This assertion is supported by Patten [42] who in a study of internal auditors found that employees with internal LOC performed better than those with external LOC.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
The research design was a descriptive cross sectional survey. The population consisted of all academic staff in all seven public universities. There are a total of 5066 lecturers in the seven universities to be studied. Krejcie and Morgan [43] recommends a sample of 357 for a population of 5000. A sample of 365 was therefore chosen for the study. This was proportionately divided into five strata as per the grading of academic staff in the universities. A list of staff, their rank and department was sourced from the Universities websites and Human Resources Departments or equivalents in the universities. Simple random sampling was applied to select individual respondents from each stratum. The study relied on primary data that was collected using a semi structured questionnaire. Coefficient of determination [R 2 ] was used to measure the amount of variation between the study variables. Since the aim of this study is to predict the influence of predictor variable on dependent variables using a regression equation, unstandardized regression coefficients were used. The moderating effect of personality on the relationship between quality of work life and job satisfaction was computed using the method proposed by Baron  To test the hypotheses, multiple regression analysis was conducted at 95% confidence level. Multiple regression is used to explore the predictive ability of a set of independent variables on one continuous dependent measure [variable]. For each hypothesis, the goodness of fit was established to indicate how well the independent variables account for the variance in dependent variable. The overall significance was then determined to establish whether the independent variable significantly predicted the dependent variable. Since the aim of this study is to predict the relationships between a dependent variable and one or multiple independent variables using a regression equation, unstandardized regression coefficients were used.

Descriptive Statistics Analysis
Descriptive statistical analysis was done to present the characteristics of the respondents in respect to the variables of the study. Personality characteristics were divided into five components. To be able to determine the most dominant and least dominant characteristic among academic staff, it was important to analyze all the characteristics as shown in the Table 2.
Based on the analysis in Table 2  Job satisfaction was classified under five components adopted from Job Descriptive Index [45]. Table 3 presents a summary of job satisfaction as revealed by the study. . This analysis implies that academic staff in public universities are satisfied with their jobs especially in terms of task significance and job autonomy. They are also satisfied with skills variety and feedback. But there is an element of dissatisfaction in the task identity.

Correlation between Dependent and Independent Variables
In this study, correlation analysis was used to explore relationships between the variables, specifically to assess both the direction [positive or negative] and strength of the relationship between the variables. This was crucial to assess whether any relationship exists between the variables before carrying out further analysis. In addition, the correlation matrix will help to determine whether multicollinearity exists between the independent variables. Multicollinearity exists when independent variables are highly correlated. [Green, Tull and Albaum [46]] and Lehmann, Gupta and Steckel [47] respectively suggest 0.9 and 0.7 as a threshold of correlations for the harmful effect of collinearity In this situation the coefficient estimates of the multiple regression may change erratically in response to small changes in the model or the data and hence multicollinearity leads to a poor regression model.
The relationship between employee quality of work life, personality and job satisfaction e was analysed using Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient. Table 4 presents the results of correlation analysis.  [2-tailed] As shown in Table 4 above the relationship between quality of work life and job satisfaction was weak, positive and statistically significant [r =.257, p<0.01]. The relationship between personality and job satisfaction was moderate and statistically significant [r=.400, p<0.01]. Additionally, the relationship between quality of work life and personality is also was weak, positive and statistically significant [r =.172, p<0.01]. This analysis confirms that there is a significant relationship between all the variables in the study. The analysis also confirms that there is no multicollinearity among the variables and that the correlation is below the threshold suggested Green, Tull and Albaum [46] and Lehmann, Gupta and Steckel [47] and therefore regression analysis can be done on the variables in this study.

Hypothesis Testing
Hypothesis I: QWL has a statistically positive significant effect on job satisfaction among Academic staff of public Universities in Kenya.
The research findings indicated that QWL explained 6.6% of the variance in job satisfaction [R 2 = .066]. The overall model reveals a statistically significant relationship between QWL and job satisfaction F [1, 306] = 21.588, p < .05 as shown in Tables 5 and 6.  Table 7. Their beta coefficients are not different from zero since p>0.05. This analysis implies that QWL significantly predicts job satisfaction with opportunities for growth and work life balance being significantly related to job satisfaction while compensation, work environment and involvement and recognition do not significantly predict job satisfaction among academic staff in public universities.
Hypothesis two [H1] suggested that QWL has a statistically significant effect on job satisfaction among academic staff of public universities in Kenya. The overall model was statistically significant and indication that the relationship between QWL and job satisfaction is statistically significant [p<0.05]. The hypothesis was therefore supported.

Hypothesis II: Personality has a positive significant effect on the relationship between QWL and job satisfaction.
The results of hierarchical regression predicting job satisfaction from QWL, personality and the interaction between QWL and Personality [QWL*PER] are shown in Table 8 . This analysis implies that personality has moderated the relationship between QWL and job satisfaction and therefore hypothesis three was accepted.      Table 11. This analysis implies that openness and agreeableness have the greatest contribution to the moderating effect of personality on the relationship between QWL and job satisfaction. This is confirmed further by the higher scores for openness to experience and agreeableness in the descriptive statistics.
Hypothesis two [H2] assessed the influence of personality on the relationship between QWL and Job satisfaction in Kenya Public Universities by suggesting that Personality has a moderating effect on the relationship between QWL and job satisfaction. Since the R 2 change was significant as well as the interaction term [p<0.05] and the regression weights of QWL and personality changed upon the inclusion of the interaction term and their effect on job satisfaction was no longer statistically significant [p>0.05], personality has a moderating effect on the relationship between QWL and Job satisfaction and therefore hypothesis three was accepted.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS
The first objective of the study was to determine effect of QWL on job satisfaction among academic staff of public universities in Kenya.
The study confirmed that hat there is a positive significant relationship between these two variables and that overall, QWL has a positive and significant effect on job satisfaction. This means that indeed QWL contributes to job satisfaction. Specifically, the study revealed that opportunities for growth and work life balance significantly contributed to performance while compensation, work environment, job security, and involvement and recognition did not predict job satisfaction. This supports Wooden and Bearfield [4] who, in their study of QWL among Australian employees, found that job satisfaction levels was different on different aspects of quality of work life. Similarly a study by Gunguly [38] found that that QWL significantly contributed towards increasing satisfaction or dissatisfaction as experienced by the employees in their concerned job and depended largely on the perceived positivity or negativity of the relevant dimensions.
The second objective of this study addressed the influence of personality on the relationship between QWL and job satisfaction. The results of hierarchical multiple regression model revealed a statistically significant relationship between QWL, personality and job satisfaction. When the interaction between QWL and Personality was introduced into the regression equation, there was a statistically significant increase in variance. The regression weights of QWL and personality changed upon the inclusion of the interaction term and their effect on job satisfaction was no longer statistically significant. This implies that personality had a moderating effect on QWL and job satisfaction and the hypothesis was supported. The key personality sub scales which had a moderating role were agreeableness and openness. This was confirmed further by the higher scores for openness to experience and agreeableness in the descriptive statistic. These findings supported Ayan and Kocacik [6] who concluded that personality characteristics have an impact on job satisfaction. Similarly, Scheider and Dachler [7] argued that over time, job satisfaction is stable and that individual personality causes satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the job.
The study also concluded that employees who are agreeable, open and conscientious tend to have higher levels of job satisfaction. This supports the findings by Judge, Heller and Mount [8] who found that conscientiousness was a significant predictor of job satisfaction. Additionally, Furnham Petrides, Jackson and Cotter [48] found that individuals' high in openness are more satisfied especially with their jobs.
The study examined the moderating effect of personality on the relationship between quality of work life and job satisfaction and concluded that indeed, personality moderated this relationship.
Openness and agreeableness had the greatest contribution to the moderating effect of personality on the relationship between QWL and job satisfaction. This means that academic staff who are open and agreeable are likely to be more satisfied with their job and this in turn leads to improved performance. The study contributes to knowledge on the effect of personality as a moderator of the relationship between quality of work life and job satisfaction.