Personality Dimensions as Predictors of Job Satisfaction Of IT Employees in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Under this study an attempt was made to investigate into relationship existing between personality dimensions and job satisfaction of IT employees attached to leading companies in Sri Lanka. For this purpose, four companies namely Ind. And financial system Sri Lanka ltd, Millennium Software Ltd, John Keels Computer service (pvt) Ltd, and Virtusa (pvt) Ltd. For the convenience of analysis, a sample consisting of 125 employees were selected by using simple random sample technique. Out of these four companies 32 employees were selected from Millennium Software Ltd. while 31 employees per each of other three companies were selected for the analysis. As this study is empirical in nature, a great attempt was made to collect primary data as much as possible by administering a detailed questionnaire which was subjected to a pilot study with a view to clarify reliability and validity of questions. In addition, further information was collected through a series of interviews held with senior management and other low level employees. For collecting additional information an endeavor was made to associate secondary data too. For this purpose, related documentary evidences such as electronically stored data /data mining were used. The focal problem of the study is existence of number of bottlenecks in software development industry in Sri Lanka. The key purpose of the study was to examine the correlation between personality dimensions and job satisfaction. Specific objectives were to identify the correlation between job performance and job satisfaction and to make a better set of suggestions to improve job performance and job satisfaction through the development of personality. Accordingly two research questions consistent with so-called objectives were addressed. They are, is there any relationship between personality dimensions and job satisfaction? What is the relationship between job performance and job satisfaction? The Big-Five personality dimensions were applied to conceptualize the respective theme of the study. For presenting data out of the descriptive statistical tools percentage values, mean, mode and standard deviation were used. Furthermore, in testing hypotheses the well known chi-square test was completely employed. Resulting from the analysis it was found that there is a direct relationship between personality dimensions and job satisfaction of IT employees in Sri Lankan leading companies. The most significant finding is that emotional stability, extraversion and consciousness dimensions are consistently valid predictors for all job categories there. All these dimensions are positively correlated with job satisfaction. And also it was noted that job performance and job satisfaction are almost interrelated each other.