The relationship between self-esteem and job satisfaction of personnel in government organizations.

Self-esteem describes one's feelings regarding his or her value, or it is to consider oneself as a valuable person. This particular kind of consideration comes from all of the thoughts, feelings, emotions and experiences throughout one's life. On the other hand, job satisfaction is a concept that indicates the mental and spiritual enjoyment that one gains from his or her job through satisfaction of needs, interests and hopes. (1)

Hapak (1935) defines job satisfaction in relation to psychological, physiological and social factors. That is to say that it is necessary for a person to be satisfied physically, psychologically and socially to attain job satisfaction. (2)

The 20th century has been called the century of anxiety and psychological disorders (3) and one of the duties of managers is considering their staff/employees' mental health. Managers should always consider self-esteem and job satisfaction as two important elements in mental hygiene of the staff. (4)

Acquiring new skills and increasing abilities is one of the important factors in creating self-esteem in staff members.

Undoubtedly, job satisfaction is of great importance. There are at least three reasons that managers must pay attention to the job satisfaction of their personnel:

1. There is much evidence that unsatisfied individuals leave organizations or resign.

2. It has been proven that satisfied staffs are in better health and have longer life expectancy.

3. The effects of job satisfaction are carried outside the boundaries of an organization, and thus the individual's private life is also influenced by job satisfaction. (5)

Moorhead and Griffin (1989) define man's magnanimity as his belief in the degree of his value and usefulness in the organization. They also express that recent research shows that there is relationship between magnanimity and job performance, job satisfaction and searching for new a job. For example, a person with high magnanimity may want a job that has a higher position, but a person with low magnanimity may accept the status quo. (6)

Individuals with low self-esteem show such symptoms as physical complaints, depression, anxiety, decrease in general health, the attitude of attribution of their defeats to others, job dissatisfaction and decrease in performance, lack of educational success and interpersonal problems. (7)

Therefore, consider that self-esteem and job satisfaction are important from several points of view. Self-esteem and job satisfaction have important roles in improving the organizational psychological climate, and the self-esteem of the staff can lead them to their job satisfaction.

The importance of this research and the benefits accruing on doing it are as follows:

1. The satisfaction of personnel from different aspects of their jobs is made clear, and thus the manager can differentiate the weak points of the organization from its strengths and plan in a manner that allows the removal of those weaknesses.

2. The self-esteem of personnel is clarified: for example, to what extent do personnel feel they are successful in their affairs, their self-confidence, self-consciousness, self-deprecation, etc. This in turn allows personnel and managers to treat the probable weaknesses.

3. Discovering the relationship between different aspects would make clear the relationship between diverse aspects of personnel job satisfaction and their self-esteem. Thus, if this relationship were verified, it may be possible that increasing the self-esteem of personnel will increase the probability of their job satisfaction, and vice versa.

4. Considering the above, it can be said that the decrease in job satisfaction of some personnel may be due to their low self-esteem, thus, by increasing their self-esteem, an increase in their job satisfaction may be expected, and vice versa.

5. It is clear that there is relationship between self-esteem and job satisfaction in relation to age, sexuality, being single or married, record of service, and number of family.

Finally, it can be concluded that people with high self-esteem and high job satisfaction perform their work much better than others, and thus increase the output of the organization, which is economically beneficial to the organization. At the same time, they enjoy working with each other, cooperation and developing relationships, and this is also beneficial to the organization.

Thus, the hypotheses of this research are as follows:

Main hypothesis: There is relationship between self-esteem and job satisfaction of personnel.

Secondary hypotheses:

1. There is a relationship between self-esteem and satisfaction from the kind and the nature of the job;

2. There is a relationship between self-esteem and satisfaction from the manager or supervisor;

3. There is a relationship between self-esteem and satisfaction from co-workers;

4. There is a relationship between self-esteem and satisfaction from promotion in the organization;

5. There is a relationship between self-esteem and satisfaction from salary and wages in an organization.

Method

In this research, the descriptive method (from the kind correlation) was used.

The statistical populations of this research were the proficient (personnel) of the 18 organizations and general governmental offices of the province Kerman, Iran, a total of 620 people.

Three hundred and ten individuals were chosen from this population by the simple random-sampling method. Two hundred and seventy-four persons completed the research questionnaire.

The instruments of gathering data were closed questionnaire. The modifying variables mentioned on the the questionnaire were sex (man or woman), marriage (single or married), age (classified in four levels), record of service (classified in four levels), the amount of salary and the number of family.

The questionnaire of "Izanc" (1976) was used to assess the degree of self-esteem of the subjects. The questionnaire "job satisfaction" (Robbins, 1995) was used. The validity and reliability of these questionnaires were obtained: 0.9, 0.85, 0.952 and 0.979 respectively. Five different aspects (dimensions) of job satisfaction in this questionnaire are as follows:

Satisfaction from:

1. The kind of the job (educational, business, research, etc.);

2. Manager or supervisor (management and supervision, relations and communications, decision-making, planning, organizing, etc.);

3. Co-workers;

4. Promotion in the organization; and

5. Salary and wage benefits.

The questionnaire included 40 questions, which evaluate the above-five aspects of job satisfaction. That is, for example, to what extent personnel have satisfaction from their salaries or from the particular kind of the job they do, or from the decisions of their manager in the organization.

The Kruskal-Wallis test and the median test were used in data analysis.

Findings

The mean, standard deviation, minimum and maximum of each of the variables self-esteem, satisfaction from promotion, satisfaction from salary and wages, satisfaction from the kind of work, satisfaction from manager or supervisor and job satisfaction are presented in Table 1.

Table 2 shows the amount of statistic T in the column chi-square, the degree of freedom in the column DF, the real levels of the test (P-value) in the column Sig.

The amount of job satisfaction and its five dimensions is a number that each of the subjects acquires from different sections of the job satisfaction questionnaire.

In Table 5, the correlation coefficient between the variable self-esteem and job satisfaction, and the correlation coefficient between self-esteem and the five dimensions of job-satisfaction, and the level of significance of the related test have been showed.

The results show that there is a positive relationship between self-esteem and the five dimensions of job-satisfaction.

The column (Sig.) shows that the hypothesis (H0) is rejected in all cases (because the calculated p-value is less than the ([alpha] = 0.01) in all cases).

Results

The analysis of the data, as described in the previous section, specified the following results:

1. There is a significant and meaningful relationship between self-esteem and the job satisfaction of personnel. This positive relationship coefficient shows that the personnel with high self-esteem have more job satisfaction as compared with personnel with low self-esteem. Therefore, the main hypothesis of this research was accepted and confirmed.

2. There is a significant (meaningful) relationship between self-esteem and the satisfaction from the kind and the nature of job. The correlation coefficient between self-esteem and the satisfaction from the kind and the nature of the job is (r =0.6422). This positive relationship coefficient shows that personnel with high self-esteem as compared with personnel with low self-esteem have more satisfaction from the kind and the nature of their jobs. Thus, the first secondary hypothesis of this research was verified.

3. There is a significant relationship between self-esteem and the satisfaction from manager or supervisor. The correlation coefficient between self-esteem and the satisfaction from manager or supervisor is (r = 0.4881). This positive coefficient shows that personnel with high self-esteem have more satisfaction from their manager or supervisor as compared with personnel with low self-esteem. Therefore, the second secondary hypothesis of the research was also confirmed.

4. There is a significant relationship between self-esteem and the satisfaction from co-workers. The relationship coefficient between self-esteem and the satisfaction from co-workers is (r = 0.4755). This positive relationship coefficient shows that personnel with high self-esteem as compared with personnel with low self-esteem have more satisfaction from their co-workers. Therefore, the third secondary hypothesis of the research was accepted.

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