Relations between Team Work and Innovation in Organizations and the Job Satisfaction of Employees: A Factor Analytic Study

This paper examines the relationship between organizational culture and employee job satisfaction in wire and cable manufacturing companies. The subjects of the study were 339 employees, working in a variety of jobs, for 10 cable and wire companies quoted on the Taiwan stock exchange. The key variables were assessed by the Wallach (1985) Organizational Culture Index and the Job Satisfaction Survey of Lyons, Laptin & Young (2003) respectively. The two scales were factor analyzed to indicate the main 'aspects' or 'dimensions' that underlie each of the two measures. Significant correlations were found between the two aspects of organizational culture and the two aspects of job satisfaction uncovered by the factor analyses. It is argued that the results suggest that the industry needs an innovative and group-oriented culture which promotes employee job satisfaction. In addition, it is argued from the findings that the job satisfaction of these Chinese employees will be strengthened by their organization gaining external recognition and respect. Introduction The Taiwanese wire and cable industry has been in existence for more than half of century. It has always had a conservative business 'culture' with close connections with the government. The industry relies heavily on basic technology and a detailed knowledge of the materials needed to produce electricity. In the past two decades however globalization and the emergence of high tech industries has forced wire and cable firms, in Taiwan at least, to restructure their operations, creating many redundancies and forcing managers to reconsider their 'conservative' way of doing business and to deal with the effects of this kind of culture on the job satisfaction of its employees. This is the focus of our attention in this investigation: What will be the effect of the organizational culture of firms in this conservative industry on the feelings of employees about their jobs? To help answer this question, a number of public electric wire and cable firms were investigated in this study. Independent measures were made of organizational culture in each firm and the extent to which the employees in each firms felt satisfied or dissatisfied with their jobs. It is expected that the results of the study will have implications for how managers should treat or look after the staff in a traditional industry run on relatively 'conservative' lines. Background to the study Culture can be broadly understood as 'a set of basic assumptions about how the world is and ought to be that a group of people share and that determines their perceptions, thoughts, feelings, and, to some degree, their overt behavior' (Schein, 1996). Organizational culture reflects individuals' interpretations of events and situations in organizations (Peterson & Smith, 2000). It refers to a system of shared meaning held by members mat distinguishes the organization from other organizations (Robbins, 2001). In the light of these definitions, different organizations can be regarded are having their own cultures, which affect or influence the attitudes and sometimes the behaviours of their employees (Flamholts, 2001). To assess the culture in each organization, as perceived by its employees, the present study used OCI (Organizational Culture Index) of Wallach (1983). In the broadest sense, job satisfaction is a general attitude a person has or holds towards his or her job. One of the major contributors to the study of job satisfaction was Herzberg who claimed that factors leading to job satisfaction are separate and distinct from factors leading to job dissatisfaction (Lyons, Lapin & Young, 2003). It has been well established that employee job satisfaction can contribute to their psychological well being both at work and outside (Robbins, Peterson, Tedrick, & Carpenter, 2003). To what extent employees area able to contribute to their organization-and the degree to which such contributions are recognized and rewarded -as well as the appropriateness of organizational practices - for the particular employees - have been shown to be the best predictors of overall job satisfaction and satisfaction with the organization (Leung, Sui & Spector, 2000). …