The influence of demographic variables on job satisfaction and organizational commitment in Nigerian public universities

The Nigerian workforce is becoming more diverse with respect to tribal origin, gender, age, marital status among others following the implementation of the Federal Character Act. The Act ensures recruitments into public institutions fairly reflect the tribal, religion among other diversity in the country. Thus, as public institutions become more diverse, it is important to empirically investigate how the different groups interact and how this interaction affects their work attitude. It is on this basis that this study investigated the link between diversity in terms of demographic variables and job satisfaction/organizational commitment in Nigerian public universities.

The study reviewed a number of theories a number of theoretical perspectives namely,

similarity-attraction and adaptive self-regulation theories. Both qualitative and quantitative data generated through field survey with a structured questionnaire and Key Informant Survey (KIS) as the main instruments of data collection. The qualitative data were analysed thematically while the quantitative data were analysed with descriptive statistics (frequency tables, percentages, charts, and ratios), Factor analysis, Spearman's rho correlation test, Mann-Whitney's U rank test, Kendall's Tau-b test and the Kruskall-Wallis H rank test.

The study found that male and female respondents were not differentiated in terms of university commitment, work compulsion, general satisfaction, and career satisfaction. Other findings of the study include:

(i) age is a significant determinant of employee general satisfaction and commitment, and that older employees are more likely to committed to their jobs than their younger counterpart

(ii)the level of job satisfaction and organizational commitment among married employees does not differ significantly from their unmarried counterpart in Nigerian public universities

(iii) job satisfaction and organizational commitment are differentiated on the basis of culture as staff

(iv) job satisfaction/organizational commitment among administrative staff do not differ from those of academic staff

(v) educational background is also a significant determinant of employee job satisfaction and commitment

(vi) tenure (number of years in service) does not have any significant effect on the level of job satisfaction and organizational commitment in Nigerian public universities.

The study recommends a more diverse workplace since it reduces domineering effect of one group on the others. This, in turn, increases job satisfaction and commitment.