Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemInvolvement and influence in decision-making as factors affecting job-satisfaction: a case-study involving selected secondary school teachers( 1983)This thesis, using a case-study approach, aimed to investigate a number of questions concerned with the relationship between participation in decision-making and job-satisfaction of secondary school teachers. Decisional influence and involvement were seen as two important dimensions of participation: (i) involvement, which may be perceived through frequency of consultation and/or attendance at meetings, and (ii) influence, which requires an appraisal by the teacher of his role in affecting the decisional outcome. Job-satisfaction was viewed both as a global concept and as a multidimensional concept. Particular aspects of a teacher's job, which were capable of measurement in terms of job-satisfaction and participation in decision-making, were selected and correlated with perceived overall job-satisfaction. These aspects were then grouped under the following criteria: Curriculum Planning and Adaptation; Classroom Management; Arrangement of the School Instructional Program; and General School Organisation. Some key questions emerged and were applied over each of the above criteria. (i) Are teachers who are more involved in decision-making likely to display higher levels of satisfaction? (ii) Are teachers who are able to exert higher levels of decisional influence likely to display higher degrees of satisfaction? Further through considering that the desire to participate in decisions may not be uniform, an approach based on the decisional discrepancy model of Belasco and Alutto enabled these additional questions to be investigated over each particular criterion: (i) Are teachers who are satisfied with their perceived level of decisional involvement likely to display a higher degree of satisfaction? (ii) How does a teacher's satisfaction with his perceived level of decisional influence relate to his degree of satisfaction with a particular criterion? From these questions developed a series of hypotheses which were subsequently tested for statistical significance. Although using a sample size of only thirty teachers did restrict the possibility of making any definite statements, results seemed to indicate that merely increasing the level of involvement or the level of influence in decisions is not a panacea for enhancing satisfaction for all criteria. Further the degree of satisfaction perceived with the levels of decisional involvement and/or influence did not seem to affect the level of criterion satisfaction in all cases. The results of this thesis are discussed in Chapter 6 in terms of their implications for administrators regarding models of organisational structure which may facilitate and increase the effectiveness of decision-making processes. Through taking into account (i) the levels of decisional involvement and influence, and (ii) the degree of satisfaction perceived with those levels of participation, possible outcomes resulting from adjusting teachers' levels of participation may be predicted and viewed in terms of their effects on the satisfaction levels of teachers.