The importance of job content and social information on organizational commitment and job satisfaction: A study in australian and malaysian nursing contexts

An emerging challenge for health-care administrators is how to ensure harmony in a multicultural workforce. This is a cross-cultural study with 48 Australian and 90 Malaysian nurses. Using a path analytic approach, it was shown that the perceived content and context work properties contributed differently to job satisfaction. Specifically, for the Australian nurses, the task content dimensions were significant determinants of job satisfaction, while only the perceived information cues substantially contributed to the affective responses of the Malaysian nurses. Both types of workplace attributes influenced the nurse's organizational commitment. The implications for human resource practices in the increasingly important evolving health-care delivery industry are discussed.

[1]  G. Hofstede Cultural constraints in management theories , 1993 .

[2]  Chris Argyris,et al.  Reasoning, learning, and action , 1982 .

[3]  E. Molleman,et al.  Work Redesign and the Balance of Control Within a Nursing Context , 1995 .

[4]  Kenneth A. Bollen,et al.  Structural Equations with Latent Variables , 1989 .

[5]  Ricky W. Griffin,et al.  Objective and social sources of information in task redesign: A field experiment. , 1983 .

[6]  Y. Fried,et al.  Growth Need Strength and Context Satisfactions as Moderators of the Relations of the Job Characteristics Model , 1992 .

[7]  W. Cascio International Human Resource Management Issues for the 1990s , 1993 .

[8]  J. O'Malley,et al.  Back to the future: redesigning the workplace. , 1990, Nursing management.

[9]  P. Lawrence,et al.  Industrial Jobs and the Worker , 1966 .

[10]  J. Hackman,et al.  Employee reactions to job characteristics. , 1971 .

[11]  G. Hofstede,et al.  Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind , 1991 .

[12]  Jia Lin Xie,et al.  Mediating and Moderating Effects in Job Design , 1992 .

[13]  Samuel Aryee,et al.  Work Values and Organizational Commitment: A Study in the Asian Context , 1989 .

[14]  Thomas G. Gutteridge,et al.  Determinants of Expatriate Effectiveness: A Theoretical and Empirical Vacuum , 1978 .

[15]  Charles E. Lance,et al.  Examining the Causal Order of Job Satisfaction and Organizational Commitment , 1992 .

[16]  S. Weaver,et al.  First-line manager skills: perceptions and performances. , 1991, Nursing management.

[17]  E. Hayes Managing job satisfaction for the long run. , 1993, Nursing management.

[18]  E. O'Connor,et al.  Informational Cues and Individual Differences as Determinants of Subjective Perceptions of Task Enrichment , 1980 .

[19]  Nicolle P.G. Boumans,et al.  The effect of work dimensions and need for autonomy on nurses' work satisfaction and health , 1994 .

[20]  J. Pfeffer,et al.  A social information processing approach to job attitudes and task design. , 1978, Administrative science quarterly.