Job Satisfaction and Its Determinants in Addis Ababa: Evidence from Public Employees

Abstract

For decades, job satisfaction has been an object of interest for many. More recently, public managers find it difficult to disregard the issue of job satisfaction as it directly affects productivity and turnover of the workers. The main purpose of this research is to investigate determinants that influence the job satisfaction and analyze the level of job satisfaction of civil servants in Addis Ababa city administration. To achieve the research objective, information was gathered through questionnaires from 372 randomly selected public servants in five sub-cities (Bole, Arada, Yeka, Gulele, and Kirkos) during summer 2015. In order to analyze job satisfaction, an ordered probit model was utilized. After the analysis, some attention-grabbing findings have come into sight. To begin with, women are more satisfied with their jobs than men.  It also shows an inverted U-shaped relationship between age and job satisfaction. The best and least trained are less satisfied relative to intermediately educated.  Married are more satisfied than non-married. Moreover, family characteristics found to have no significant effect on job satisfaction of workers; health problems do not significantly affect job satisfaction; and living in rental house have lower job satisfaction than living in own house. With respect to job related characteristics, civil servants who are living in their own house, working in a conducive working environment, believe to have a secured job,  commute for short distance, and worked for less than 5 years in present organization report higher level of job satisfaction. What is more, individuals working for Bole sub-city administration as well as those working in land administration sector have higher job satisfaction. Finally, this paper recommends the city administration to improve working environment; facilitate paths to homeownership for civil servants; device a mechanism to make them car owners; improve their earnings; and regularly assess job satisfaction.