Propensity for participative decision-making, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, organizational citizenship behavior, and intentions to leave among Egyptian managers

Multinational Business Review, Spring 2003 by Parnell, John A, Crandall, William (Rick)

Managers often view power as finite, and thus perceive that an increase in employee power must be accompanied by an undesirable requisite decrease in managerial power (Hrebiniak, 1974; Parnell & Bell, 1994). Thus, one's PPDM is impacted by one's attitude concerning a redistribution of power and control that may or may not accompany participative decision-making. Hence, a manager's PPDM is highest when he or she believes that PDM enhances organizational effectiveness and will not result in a decline in his or her organizational power. A manager's PPDM is lowest when he or she believes that PDM impedes organizational effectiveness and results in a decline in his or her organizational power.

Although PPDM has not yet been measured across cultures, there is no initial reason to believe that the construct is not present in non-Western management environments. As such, the first proposition concerns the loadings of the two factors:

P1: The rotated factor solution for the PPDM items will produce loadings on two factors: organization and power.

Job Satisfaction

A popular management research topic for the past several decades, job satisfaction has been viewed as an affective outcome or attitude referring to dimensions of satisfaction with both the job situation and work experiences (Mowday, Porter, & Steers, 1982). As such, it encompasses dimensions of satisfaction with work itself, pay, working conditions, co-workers, organizational practices, and opportunities for advancement (Locke, 1976). Major literature-supported determinants of job satisfaction include one's demographics, organizational reward systems, factors such as power distribution and centralization, and individual differences such as self esteem and the need for achievement (Griffin & Bateman, 1986; Lankau & Scandura, 2002; Lefkowitz, 1994; Martins, Eddleston, & Veiga, 2002). Many of these studies examined job satisfaction, along with other constructs, since job satisfaction is commonly treated as a critical outcome variable in organizations (Gregson & Wendell, 1994; Griffin & Bateman, 1986; Judge & Hulin, 1993; Judge & Watanabe, 1994; Landeweerd & Boumans, 1994; Riggio & Cole, 1992; Savery, 1994).

Five distinct elements of job satisfaction have been empirically validated, relating the construct to pay, security, support, socialization, and growth. It is expected that these elements will also be present in the Egyptian sample.

P2: The rotated factor solution for the job satisfaction items will produce loadings on five factors: pay, security, support, socialization, and growth.

There is considerable debate as to the extent, if any, that participative decision-making can promote high job satisfaction or organizational commitment (Wagner, 1994). Although participation can even be seen as a sign of weakness among subordinates in Egypt (Hatem, 1994), limited empirical data suggests that collaborative decision styles may have gained popularity (Ali, 1993). Specifically, the solicitation of participation tends to be viewed positively in the American context, but negatively in the Egyptian setting, a finding contradictory to another published study (Ali, 1993). Hence, we argue that a relationship between PPDM and job satisfaction will not be found among Egyptian managers.