In the United States, job satisfaction and dissatisfaction
has been subject of more than 3>350 articles, books,
and dissertations (Locke, 1976). Yet, despite this vast
output, many researchers are dissatisfied with the progress
that has been made in understanding job satisfaction. For
decades, researchers have tried to understand employee morale
and to establish relationships between job satisfaction and
productivity, absenteeism, and other independent variables
(Cohen, 1974). While the concept of job satisfaction and
its causes and effects have been studied in a great variety
of organizational settings, few studies have been pursued
in institutions of higher education. During the past few
years, there are some improvements in the faculty job satisfaction
area (Neumann, 1978). This may be caused by the
fact that faculty members do not tend to consider themselves
2
as workers; therefore, the literature of business and industry
for models or theories to use in describing the activities
is not applicable to them. Another reason may be that
the number of scholarly publications produced by faculty
members and the number of hours per week spent in teaching
can be counted, but the quality of the production is difficult
to ascertain and almost impossible to attribute to any
type of industrial organizational environment (Cohen, 197^).
Still, job satisfaction and dissatisfaction in institutions
of higher education and problems of imprecise dependent
variables should not be overlooked by researchers.