Quality of worklife and higher education support personnel : testing the generalizability of a proposed model

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2012-05
Authors
Inoshita, Lynn Toshiko
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[Honolulu] : [University of Hawaii at Manoa], [May 2012]
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Abstract
Higher Education Support Personnel support the faculty in fulfilling the mission of America's colleges and universities. Rarely studied, these personnel include position classifications such as support/service professionals, technical/paraprofessionals, clerical and secretarial, service/maintenance, and skilled crafts. The support/service professionals and technical/paraprofessionals are typically called midlevel administrators while the other three classifications are referred to as staff. Studying worklife perceptions from the point of view of support personnel is important because how they feel about specific worklife issues affects performance, impacts morale, and has implications for the general well-being of the entire organization. This study proposed a quality of worklife model comprised of six factors (Career Development, Leadership and Supervision, Evaluation and Recognition, Professional Relations, Working Conditions, and Fair Treatment) and tests the model across two groups of support personnel--midlevel administrators and support staff. This study was framed using Mintzberg's concept of organizational structure and the work of Kanter and Stein on organizational life. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to test whether the model had construct validity and a test of model invariance was used to determine whether this model was generalizable to another personnel group. Finally, difference in latent means was examined for any differences in the perceptions of worklife across both groups. The results revealed that the model had construct validity, and the model was generalizable to another group as the fit indices of the final model were reasonable. There were significant differences in three of the six factors. Midlevel administrators were significantly more satisfied with Leadership and Supervision, Professional Relations, and Working Conditions than the staff group. The worklife model and instrument used in this study are therefore sensitive to the similarities and differences that exist across the groups of employees in how they perceive their work. The results of this study show that perceptions of worklife among support personnel may vary depending on where one's position is located in the organizational structure. Senior administrators, when implementing new policies or changing current practices, must be sensitive to such similarities and differences in these perceptions and realize that both groups of staff are not one and the same.
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Ph.D. University of Hawaii at Manoa 2012.
Includes bibliographical references.
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worklife, higher education support personnel
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Theses for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (University of Hawaii at Manoa). Education.
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