Introduction
The extent to which employees of a certain organization are contented and intend to retain to their present job, can be determined by the level of their Job Satisfaction. There are different responses towards work, some people may find their jobs interesting and may find it necessary for their personal development and fulfilling part of their daily routine, whereas some may not be serious about their work, and would do it only to earn livelihood. Research relating employee’s behavior and responses towards work and their respective levels of job satisfaction form an essential part of an organizations psychological environment. The job satisfaction is one of the measures in organizational context which is given probably the most importance over other key indicators of organizational performance.
Presently, all of the biggest organizations are engaged in assessing the levels of job satisfaction and motivation of their employees on regular basis, in order to show their concerns for employees well being. There is sufficient argument which supports the acquisition for the concerns for the job satisfaction levels, which could be arranged according to the employee or the organization itself as the focal point. Firstly it could be stated simply that people should be dealt with sufficient respect and equality, therefore the levels of job satisfaction among the employees can be a good and precise indication of the good an equal treatment from the employers and moreover a sign expressive well being. Secondly job satisfaction is important for the firms because the labor is one the most essential resources which care employed by an entrepreneur and can have long lasting impacts on the practices and functioning of the whole organization and therefore can also effect the impression of the whole organization in society. It can fairly be said that both of the aspects discussed above are reasonable enough to justify the need for concerns relating the h-job satisfaction among employees and that appropriate attention to the topic is necessary. Although there are a number of research based studies undertaken in relation to job satisfaction levels of the employees, employed in ownership and profit oriented firms, but studies related to religious aspects, as in this dissertation is about Christina leadership, have been negligible.
Background of the Study
The conclusion of this research would express either head with Christian world vision optimistically or pessimistically effect IT worker job satisfaction and retention. These conclusions might prove noteworthy in future evaluation of job satisfaction and retention.
There are two research programs i.e. the Blanton and Burger in the workplace regarding Christian leadership. Still, research is not there concerning Christian headship in the IT industry. An assessment of the research query could verify if Christian headship effects job satisfaction among IT workers.
Problem Statement
The objective or the selected problem for this dissertation on which it is based is that to recognize the potential in the leaders who are associated to Christianity, in order to squeeze out the best performance out of the IT based professionals. Today large and highly diversified firms are unable to recognize the potentials Christian leaders can provide with in order to influence the levels of job satisfaction and the intentions to retain to jobs among the employees, though this dissertation discusses of the influences Christian leaders can have on the IT professionals.
Purpose of the Study
The dissertation specifically intends to ascertain that if there is any possible relationship between the levels of job satisfaction and retention intentions among the Information Technology professionals and Christian Leaders particularly in Missouri. The core methods undertaken for data collection are qualitative. These data collection methods are used and arranged in order to collect any subjective information which evidences of any of the impacts which Christian leaders can have on the retention and job satisfaction and motivation among the IT based employees in Missouri.
Overview of the Term “Leadership”
Leadership
Leadership is defined as the activity of influencing people to strive willingly for group objectives (Terry). Moreover in other words it is the interpersonal influence exercised in a situation and directed, through communication process, towards the attainment of a specialized goal or goals.
Relationship and Difference between Leadership and Management
There may be quite a lot of definitions of leadership, however it is necessary to distinguish leadership from management and realize the relationship between the two. They key features which could be identified to differentiate management from leadership are the interpersonal influence, securing of willing commitment to achieve shared goals, creation of precise direction and required level of energy and orientation to transform.
These two terms are usually used interchangeably for each other. In most aspects, management theories and skills have been simply relabeled or renamed to give out a more fashionable term. Attempts to distinguish the two have been numerous.
According to Kotter (2001) leadership and management involve two distinctive sets of action. Management is about coping with complexity, i.e. its functions are in relation to logic, structure, analysis and control, and are aimed at producing order, consistency and predictability. On the other hand leadership is about coping with the changes; its activities included creating a sense of direction, communicating strategy, and energizing, inspiring and motivating others to translate the vision into action.
Management can be exercised over resources, activities, projects and other essential non-personal things whereas leadership can be exercised only on people.
Key Leadership Skills
The key leadership skills may be identified in a range of interpersonal and business areas.
There is a range of business and managerial skills important to good leaders which are:
- Entrepreneurship: the ability to spot business opportunities and mobilize resources to capitalize on them.
- Interpersonal Skills such as networking, rapport-building, influencing, negotiating conflict resolution, listening, counseling, coaching, and communicating assertively.
- Decision Making and problem solving skills, including seeing the bigger picture.
- Time Management and personal organization.
- Self Development skills: the ability to learn continuously from experience, to grow in self-awareness and to exploit learning opportunities.
In simpler words the Christian leaders are ones who incorporate their ethical into professional management, they inculcate the view that Gods superiority is above all and most important. He would try to follow the example of the Jesus Christ who would always prefer the Gods orders and would care very much for the employees. They would even lay down their lives for their employees similarly the way Jesus Christ was concerned for his for followers and they would always be prepared to serve for their employees.
The Christian Leadership can be most influencing and can exercise enough power to change the organizational culture which includes the norms, signs of uniqueness and décor.
This research paper is actually intended to know if there is sufficient evidence see as if there is and correlation or direct relation between the levels of job satisfaction and retention to current jobs and the Christian leadership. For this purpose a number basic research based questions are specified and different quantitative and qualitative methods are used.
In order to know precise detail of this topic there has to be a reference to any previous researches or evidences available which may be referred to so that some fundamentals could be approached. However unfortunately there is no or not sufficient research, or history or not reliable enough to encourage any reference to it.
In the following context of this paper a detailed and precise study of the topic is provided with an intention that readers are able to get the full background of this topic. For this purpose firstly in chapter 2 that is the literature review, a short reference is given to any available historical perspective, although couldn’t found any. Later in this chapter the key variable is determined which is the Job Satisfaction & Retention and the Leading Information Technology (IT) Workers then the Christian values in Leadership are discussed which are followed by a brief summary. In the job satisfaction & retention part is discussed that how specifically the Christian leaders are conductive and helpful to their employees which raises or lowers their level of job satisfaction and intention to retain to the present job. It is discussed that what are the ways in which Christian leaders are more conductive than other leaders and how the job satisfaction and retention levels are maintained.
It is further expressed that job satisfaction is a variable which actually varies from person to person and in reality there may be a lot of different behaviors observed in this context. These different behaviors are therefore dependent on various other aspects such as the personal characteristics such as the ethnic origins, cultural and religious beliefs and most importantly the environment in which they work and the concerns of their leaders or employers for their betterment. Then it is made clear that job satisfaction is an important measure for the leaders to evaluate this is because it is strongly related to the retention levels and labor turnover and thus to the exploitation of economies of scale.
So that better evaluation of the topic could be done the models of leadership by different writers are included in which Elton Mayo’s, Herzberg’s and Maslow’s ones are important. Under Mayo’s model studies are made on the basis of changing working environment, whereas in Herzberg’s case it is observed that what are the aspects by which the workers are satisfied or dissatisfied by the workplace environment. While the Maslow’s model can be explained by the following diagram.
There is also another aspect which needs to be approached to. This is the aspect which discusses the impact of the manager’s practices on the behavior of the employees. In the context of the research work, it is to be determined that how the behavior of the Christian leaders would have positive or negative impacts on the IT professionals. In the later content of this paper it is discussed in detail that Christian leaders try to adhere to the example of Jesus Christ and thus are most concerned about their workers.
Therefore it can be implied that such behaviors do have some impacts on the workers. For example it maybe implied that workers recognizing their leader as role models also become concerned for each other and in turn for their leader. When they are concerned for their leader they may become concerned for his esteem and therefore try to meet the deadlines, may become motivated and try to give out the best out of them and thus giving out better and quicker results.
The concept of leadership in the IT personnel is not usually the same as it is in the case of operational workers; this is because the IT workers are themselves prone to lead the workers of various organizational functions therefore the traditional ways in which authority and power is exercised on the employees of other departments it cannot be done on the personnel of the IT department. Therefore it is necessary for the leaders of IT professionals to be very flexible in their practices. They key responsibility of the leaders of balancing the environment and the team member is to be performed with substantial effectiveness, sophistication and care.
Moreover it is important to determine that what are the leadership values and styles to which the highly trained IT officials may respond, this is because it will be an aiding measure to know that what are the effects on the job satisfaction levels and retention intentions. These responses are to be revised thoroughly because the IT personnel are highly professional and their knowledge about management and leadership are increasing constantly.
It is also important to know the behaviors of the IT professionals with substantial precision, because the IT professional are highly crucial for successful operations and fulfillment of objectives of any business irrespective of their size and ownership orientation. A very exclusive expression is expressed by Glen (2003) which is discussed later in detail that it is fundamental to realize that all IT professionals are different as their job descriptions are.
In chapter 3 the methodologies used in this paper are discussed in great detail, they are basically divided into two divisions i.e. 1. Qualitative and 2. Quantitative. The quantitative methods are those methods, speaking generally, which involve the manipulation of numerical figures such as determining of correlation between two variable given by sophisticated formulae therefore these methods turnout to be quite objective, while on the other hand the qualitative methods are the ones which involve the extraction of information from the opinion of people and/or the way in which people think of any certain phenomenon. The easiest of all qualitative methods is the carrying out of the questionnaires and interviews and surveys. Under these methods simply group or individual interviews are carried out in order to get hold of the expressions and opinions by an individual or certain groups.
Later in the end of the 3rd chapter the detailed methods and their outcomes are discussed in detail. The specific data collection methods as discussed already are the interviews and questionnaires, another detailed version of the same questioning technique is used referred to as the Likert Scale provided by Rensis Likert. Also known as the psychometric scale is usually used to extract results from the research based questionnaires. Under this method the interviewees are required to be expressing their opinion according to their level of agreement or disagreement about certain things. This is one of the techniques which is also referred to as the bipolar scaling method that procedure the responsive behaviors for particular action no matter negative or positive.
However there is one problem specific with the qualitative methods this is because these methods are highly subjective. And when subjectivity is involved it may be the case that opinions about basic actions or events may be unreliable.