Faculty participation in decision-making and their job satisfaction in Mongolian public universities

Faculty participation in the decision-making has been accepted as a positive influence on organizational functioning and the means for reforming educational systems from academic point of view. It has also been pointed that faculty members\u27 participation in decision-making is associated with their perceptions of job satisfaction. Mongolian higher education system, which has a centralized decision-making structure, is moving toward democratization, decentralization and delegation of decision-making at the university level as the means for reforming its structure. The specific purpose of this study was to determine if Mongolian public universities\u27 faculty members were dissatisfied with their jobs when opportunity for decision participation was less than desired. The study also determined if there were differences in participation status among faculty members in each of the demographic categories surveyed: gender, marital status, age, total teaching experience in the public university, degree, rank, salary, and kind of university and the differences between them and decision participation status and its effect on general job satisfaction. The survey instruments, The Job Descriptive Index (JDI; 1997 Revision) and The Job In General, The Alutto-Belasco Decisional Participation Scale (the Conway adaptation), and a personal data sheet, were administered in the first week of June, 2004, to 300 faculty members in the five largest Mongolian public universities. A total of 235 questionnaires were returned (78%). Multiple regression analysis was employed for testing four hypotheses posed. The conclusions were as follows: (1) Mongolian public universities faculty members were in a decision deprivation condition; (2) Faculty members were somewhat satisfied with their jobs; (3) Faculty members\u27 actual levels of decision participation were positively related to their perceptions of job satisfaction; (4) Faculty members\u27 desired levels of decision participation were not related to their perceptions of job satisfaction; (5) Faculty members\u27 perceptions of decision participation were significantly associated with the demographic variables of university kind and ranks; (6) With the exception of total teaching experience in the public university, faculty members\u27 perceptions of job satisfaction were not associated with demographic variables