Demographic Characteristics and Job Satisfaction: The Mediation Role of Organisational Justice Perceptions in Public and Private Sector Health Organisations in Nigeria

Abstract

The health sector is of critical importance to the wellbeing of the labour force, dependent demographic structure and life expectancy for economic development. Effective and efficient health care delivery is of a prime focus among stakeholders in the health sector in Nigeria. The current status of the health sector is fraught with industrial unrest and picketing following the failure of the government to meet the expectation of workers. Employee work-related attitude of job satisfaction, distributive, procedural and interactional justice perceptions of health workers in part play a key role to attaining quality health care. However, a large number of factors are responsible for job satisfaction of health professionals. In this paper, the nexus between demographics and job satisfaction is examined as well as the mediating role of organisational justice perceptions of workers in public and private healthcare institutions in Nigeria. Demographics of age, gender, education, job experience were considered with respect to overall job satisfaction and organisational justice. The study is grounded in the equity theoretical foundation of Adams in 1965. An analytical descriptive survey design was adopted in this study. A sample of 300 employees from private (150 workers) and public (150 workers) health care institutions were selected for the study through the use of a stratified random sampling procedure. The data were collected from self-report of workers via the administration of a structured questionnaire to employees. The numeric scores were determined from the summated scales of job satisfaction and organisational justice. The data were analysed with multivariate regression and structural equation modelling. From the analysed data, the study found that gender and job tenure were significant predictors of distributive justice, procedural justice and extrinsic job satisfaction while organisational justice had a significant effect on job satisfaction. In terms of the indirect effects, organisational justice mediated the relationships between gender, job tenure and overall job satisfaction. Consistent with the findings of the study, all health professionals should be treated on the basis of fairness without discrimination irrespective of status and professional dichotomy. Accordingly, the study recommended that the health care workforce who play managerial roles should ensure fairness and consider job tenure and gender in the formulation of policy frameworks for the overall job satisfaction of employees.