Job Satisfaction Plays a Critical

Job Satisfaction plays a critical role in overall productivity, employee retention and sense of personal well being. However it has not always been easy to point out the precise factors of job satisfaction. It is believed that correct performance appraisals, encouragement, positive reinforcement, adequate compensation are some of the factors that lead to higher job satisfaction. Autonomy is seen as another major factor in this area. Autonomy refers to the extent to which an employee is allowed to make decisions on his own. This gives a deep sense of empowerment to employees when they are seen as capable beings that can make decisions without a higher-up's approval. Some degree of autonomy may therefore not only be important but also critical for better performance and higher productivity. In this research our general hypothesis would be this: autonomy both personal and professional lead to higher job satisfaction. The specific hypothesis would thus be as follows:

Employees who have higher levels of job autonomy in their work place have higher levels of job satisfaction than employees who have lower levels of job autonomy in their workplace.

2. Employees who have higher levels of professional autonomy in their workplace have higher levels of job satisfaction than employees who have lower levels of professional autonomy in their workplace.

3. Employees who have higher levels of personal autonomy in their workplace have higher levels of job satisfaction than employees who have lower levels of personal autonomy in their workplace.

CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW

Job satisfaction is defined as "the extent to which people like (satisfaction) or dislike (dissatisfaction) their jobs" (Spector, 1997, p. 2) based on a variety of factors including compensation, nature of job, colleagues, support network etc. traditionally job satisfaction was not considered an important thing to study because it was felt that no two people can have the same sense of well being or consider the same factors important for personal well being. Economists thus never touched the subject thinking that 'personal judgments of satisfaction and other subjective opinions as a black box that should be opened only by psychologists and sociologists' (Levy-Garboura and Montmarquette 1997, p.1).

But later researches indicted that job satisfaction was not only a worthy subject for discussion, it could very well be the main factor influencing productivity in a firm. Consequently many studies in the later half of 1990s and early 2000s focused on the factors and measurements of job satisfaction. Some researches in 1970s had also become aware of the role of job satisfaction even though the specific term had not been coined yet. For example Freeman (1978) had noted that, 'the answers to questions about how people feel toward their job are not meaningless but rather convey useful information about economic life that should not be ignored' (p. 135).

Thus among some of the factors that heavily influence job satisfaction is job autonomy i.e. The extent to which people have the freedom to make independent decisions at work. Several studies have already been conducted on the subject but there have been limitations attached to most of them. Some have specifically focused on employees working abroad (e.g. Bhuiman et al. 1996) while others have focused on psychological and sociological theories alone. Yet some others have failed to suppress other factors of job satisfaction while studying autonomy and its impact.

CHAPTER III: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK