The January 2014 issue has four papers, of which three have reference to the teaching fraternity and one is on HRM practices. The first paper, “Human Resources Management Practices and Turnover Intentions: The Mediating Role of Organizational Justice”, by Neuza Ribeiro and Ana Suzete Semedo, seeks to examine the mediating role of organizational justice in understanding the relationship between HRM practices and turnover intentions. Employee turnover has always been an important outcome variable for organizational research along with other significant outcome variables such as performance and productivity. On the other hand, why people leave an organization has been an area of research for scholars for long. There is available literature that suggests that HR practice perceptions have a bearing on employees’ decision to stay or quit an organization. On the other hand, there are numerous published papers that indicate a causal link between organizational justice perception and turnover intentions. It is interesting to see that this paper tries to merge these sets of literature by using organizational justice as a mediating variable in explaining the relationship between HR practices and turnover intention. The findings of the study indicate that HR practices, directly and through the mediating role of organizational justice, tend to impact turnover intentions. What is also interesting to note is that out of four dimensions of organizational justice, only two dimensions, that is, how much you get (distributive justice) and how you are treated (interpersonal justice), predict turnover intention.

The second paper, “Job Satisfaction Among College Teachers: A Comparative Analysis”, by Sumbul Tahir and S M Sajid, examines job satisfaction among college teachers. With the mushrooming of private educational institutions, especially in the area of management, engineering and medical education, teachers across different institutions experience a variety of contextual factors that can influence their satisfaction with their jobs. The working conditions, the nature of relationship between the managing body and the teaching fraternity, and other such related factors tend to impact the satisfaction levels of teachers with their jobs. The findings of this study do not indicate significant differences in the level of perceived job satisfaction of teachers across institutions, but the study does report statistically significant differences in the perception of job satisfaction based on gender differences. It is interesting to see that male and female teachers indicate different levels of job satisfaction. It would be even more interesting to discover the reasons for these differences. More in-depth study, not necessarily confined to the use of quantitative research techniques, can unravel some of these reasons behind the differences in the perception of job satisfaction by male and female teachers.

The third paper, “Work-Life Balance and Job Satisfaction Among School Teachers: A Study”, by S Padma and M Sudhir Reddy, examines the relationship between work-life balance and job satisfaction among school teachers. Teaching jobs, by nature, tend to provide scope for balancing work and personal life, as there are periods of intense and non-intense work and these periods are well-defined and structured, lending itself to planning for personal work and time away from work. Given this, by all moderation, a teaching job, as compared to any other professional working full-time, should provide for a better balancing of work and personal life. What is interesting about this paper is that, given the same contextual factors, people may differ with respect to their ability to balance work and life, and therefore, the impact of demographic variables has been examined to account for such possible differences. The issue of work-life balance assumes importance in today’s fast paced world, as it is used as a tool for attracting and retaining employees, and it especially appeals to a section of the society that values balancing work and life. The final paper, “A Study on the Self-Concept of Teachers Working in Government, Aided and Unaided Colleges in Bangalore”, by Jacqueline Kareem and Bupha Ravirot, examines the self-concept of teachers. The paper starts with an assumption that the quality of education is dependent on the quality of teachers, and to enhance the quality of teachers, understanding of oneself, which refers to self-concept, is important. Another assumption of this paper is that the self-concept of the teachers would vary across different types of institutions based on whether it is a government, aided or unaided institution. The results indicate that unaided college teachers have higher self-concept scores as compared to government and aided college teachers. Again what would be interesting to discover is, if the teachers’ self-concept varies across different types of institutions, what could be the possible reasons for these differences, and a study of this kind would make for interesting reading.

--Vivekanand
Consulting Editor