Effect of good governance perception towards job satisfaction: a case study of the agriculture professionals attached to the Department of Agriculture Sri Lanka

Effectiveness of service delivery system of public sector organizations like Department of Agriculture (DoA) depends on the job satisfaction of the relevant officers. Research Officers (ROs), Agriculture Officers (AOs), Lecturers (LCs) and Subject Matter Specialists (SMSs) are the key officers in the DoA in Sri Lanka Agriculture Service (SLAgS). It is therefore, a pre requisite to improve the job satisfaction of SLAgS officers in the DoA in order to improve the effectiveness of service delivery system. Further, empirical evidence showed that there was a positive relationship between good governance (GG) and job satisfaction. On the other hand, personal and job related factors are also affect job satisfaction of the employees. This study therefore attempted to identify how job satisfaction can be improved via improving good governance perception and other factors of officers of SLAgS working in the DoA. Pre tested questionnaire was used to collect the data from ROs, AOs, LCs and SMSs. Results of the correlation test showed that there was a positive and significant relationship between job satisfaction and GG perception of SLAgS officers (r = 0.673, p= 0.001). It reveals that the favourable GG perception of the employees increased their job satisfaction. In addition, path analysis was performed to identify the direct and indirect factors which positively or negatively influence the GG perception and job satisfaction of the respondents. According to the Path analysis, there was a direct effect of GG perception to job satisfaction and indirect effect of other factors to job satisfaction through GG perception.