ORGANIZATIONAL SOCIALIZATION, JOB SATISFACTION, AND TURNOVER INTENT AMONG FACULTY OF AN EMERGING RESEARCH UNIVERSITY IN A POST-SOVIET CONTEXT
Open Access
- Author:
- Bilyalov, Darkhan
- Graduate Program:
- Higher Education
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- June 13, 2017
- Committee Members:
- Roger Geiger, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Roger Geiger, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
John Cheslock, Committee Member
David Baker, Committee Member
Kyle Peck, Outside Member - Keywords:
- international faculty
organizational socialization
job satisfaction
turnover intent
excellence initiatives - Abstract:
- Different nations across the globe strive for academic and research excellence by creating western style institutions with world-class university aspirations. Often unable to fill academic positions from local pool of academics, these “excellence initiatives” (Salmi, 2016) rely heavily on foreign faculty. With the lion’s share of faculty coming from outside of Kazakhstan, Nazarbayev University, an emerging institution in a post-soviet context, is not an exception (Ruby, Kuzhabekova, & Lee, 2016, Nazarbayev University, 2017). While the number of academics assuming faculty positions abroad is growing, little is known about their experiences at host institution. The goal of this study is to understand faculty experiences using the case of an emerging institution in a post-soviet context. In particular, the study aims at understanding the three aspects of faculty experience of working in the context of a new western-style institution: their organizational socialization, job satisfaction, and turnover intent. The three phenomena are analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively in this exploratory mixed methods study, thus setting the baseline for future research and contributing to the limited scholarship on socialization, satisfaction, and turnover intent among academics who assume positions abroad. The study found that socialization positively affects job satisfaction which in turn predicts turnover intentions among faculty. In particular, among organizational socialization constructs, the identification with goals and values of the university was a particularly strong predictor of both job satisfaction and turnover intent among faculty. Additionally, satisfaction with administration which was the lowest rated satisfaction construct, was also the only significant predictor of turnover intent. The study revealed challenges of student academic dishonesty, limited research funding and infrastructure, as well as a particularly low satisfaction with administration reflected in the mutual lack of trust, and perceptions of limited transparency and appreciation. Implications for research and practice are discussed.