ASSESSING JOB INVOLVEMENT OF SELECTED UNIVERSITY LIBRARY PROFESSIONALS IN BANGLADESH

Abstract

Job related issues of library professionals of Bangladesh have gained attention in recent times. A university striving for excellence and growth must have a world class library meeting all the academic needs of its students and teachers. In this context, universities would like to achieve positive feedback from their library professionals and would like to see their library professionals proactively contributing more to the growth of a library. It is, therefore, important that the universities give emphasis on three areas of job for smooth functioning of their libraries: enhancing the job involvement; increasing the level of job satisfaction and mediating personality traits. This present research has attempted to investigate the level of job involvement and its relationship with two other variables namely personality traits and job satisfaction of university library professionals of Bangladesh. The term of job involvement is basically analyzed in the area of psychology, sociology or business. From the review of literature, it has been observed that no research was done on job involvement in libraries of Bangladesh. The main aim of this research is to investigate the level of job involvement of library professionals who are working in select university libraries in Bangladesh. The specific objectives of the study are:(1) to determine whether there is a significant relationship between background variables and job involvement; (2) to determine whether there is a significant relationship between job involvement and personality traits of library professionals; (3)to assess whether there is a significant relationship between job involvement and job satisfaction of library professionals; (4) to investigate the most critical impact among all variables (Personality traits and Job satisfaction) towards job involvement of library professionals; and (5)to suggest the remedial measures that should be taken to involve in the job of library professionals in Bangladesh. Based on these objectives, the study focused on answering four research questions. The research areas of this study are 15 universities of Bangladesh. Universities of Bangladesh were categorized into public and private universities. The population and sample of this study were covered by all library professionals who are working at the central libraries of public universities and those who are working at private university libraries in Bangladesh. The simple purposive sampling method was chosen for the study. Data was collected by a structured questionnaire that consisted of 79 items. There were four parts of the survey questionnaire asked to library professionals concerning job involvement, personality traits, job satisfaction and background information of respondents. In total, 151 completed questionnaires were received out of 260 questionnaires distributed. The one factor confirmatory factor analysis model was performed to come with a single scaled score of all statements. Afterwards, the multiple logistic regression model was used to determine the relationship between job involvement and personality traits, job involvement and job satisfaction and relationship between job involvement, personality traits and job satisfaction of library professionals. The bivariate statistical analysis, chi-square test was used to determine the significant relationship between job involvement and demographic variables.

The data for this research is analyzed using the statistical software for data science (STATA) and other appropriate statistical methods. The result revealed that low job involvement is independently associated with low personality traits and low job involvement is independently associated with low job satisfaction. The results showed that high job involvement is linked with high job satisfaction. It is observed that professionals almost agreed with nearly every of the factors of job involvement, excluding job longing, job concern, and time-consciousness. The result demonstrated that most of the professionals are moderately extrovert, conscientious and intellect or conclusive imaginable. It is also exposed that professionals are retained with agreeable traits in their personality. Most likely they are sympathetic, supportive and overall they are competent for their job. The study also identified that the majority of the respondents are more or less satisfied with all the job facets of job satisfaction. On the other hand, the type of university and years of experiences of professionals are significantly associated with job involvement. The results found that professionals working in public universities have higher job involvement than private universities. Additionally, years of experiences are found significant with the job involvement. The findings have several implications for universities attempting to strengthen professionals' operational capabilities through increased job involvement. Universities need to give more importance to personality traits and job satisfaction of library professionals to better understand their job involvement. The limitations of this study include a relatively small sample size for conducting this type of research. Additionally, the study provides suggestions for further research in this area. This finding provides managerial information for university authority in terms of how to improve the level of jobs involvement of their library professionals. Consequently, it provides constructive suggestions to university authorities to introduce a standard performance appraisal system for library job that can be structured together with personality traits and job satisfaction to get better job involvement of university library professionals in Bangladesh.