Examining perceptions of the work environment and defining the concept of job satisfaction among African-American faculty members.
Patton, Daniel Carlton
2001
Abstract
This dissertation examined how African-American faculty perceived their work environments and conceptualized job satisfaction. The sample included 20 African-American, full-time faculty members from a large, Midwestern, public Research I University. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to gather data on respondents' experiences within the university, in various professional associations, and off-campus. Open-ended questions were used to solicit information about daily interactions with colleagues and students as well as personal definitions of job satisfaction. Trigger cards were utilized to explore whether, and to what extent, respondents' perceptions and experiences fit with findings from previous research on underrepresented faculty and job satisfaction. In addition to confirming many results and observations from the extant literature on African-American faculty and job satisfaction, the data identified several new findings about their academic lives which are reported in three clusters: isolation, scholarly legitimacy, and service. Regarding isolation, the participants explained that some aspects of their isolation were experienced by all African-Americans, while others developed as a result of their individual behaviors. Examples of group-based isolation were racial and gender-based discrimination, as compared with individual-based isolation, which often developed in response to research interests or personal advocacy of positions in opposition to those of central administrators. Isolation was not universal among the participants, and many of the respondents described themselves as being central members of their departments or schools. While the literature on African-American faculty asserted that African-American professors who conduct research on African-American populations are typically marginalized, I identified variations in relation to the centrality of research on African-Americans in different fields. Faculty with appointments in service fields (social work, public health), in particular, believed that their scholarship on blacks was valued because of the dearth of information on this targeted service group. They did not encounter questions about the legitimacy of their scholarship that colleagues in other fields faced and they did not feel marginalized within their departments. For about half of the participants, off-campus service activities were an integral part of their professional agendas. This service orientation is consistent with findings from previous research involving African-American faculty. Other respondents, however, felt no special obligation to advocate for the interests of African-Americans, or include them in their professional activities.Subjects
African-american Concept Defining Examining Faculty Job Satisfaction Members Perceptions Work Environment
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