Factors to Improve Employee Satisfaction and Management Performance: A Qualitative Phenomenological Study

The purpose of the this study was to identify why Lebanese employees are dissatisfied and what should be done to change their state of dissatisfaction and why Lebanese managers are task oriented and what should be done to improve their performance. Managers and employees described their lived experiences, actions, and beliefs in a qualitative phenomenological study through informal face-to-face interviews and open-ended standardized questions. Data was analyzed using a qualitative method to identify themes related to the research questions. Eleven themes emerged from the interviews conducted which were dissatisfaction, stress, low salaries, disrespect, economic/political conditions, managers with Theory X approach, lack of employee empowerment, extrinsic motivation, overconfident managers, task orientation, and change of mentality. The findings revealed that most of the managers were overconfident with their managerial performance and employees were not satisfied with their managers’ approaches. In addition, managers’ tendency towards task orientation made them more inclined to appreciate extrinsic motivators to achieve organizations’ objectives.

Wafa Skaff is a doctorate graduate from Northcentral University (Arizona) and a member of Delta Mu Delta - International Honor Society in Business. She is a university lecturer and previously worked for Merrill Lynch International Bank and UBS (Bahrain) for seven years (1999 – 2006).