Job Satisfaction and Performance of Police Officers in Penang

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to examine if job satisfaction predicts job performance among police officers in Malaysia. Data was collected from 262 police officers who are currently working in the Royal Malaysia Police (RMP) located in Georgrtwon, Pulau Pinang, Malaysia. Participation in the research was voluntary. The results indicate that job satisfaction is positively correlated with performance. Supervision, co-workers, and work have a significantly positive impact on job performance, while the effect on pay and promotion is not significant. The findings of this study provide some insight to extend research in organizational behavior among police officers in North Earth Police Department, Pulau Pinang. In addition, studying the relationship between job satisfaction and job performance has synergistic and complementary effects on each of employee attitudes that exceed the individual effects. Intervention to improve the police officers’ job satisfaction should be kept developed in the future, especially to enhance the better performance in RMP. Implications, limitation, and suggestion for further research and practitioners are discussed in this study.

Keywords: Job satisfactionjob performancepolice officersMalaysia

Introduction

Normally, the public sector organizations known as the largest employer in many countries (Knies, Boselie, Gould-Williams, & Vandenabeele, 2017). The public sector employment can be characterized as being labor intensive, as the performance of public sector workers is critical to the delivery of services (Knies et al., 2017). In the globalization changing widely, the public sector always try to provide quality service and high performance organizations based on the expectations and needs of their stakeholders including the communities, civilian and customer (Wisniewski, 2001).

According to De Waal (2010) noted that an employee is able to anticipate, respond and adapt to change is crucial element will achieving high-performance in the public sector .It strongly support by Danish and Usman (2010) defined the employee as important assets and as the key for development for success in the organization. The studies have done by scholars show that job performance and job satisfaction are strongly correlation positive (Agyare, Yuhui, Mensah, Aidoo, & Ansah, 2016; Koedel, Springer, & Tan, 2017; Shaju & Subhashini, 2017).

The Malaysian Public Service (MPS) has considered a crucial component in the economic and social development in Malaysia (Woo, 2015). MPS has responsive to make changing and transforming in the public sector to stay relevant, efficiently and optimize value creation. The government always want to provide high-performance through focus public administration and management research and reform for many years (De Waal, 2010). In the years 2004, programs ‘New Public Management’ introduced as a benchmark and key indicator embarked high-performance of all public sector (Siddiquee, 2006). One agency chosen are Royal Malaysia Police as the sample of the study of job satisfaction.

Problem Statement

The Royal Malaysia Police (RMP) took its formation of Malaysia in 1807. RMP responsible largely law enforcement, order maintenance and services in the country. In particular, crime reduces is one priority of the RMP (Royal Malaysia Police, 2018). In the Government Transformation Programme (GTP), the RMP give full responsibility to decreasing crime index 5% every year until 2020 (Pelan Strategik PDRM, 2015). Recently, the public is dissatisfaction with service delivery, performance and weakness RMP. In the years 2017, there are total 1,111 cases complaints from citizen included 10 agencies (Ministry): RMP is highest received complaints 274 cases (24.67%), State Health Department are 222 cases (19.99%), State Education Department are 200 cases (18.00%), Public Works Department are 117 cases (10.53%), Road Transport Department are 89 cases (8.01%), Immigration Department are 84 cases (7.56%), Kuala Lumpur City Hall is 79 cases (7.11%), Department of Irrigation and Drainage are 46 cases (4.14%) (Public Complaints Bureau, 2017).

As a result, poor operational management declined confidence among the public on RMP as the agency which responsible for upholding the law in the country (Kadir & Jusoff, 2009). In add, another issue has reported similar likely unethical misconduct (Klockars, Ivkovich, Harver, & Haberfeld, 2000), integrity (Bakri, Said, & Karim, 2015) and assets misappropriation (Karim, Said, & Bakri, 2015).

Research Questions

The present study aims to examine the relationship between job satisfaction and job performance among police officers is located in Northern Malaysia. With reference to the research objectives stated in this study, the research questions to be answered are as follows:

• What is the relationship between job satisfaction and job performance in the

North East Police Department?

• Does job satisfaction (such as pay, promotion, supervision, co-workers, and work) influence the job performance in the North East Police Department?

• Determine the correlation between job satisfaction (such as pay, promotion, supervision, co-workers, and work) and job performance in the North East Police Department.

Purpose of the Study

The objectives of this study were to measure the impact of job satisfaction on the job performance and assesses in police officers who currently working in NEPD, Pulau Pinang. In order to materialize these objectives, the following specific objectives were considered.

• to examine the relationship between job satisfaction (such as pay, promotion, supervision, co-workers, and work) and job performance in the North East Police Department.

• to understand if the job satisfaction (such as such as pay, promotion, supervision, co-workers, and work) increasing the job performance in the RMP in the North East Police Department.

Research Methods

The population comprises sample was a police officer from the department in District Police North East Penang. Penang has the highest Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita in the 2014 and 2015 (World Economic Forum, 2017). The potential significance George Town, Penang as World Heritage listing attractive tourists as destinations tourism, which is deemed a more profitable and sustainable market (Hall & Piggin, 2002). Usually, the tourism is potential variables that can influence the crime in the urban (Lisowska, 2017). Over the past several years, the world urban population have been changing rapidly of urbanization and rural population became more decreasing steeply (UN-HABITAT, 2015). In the years 2015, the world population are 7.3 billion and 53% are living in urban areas. The percentage will increase to 9.8 billion in 2050 which 69% will be urban (World Population, 2015). The rapidly in growth in urbanization, creates some social problems, and is one major contributor the high level urban crime in the countries (Ghani, 2017; Amin, Rahim, & Geshina, 2014).

Total 300 set questionnaires were disturbed and 262 were returned and complete to analyse. The impact effectively seriously at sampling less than 50 cases but if samples more 200 cases making the effectively diminishes (Hair, Black, Babin, & Anderson, 2014). The score scale including with 1 for “no”, 2 for “neutral”, and 3 for “yes”. The survey contained the five facets job descriptive index: pay, promotion, supervision, co-workers and work (Smith et al., 1969). We also delete all the respondents who missing more than 5 missing points across the JDI. The data collected was analysed by using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 2.0. The statistical analyses include the mean, standard deviation, and reliability value.

Findings

The statistical analyses were computed using SPSS version 12.0 for Window to extract the data and results. There are several results which are displayed below from study. Table 1 : below explains the background of the respondents. 86.6% respondents were percent male and 13.4% respondents were female. Age shows 6.5% were 21-25 years, 29.8% were age 26-30, 22.1%were 31-35 years, 12.2% were 36-40 years, 6.1% were 41-45 years and 46-50 years, 11.5% were 51-55 years and 5.7% were 56-60 years. The ethnicity divided into 4 group; first Malay 82.4%, Chinese 6.5%, India 5.0%, and others 6.1%. Majority of the respondents are between 26-30 years old (29.8%). Most of the respondents are Malay (82.4%) and educational backgrounds are the secondary school (76%).

Table 2 shows that all of the questionnaires in the questionnaires were reliable since, the scales used highly reliable for data analysis because the minimum acceptable range for Cronbach alpha is 0.7 (Cortina, 1993). The value of Cronbach Alpha was 0.74 for question impacts of pay towards employee job satisfaction, 0.69 for questions promotion towards employee job satisfaction, 0.77 for question impact of supervision towards employee job satisfaction, 0.89 for question impact of co-workers towards employee job satisfaction, and 0.67 for question impact of work towards employee job satisfaction.

Table 2 show, supervision, co-workers, and work have a positively correlated with job performance. Supervision shows a positively correlated to the job performance with the value (r=.305), co-workers show a positively correlated to the job performance with value (r=.333) and work also show a positively correlated to the job performance with value (r=.157). Based on the result, it can be concluded that correlation analysis has positive relations between variable and independent variables.

Table 3 , coefficients shows, co-workers and work are participation positively influence the dependent variable as the beta value is (.236) and (.183). From the result, it shows that the independent variable of co-workers has significant relationship towards dependent variables. The value of R square is represented .135 which means 13.5% of the variation in employee job performance can be explained by five (5) independent variables (i.e. pay, promotion, supervision, work and co-workers).

Conclusion

This study is investigated effective job satisfaction that may lead to job performance using the questionnaire survey method. By considering and understanding job satisfaction (such as i.e. pay, promotion, supervision, co-workers, and work) that influences the job performance of police officers today, it is one of the best strategies to measure the level police officer’s performance. The between of five dimensions of job satisfaction in police officers in police district North East Polis Department, Pulau Pinang, only supervision, work, co-workers, and work have significant relationship between job performance among the polices. This study also found certain that police officers should pay more attention to another variable (such as job stress, organizational commitment, and HRM practices) to enhance and improve job performance in the police officers.

It is hoped that contributed proposed by the researcher were able to contribute towards improving the job satisfaction among the police officers in North East Polis Department, Pulau Pinang.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Associate Professor for their guidance and comments helped in completion of this reseach. My sincere appreciation also goes to Royal Malaysia Police (RMP) that provide the data to me. Last but no least, I would like to thank the participants of this research who spend valuable time in filling out the questionnaires.

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