RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CAREER PROGRAM CHARACTERISTICS AND JOB SATISFACTION IN A CITY BASED LOCAL AUTHORITY

According to the human resource development literature, career program has two salient characteristics: career planning and career management. Recent studies in this area reveal that the ability of management to properly implement such career program characteristics may have a significant impact on job satisfaction. Although the nature of this relationship is interesting, little is known about the role of career program characteristics as an important antecedent of job satisfaction in the workplace career models. Therefore, this study was conducted to examine the relationship between career program and job satisfaction in a city based local authority in Sabah, Malaysia. A survey research method was used as the main instrument to gather data from employees in the organization. The outcomes of testing hypothesis using a stepwise regression analysis showed two important findings: first, career planning insignificantly correlated with job satisfaction. Secondly, career management significantly correlated with job satisfaction. Statistically, this result demonstrates that the career planning does not act as an important determinant of job satisfaction, career management act as an important determinant of job satisfaction in the career model of the organizational sample. In addition, discussion, implications and conclusion are elaborated.