Organizational Culture, Job and Customer Satisfaction: A Quest for A Relationship

Abstract

Organizational Culture, Job Satisfaction, and Customer Satisfaction: A Quest for a Relationship This study investigated the relationship between Organizational Culture, Job Satisfaction, and Customer Satisfaction, and whether a causal relationship existed where Job Satisfaction mediates the relationship between Organizational Culture and Customer Satisfaction in the Pharmaceutical Industry in the Khartoum State in the Sudan. The field study consisted of three factories randomly selected through the SPSS involving the sales representatives of the three factories as well as their clients. A quantitative survey methods using questionnaires was used to collect and analyze data. Three questionnaires were used. One questionnaire is to elicit the organizational culture type (OCAI), the other is for measuring overall job satisfaction level (JSS), and the third questionnaire is for measuring the overall customer satisfaction level (CSQ). This study has two groups of population. One population is the sales representatives of the three factories, (27, 26, and 5 for F1, F2, and F3 respectively), the other population is the customers of these factories (66 for the three factories). The finding of this research indicates that the foreign pharmaceutical organizations (2 factories) are dominated more by the Market Culture type, while the Sudanese local organization ( 1 factory) is dominated more by the Hierarchal Culture type. Another major finding is that all the three constructs, organizational culture, job satisfaction, and customer satisfaction enjoy a statistically significant correlation among themselves, while there is a statistically significant vii causal relationship between organizational culture and customer satisfaction mediated by job satisfaction. Yet another result is that the level of both job satisfaction and customer satisfaction for the three sample organizations is negative (dissatisfaction), and it is found that this industry is dominated by male sales representatives, while customers are mostly females. Both sales representatives and customers are graduates, young with few years of experience. Based on the results and findings of this study, some recommendations for leaders and practitioners were suggested. Organizational leaders need to identify the kind of organizational culture prevailing in their organizations, and what impact it has on different organizational outcomes, such as job satisfaction and customer satisfaction. Also, leaders should realize the importance of treating staff (sales representatives) as internal customer, as research indicates that customer satisfaction is just a reaction to employee satisfaction, based on this reality, the old conventional wisdom that “the customer runs the company” may now be re-phrased as “both employee and customer run the company”. For Human Resource Managers, this study recommends that it imperative for the human resource leaders, as change agents, to educate and train themselves on organizational culture issues and the impact it has on other organizational dimensions. Also, it is suggested that the type of the prevailing organizational culture to be included in the advertisement for vacancies, as it will help candidates to know what kind of organization is it. Employment is a kind of long term engagement, and as such it needs to be initiated on clear grounds. Mismatch of the organizational values, and those of the candidate will lead to loss on both sides, and this is why it is important that selection of new hires be based on “culture-fit” dimension as well. Finally, this study suggest that it is time for viii human resource people to engage into communication with customers and use their feedback on trainings and evaluation of the front line staff (sales representatives).