Employee job satisfaction in developing countries: The case of Kenya

Although developing countries that rely on agriculture continue to invest considerable amounts of resources toward the training of qualified agricultural manpower, the intensification of agricultural research, and the development of favourable agricultural policies, little attention is given to the organizational and social structure of the workplaces of the technical workers in agriculture. We argue that an understanding of what produces satisfied agricultural technicians is important in its own right, but is also important for indirectly increasing agricultural production in these developing countries. Following a social exchange theoretical argument, and using a national sample of technically trained agricultural personnel in Kenya, we identify the factors in the workplace that affect job satisfaction. Implications for management are drawn from these findings.