Motivation, Performance and Satisfaction Among University Teachers: Comparing Public and Private Sectors in Pakistan and Malaysia

The research aims to determine the difference in performance, achievement motivation and job satisfaction of teaching faculties of selected private and public sector higher educational institutions of Pakistan and Malaysia, which are countries representing South/South-East Asia in cross-cultural perspective. The sample consisted of 120 Heads of the departments and teaching faculties of Pakistan (N=60) and Malaysia (N= 60).With the consent of the Vice Chancellors/ Registrars/Deans of the faculties, the Heads of the Department (HODs) were requested to rate the performance of their teaching faculty on University Teacher’s Evaluation Rating Questionnaire (UTERQ). Then two senior and regular teachers from each teaching faculty of the department completed Personal Information Form following Costello Achievement Motivation Scale (CAMS, adapted English version by Misra and Srivastava, 1990) and Job Satisfaction Scale (Singh and Sharma, 1999). Scoring was made according to the standard procedures as mentioned in the manuals. In order to treat the scores in statistical terminology, t-test was applied. The results indicate that when comparison was made separately between private and public higher educational institutions of Pakistan and Malaysia, the achievement motivation of teaching faculties of Malaysian private and public sector is higher than that of Pakistan. Similarly, the performance of public sector Malaysian teaching faculties seems to be better than public sector Pakistani faculties, although their evaluation mean score fall in the good range. However, the performance of private sector teachers of Pakistan and Malaysia do not differ. Further more, Pakistani public sector faculties seems to be more satisfied with their teaching jobs than Pakistani private sector teachers, although their performance and achievement motivation are alike. Whereas Malaysian public sector faculties not only seem to perform better than private sector Malaysian teachers but they are also more satisfied with their teaching profession than the latter group, regardless of similarity in their achievement motivation.