The Quality of Work Life: An Empirical Study

Abstract

This research examines the quality of work life in a selection of pharmaceutical companies in Egypt. It aims to test the relationships between the employees' perceptions of their quality of work life and; their perceptions of the degree of participation in decisionmaking available to them, their perceptions of their level of job satisfaction, their perceptions of their level of affective, continuance, and normative commitment, and the ownership form of the company. It uses a sample of 1270 employees in three different ownership forms; public, private, and multinational pharmaceutical companies in Egypt. The total sample size is proportionately distributed (i. e. the actual 'sample size has been distributed between the three ownership forms based on the percentage of employees in each ownership form to the total size of the population) among' , the three, forms Of ownership (public companies 889, private companies = 165, and multinational companies = 216 employee). The number of employees surveyed in each company has also been proportionately distributed. The perceptions of the targeted employees are surveyed using a questionnaire that contains 81 items. The collected data are analysed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) programme. The findings of the study indicate that there is a significant positive relationship between the employees' perceptions of their quality of work life and; their perceptions of the degree of participation in decision-making available to them, and their perceptions of their level of job satisfaction. A significant positive and partial relationship is found between the employees' perceptions of their quality of work life and their perceptions of III their level of affective, continuance, and normative commitment, as it is expected, by the researcher, that the employees' perceptions of their quality of work life may positively affect their perceptions of their level of affective, continuance, and normative commitment through affecting their perceptions of their level of job satisfaction. A significant relationship is found between the employees' perceptions of their quality of work life and the ownership form of the company. The results also indicate that employees perceive their quality of work life to be greater or better in the multinational pharmaceutical companies than are the employees' perceptions of their quality of work life in both the private and public pharmaceutical companies in Egypt. Furthermore, the results indicate that the employees' perceptions of their quality of work life in the private phan-naceutical companies are better than the employees' perceptions of their quality of work life in the public phan-naceutical companies in Egypt. A set of quality of work life criteria that seems important to employees in the pharmaceutical companies in Egypt, and which might therefore be productively addressed by employers/organisations has been identified. In addition, some implications for HR practices in Egypt have been raised and discussed. Finally, a set of models that could clarify the interactive relationship between the variables that have been investigated in this research in the Egyptian context has been developed. It is suggested that the set of quality of work life criteria as well as the models might fon-n the basis for future researches of this type.