Job Satisfaction Level of Scientists in Government Owned Research and Development Organizations in India

The paper focuses on job satisfaction of scientific professionals working in government-run research and development organizations which are targeting indigenous technology developments. The organizational structures of most of these organizations are divided into projects and facility groups, where the former plays a proactive role in planning and conceiving and the latter provides the deliverables and fulfilling requirements. The scientists in both the groups are engineers, and therefore, are equally qualified and recruited at the same starting salary. Therefore, it made an interesting study to investigate and compare their job satisfaction levels using Paul Spectors' Job Satisfaction Survey (JSS) as the measurement instrument. The results show that as against the common perception that the educated and learned scientists of our country are dissatisfied and are looking towards careers in Western countries, the scientists are generally a satisfied lot and that beyond salary, contingent rewards and recognition among co-workers will be the deciding factors for job satisfaction among the intellectual and scientific community