Social Capital: Relationship between Social Capital and Teacher Job Satisfaction within a Learning Organization

This dissertation was designed to study the relationship between Social Capital and teacher Job Satisfaction for 11 selected North Carolina Middle Schools. This study uses the learning organizational theory and social capital theory as theoretical constructs for studying the complex relationships between school as a Learning Organization (LO), Social Capital (SC), and teacher Job Satisfaction (JS). SC encompasses the interactive-interpersonal relationships and the values that are placed on those relationships whose collaborative efforts provide collective leverage to obtain an agreed-upon task. SC, according to Subramaniam and Youndt (2005), is intrinsically tied to Human Capital (HC), which is the individual knowledge, skills, experience, and/or expertise an individual utilizes within the organizational framework. Teachers, school administrators, and school support staff possess individual knowledge and skill for the positions for which they were hired. The researcher used the SC constructs to form a conceptual bridge between the LO concept and JS among teachers. As a first step in examining the validity of this model, the researcher used Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) to examine the fit between Bowen's 12 LO dimensions and their theorized manifest indicators, as operationalized in Bowen's Student Success Profile-Learning Organization (Bowen, Rose, & Ware, 2006). This analysis yielded the conclusion that an acceptable degree of fit existed between the observed and theorized relationships between the LO dimensions and their manifest indicators. The researcher then used CFA to examine the theorized versus observed relationships between the scored LO dimensions (justified on the basis of the initial CFA) and the 3 SC constructs. Upon confirming that an acceptable degree of fit existed between the theorized and observed LO-SC relationships, the researcher proceeded to determine the degree to which the 3 SC constructs accounted for the variance in teacher JS using ordinary least squares multiple regression. This resulted in the finding that 2 of the 3 SC constructs (viz., Cognitive Social Capital and Relational Social Capital) accounted for significant portions of the variance in teacher JS, combining to account for 10.8% of JS variance. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]