The Relationships of Role Conflict and Role Ambiguity With Job Satisfaction in Non- Managerial IT Professionals in Matrix Organization

Today's economy is fueled by IT professionals who tend to be shared across the organization, therefore these workers' job satisfaction is important for overall company success. The purpose of this quantitative correlational study was to investigate to what extent role conflict and role ambiguity were related to job satisfaction for non-managerial IT professionals working in a multinational matrix company, headquartered in the U.S. Grounded in Spector's job satisfaction theory, this study addressed two questions regarding the bivariate relationships of role conflict and role ambiguity with job satisfaction in the target population. The study was conducted with a convenience sample of company employees and contractors, who completed an online survey comprised of eight role conflict questions, six role ambiguity questions, and 20 job satisfaction questions three validated instruments. The parametric correlation analysis results showed significant direct relationships of job satisfaction with both role conflict (&rgr; = 0.335, p < .001) and role ambiguity (&rgr; = 0.595, p < .001). According to these findings, role conflict and particularly role ambiguity, which have traditionally been considered sources of job-related stress and dissatisfaction, were associated at the research site with higher rather than lower job satisfaction. The results cannot be generalized due to the convenience sample recruited from only two business lines of a single multinational company. Further research is needed on the relationships among these variables with a broader group of IT professionals, controlling for other factors that could influence job satisfaction.;Keywords: Information technology workers, role conflict, role ambiguity, job satisfaction, matrix organizations, knowledge workers, role stress, non-managerial.