Self-esteem and job satisfaction among the academic staff in higher education

Education in the 21st century is focused on knowledge based on collaboration, interaction, and creativity. We need knowledge, skills, competencies, and characteristics of individuals who will create knowledge with the assistance of university academics. So the objective of our paper was to determine the relationship between self-esteem and job satisfaction among 150 full-time academic employees, employed at three state universities in the Republic of Kosovo and the Republic of North Macedonia. We used the following measuring instruments: job satisfaction survey (JSS) and Rosenberg self-esteem scale (RSE). Results show that 86 (57.33%) subjects have high self-esteem, 38 (25.33%) have a medium level of self-esteem and 26 (17.34%) have low self-esteem. We found that the low self-esteem of the subjects does not depend on job satisfaction, while there is a significant correlation between the medium level of self-esteem and job satisfaction and the high level of self-esteem and job satisfaction. In addition, the self-esteem of the academic staff depends on the total job satisfaction, coworkers, and nature of work, communication, salary. The obtained results show that job satisfaction and job success are moderators of self-esteem in academic staff (Marcionneti & Castelli, 2022).