The Impact of Job Tension on Job Satisfaction: A Study on Executive Level Employees of the Apparel Industry in Anuradhapura District of Sri Lanka

Apparel industry in Sri Lanka has become major contributor to Sri Lanka’s economic development. Due to supply of low cost creative labour and organizational friendly government policies, many international apparel brands and apparel firms are outsourcing their manufacturing functions to Asian countries. Of those, Sri Lanka is a leading country where most apparel sector giants are interested to invest in. Further, in Sri Lankan context apparel sector is highly competitive as quite a number of big giants such as MAS Holdings, Brandix Apparel Lanka Ltd, Hela Clothing (Pvt) Ltd are operating in the market. Due to this high competitiveness in the industry, greater struggle is visible to attract and retain key talent. However, retaining talent has become difficult due to the job tension associated with high competitiveness. In the current study, the researchers attempt to investigate in depth the impact of job tension on job satisfaction of the executive level employees of the Apparel Industry, with special reference to Anuradhapura District. The executive level employees in three leading garment manufacturing organizations in Sri Lanka were investigated through a sample of 100 employees. Simple random sampling method was used to select the representative sample. A self-administrated structured questionnaire was used to collect data. The correlation analysis and regression analysis were used to test the research hypotheses. The study confirmed that job tension is significantly correlated with employee job satisfaction. The findings of the study also indicated that there is a strong negative relationship between job tension and job satisfaction of executive level employees. This study directly provides a major theoretical contribution filling the gaps of former studies which were done on apparel sector. The findings and the recommendations of the current research directly addresses lot of practical issues related to job tension and job satisfaction faced by the apparel firms.