Employee’s Job Satisfaction with Computer Mediated Communication System

To fill the gaps in the computer mediated communication literature and provide useful information on interpersonal relationships within an organization, this study aims to investigate how computer mediated communication (CMC) system have impacted on employee’s job satisfaction of Ceylon Electricity Board, Sri Lanka. An empirical research was conducted to test the hypothesized relationships based on a conceptual framework developed through a comprehensive literature review on CMC and job satisfaction. Through a literature support this model consisted of three independent variables (i.e., electronic mails, instant messaging and computerized maintenance management) in computer mediated communication system and a dependent variable which is job satisfaction. The sample of the study consisted of 100 respondents representing executive and medium level technical service (MLTS) staff of the transmission division of Ceylon Electricity Board in Sri Lanka. Self-administered questionnaire and the web-based questionnaire was used to collect primary data. The data were analyzed with Partial Least Squares path modeling (PLS) to test the hypotheses of the study. The research findings indicated that computerized maintenance management is the most significant factor impacting on the employees’ job satisfaction. Moreover, it also identified that there is a positive and statistically significant impact of instant messaging and electronic mails on employees’ job satisfaction. The results provide valuable input regarding the instant messaging and job satisfaction. Therefore, managers should have to pay their more and more attention in order to improve instant messaging as one of the communication media in an organization. In this research considered only three CMC dimensions which influence the job satisfaction. But there are more CMC dimensions used as organizational communication in future studies.


Background of the Study
With the enormous competition in business world, the most of the organizations eager to adopt new technological improvements and innovations to their practices for maximizing the employees and organizational performance (Paraskeva, Eriksson, Johansson, & Peter, 2019;Bordi, Tammi, & Okkonen, 2014). The high speed communication is most important fact in current competitive business world. The computer-mediated communication system (CMC) has done significant changes in the ways people communicate and associate with each other in both government and private sector organizations today (Jayalal & Balasuriya, 2015). With the use of CMC system information can be sent to single as well as multiple recipients thus making the distribution of information easier and quicker than ever before (Wellman, Salaff, Dimitrova, & Garton, 1996). With this rapid change in communication technology, the organizational culture and employees' working environment, organizational language, interpersonal relationships of the employee have totally changed as a result of CMC effects. These changes which were created due to CMC system influence has make significant impact on employees work life and their job satisfaction (Dhir, 2018). Therefore, most of the organizations are adopting CMC system as their organizational communication today. Therefore, it will have added value to study the impact of CMC on Job satisfaction of employees presently.
Nevertheless, the employees should have up-to-date technological skills or have to develop those skills to adapt the digitalizing work environment. Learning and adapting to new technologies may increase (p.3), while based on the definition of Stasser (1992) CMC can be defined as a process of negotiating the meaning of various situations arises between the group of social actors. As claims of Metz (1992) computer-mediated communication (CMC) is described as any communication patterns mediated through the computer.
There are lots of advantages that employees can enjoy because of CMC systems introduced and developed in an organization. As claims of Rowley(1999), CMC makes responds more quickly than was possible through a letter or memo as well as can attached more files and communicate with groups on one occasion. So, CMC creates faster, speeder and reliable communication service. Further he discussed the management and development of organizations considered to be centralized with CMC, and, indeed, the style of communication can influence interpersonal relationships, and in turn, factors such as commitment and motivation. Gush (1999) conducted a research to examine the potential and limitations of computer mediated communication (CMC) in an educational context at Bournemouth University on two courses to serve the needs of students out on their work placement year. There he found that the CMC is its ability to facilitate learning at a distance by providing a sophisticated tool for communication. The advantage of this is, therefore it creates new knowledge and understanding while working collaboratively with a view and can deliver against desired outcomes (Bordi, Tammi,, & Okkonen, 2014).

Dimensions of CMC
Since computer mediated communication is rapid developing technology its dimensions are vary with time. The various researches describe CMC system with various models. According to Harold Dwight Lasswell's '5W' theory, CMC system is a new form of communication with its own five characteristics Subject, Host, Information resource, Channel, Relations and Effects. Further, researcher Yu (2011) identifies CMC system composed of human and computers, absorbs and then extends the advantages of all former formats of communication, acceptance the instant interaction of oral communication, the intellectual logics of printing dissemination, and the vivid images of movie and television.
The researcher Simpson, (2002) Sias, Pedersen, Gallagher, & Kopaneva (2012) to examine teleworkers' job satisfaction related to the use of and satisfaction with a variety of communication channels and he reveals that Teleconferencing and instant messaging ranked as least satisfying among a range of communication channels available to teleworkers.

Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS)
A computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) is a software package designed to maintain a computer database for an organization's maintenance operations and human resources function (DeSanctis & Poole, 1994). Computerize Maintenance Management system (CMMS) is help for scheduling all types of maintenance jobs such as maintenance operations, labor handling, purchasing and inventory handling and providing statistical reports. Each responsible employee for above activities can involve for their job simultaneously if they are geographically dispersed because of CMC. CMMS is leading CMC system in Sri Lanka for utility management. A computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) is a computer software program designed to assist in the planning, management and administrative functions required for effective maintenance. According to the findings of Higgins, Brautigam, & Mobley, (1995) that CMMS manage maintenance information contributes to improved communication and decision-making capabilities and improve the information and communication facilities of repair needs and work priorities. Further they found in their research that CMMS has the capability of improving coordination through closer working relationships between maintenance and production. So it increased maintenance responsiveness of employees. Rastegari & Mobin (2016) says that electronic communication between offices in an organization improve with CMMS because they can send work assignments to maintenance workforce through mobile devices and so they can operate more efficiently in the field, for timely completion of required maintenance and repairs. On top of that, CMMS lets your team communicate in a more efficient manner which means the work can be started faster and subsequently finished under set deadlines. To attain a better understanding of how advanced CMMS trigger satisfaction amid their resource (employees) hereby refer to Adaptive Structuration Theory (AST) to describe the process by which people incorporate advanced technologies into their work practices. Once applied, technologies should trigger structural change in terms of productivity, efficiency, and satisfaction to individuals and organizations (DeSanctis & Poole, 1994).

Various researchers and practitioners have provided their own definitions of what job satisfaction is.
However, some of the most common definitions describe job satisfaction as a psychological, behavioural and occupational response by employees' towards fulfilment at their job. It is an expression of an employee pertaining to a particular segment of the work (For instance, reward, authority, peers). Kumar (2002) has defined the job satisfaction is a significant principle for the success of an organization where it is closely associated with life satisfaction. That means employees satisfaction is directly proportional to organizational performance. Therefore, employees can make or break an organization (Deal, 2007). Brief & Weiss (2002) defined job satisfaction as "a pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from the perception by the individual of his/her job as implementing or giving the opportunity to realize significant values available in the work, provided that these values are consistent with his/her needs" (p.282). According to this definition that job satisfaction is somewhat subjective person to person. Weiss (2002) also defines same concept of" job satisfaction represents a person's evaluation of his or her job and work context (pp. 173). Satisfaction depends on the level of discrepancy between people expect to receive and what they experience. Further Locke (1976) defines job satisfaction as really a collection of attitudes about specific facets of the job. Employee satisfaction equivalent to the expectations of the employee about the workplace and his attitudes towards his job. So, the job satisfaction is also a moral obligation in many societies. Gradually it can conclude that job satisfaction is subjective, 'a happy worker is productive worker.' The importance of job satisfaction for any organization is huge as it is linked to many variables, including productivity, absenteeism, turnover, etc. It is significant because a person's attitude and beliefs may affect his or her behavior (Saleem, Majeed, Aziz, & Usman, 2013). If the employees in an communication has a significant positive effect on employee satisfaction. Based on Attar & Sweis (2010) communication are the variables that most contributed to employee satisfaction within contracting firms. Effective communication in combination with satisfied employees. The satisfied employee is mandatory for improving the firm performance in the coordination of resources. According to Epure, Ionescu, & Nancu (2013) who did the research in Romanian company's job satisfaction is strongly affected by communication: the more individuals communicate within companies, the more satisfied they feel with their job. Number of researches have empirically founded that there was positive relationship between effective communication and job satisfaction. According to Giri & Kumar, (2010) identifies organizational communication had a significant effect on job satisfaction and job performance of the employees. The analysis further indicated that the employees at different levels perceived job satisfaction differently. Thus, it can be seen job satisfaction and performance are very much dependent on the communication behavior of the organization.

Conceptual Framework and Hypotheses
As points outs by (Balouch & Hassan, 2014) modern management science's philosophy considers job satisfaction as a baseline standard of satisfaction reported by many different characteristics of work and the workplace. There are various features of the work and the workplace that valued to job satisfaction.
Researchers have attempted to explain the effects of CMC using different theories. From media richness theory Daft & Lengel, (1986) suggests that e-mail is a leaner medium due to the text based and asynchronous nature of e-mail. The impact of communication channel satisfaction, personality, and job satisfaction could be explored from a social influence perspective (Fulk, Schmitz and Steinfield, 1990), or a media richness perspective to better predict how each variable will influence job satisfaction of teleworking employees (Waldeck, Seibold and Flanagin, 2004). The other study by Cameron & Webster (2005) used the media richness theory to investigate why employees use IM at work. To attain a better understanding of how advanced CMMS trigger satisfaction amid their resource (employees) hereby refer to Adaptive Structuration Theory (AST) to describe the process by which people incorporate advanced technologies into their work practices (Gopal, Bostrom and Chin, 1993). Once applied, technologies should trigger structural change in terms of productivity, efficiency, and satisfaction to individuals and organizations (DeSanctis and Poole, 1994). Therefore, the present study developed the conceptual framework (figure 1) to investigate the impact of email, instant messaging and CMMS in the workplace and its correlation with two core concepts of media choice theories: media richness, social influence, and adaptive structuration theory (AST).  Bob & Sooknanan (2014) and Urquhart, Bommelje, & Schmid (2002) found that there is a positive relationship between CMC dimension of email with the job satisfaction. Based on the findings of Bob & Sooknanan, (2014), it is evident that the majority of employees felt that email usage had increased productivity and efficiency in the workplace. Mukahi, Nakamura & Not (2003) states that email usage is highly important for employees individually as well as for the performance of organisation. Further they say that those organizations managing CMC well can gain CMC effects, increase employee job satisfaction. The findings of all these research shows that electronic mail usage strongly effect on employee's job satisfaction. Based on the aforementioned arguments, the following hypothesis is formulated, H1: There is a positive impact of electronic mails on job satisfaction. mediated communications which is able to boost an instant reaction, similar to face to face communication Ou, Sia & Hui (2013) and Cameron & Webster (2005) described instant messaging allows employees to communicate in real time and shows those who are online and currently available to receive messages. Lee (2011) found in her research which has been conducted to understand the potential impact of using IM in the workplace, the position power of the IM jointly influences employee satisfaction and subjective task complexity. Based on the above discussion following hypothesis is proposed.

Electronic Mails and Job satisfaction
H2: There is a positive impact of instant messaging on job satisfaction.

Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) and Job Satisfaction
According to the findings of Higgins, Brautigam & Mobley (1995) that CMMS manage maintenance information contributes to improved communication and decision-making capabilities and improve the information and communication facilities of repair needs and work priorities. Further he found in his research that CMMS has the capability of improving coordination through closer working relationships between maintenance and production. So it increased maintenance responsiveness of employees.

Rastegari & Mobin (2016) says that electronic communication between offices in an organization
improve with CMMS because they can send work assignments to maintenance workforce through mobile devices and so they can operate more efficiently in the field, for timely completion of required maintenance and repairs. Even though prior empirical evidence on these relationships are less based upon the preceding discussion following hypothesis is proposed.
H3: There is a positive impact of CMMS on job satisfaction.

The Sample, Study Variables, Questionnaire Design and Data Collection
Since Ceylon Electricity Board is a multi-divisional organization spread over to every nook of the country, it is well recommended to do a descriptive cross sectional research study to test the formulated hypothesis. The primary data was collected using a structured questionnaire and the secondary data was collected from previous research papers, Internet and books. The researcher survey carried out with mixed mode and it also included quantitative and qualitative questionnaires. Face to face interview would be helped to identify existing issues and base on that researched has been created the questionnaire. Ceylon Electricity Board is a large scale company which is holding more than 16,000 numbers of employees. Although the CEB employees are the population of the study, it is not fair to

DATA ANALYSIS AND RESULTS
Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used in this study to assess the predictive power of theoretical model and testing the formulated hypothesis. Internal consistencies of the constructs were examined using the composite reliability index. Discriminant validity indicates the extent to which a given construct is different from other latent constructs. Fornel and Larcker (1981) has suggested to use the average variance extracted (AVE) in evaluating discriminant validity of constructs. Partial least square technique using Smart PLS version 20 was used to test the hypotheses, while SPSS software package was used to check frequency statistics of demographic variable. Discriminate validity is the degree to which any single construct is different from the other constructs in the model (Carmines & Zeller, 1979). Discriminant validity is assessed by the test provide by Fornell and Larcker (1981) in which the pair-wise latent variable correlations between factors obtained are compared with the square root of the average variance extracted estimates for the constructs making up each possible pair as illustrates in table 1.

PLS Path Model Estimation
In Partial Least Squares (PLS) method, structural model and hypothesis were tested by computing path coefficients (β). Because PLS does not require a normally distributed data it is evaluated with R-squared calculation for dependent latent variables (Cohen, 1988) and the average Variance extracted (Fornell & Larchner, 1981). As shown in the Table 2, results obtained by analysing the collected data and all the variables are yielded significant values.  Data (2021) According to the results indicates in table 2, it reveals that electronic mails has a positive and statistically significant relationship with employees' job satisfaction (β = 0.35, t = 4.68, p < 0.001) and there is a positive relationship between instant messaging and employees' job satisfaction (β = 0.16, t = 2.07, p < 0.01). The results indicate that the relationship is in the expected direction and the relationship is statistically significant. The relationship between CMMS and employees' job satisfaction (β = 0.46, t = 6.91, p < 0.001) is also positive and statistically significant. The structural model in figure 2 is evaluated with respect to the estimates and hypothesis tests regarding the causal relations between exogenous and endogenous variables specified in the path diagram. Standard errors and test statistics for the relevant parameters are estimated in SmartPLS with the Bootstrapping option.

Figure 2: Structural Model Showing Path Coefficients
A confirmatory factor analysis is carrying out on the data to verify reliability of each measurement scale of variables (Forza, 2002). Standardized factor loadings and outer loading factors of each item and the composite reliability and AVE value of each construct is presented in table 3. According to the provided guide lines of Bagozzi, Yi, & Phillips, (1991) the composite reliability of various dimensions is higher than 0.7 and Average Variance Extracted (AVE) is higher than 0.5 is accepted as significant levels.

DISCUSSION
The main aim of this research is to examine how computer mediated communication (CMC) systems such as e-mails, IMs, CMMS impact on job satisfaction of employees in Ceylon electricity Board. The results of the study confirmed a positive and significant impact of electronic mails on job satisfaction of employees. This finding is in line with the findings of Bob & Sooknanan, (2014); and Urquhart, Bommelje, & Schmid, (2002). Moreover, based on the findings of Bob & Sooknanan, (2014), it is evident that the majority of employees felt that email usage had increased productivity and efficiency in the workplace. Based on Mukahi, Nakamura, & Not, (2003) email usage is highly important for employees as well as for the performance of organization. Further he says that those organizations managing CMC well can gain CMC effects such as increase employee job satisfaction. In addition, the result of the study reveals that positive and significant impact is found between instant messaging (IM) and job satisfaction. Many of the studies (Chang & Wan-Zheng, 2014) suggest that IM impact to the employees' job satisfaction. Further, they suggest that the management team of an organization should try to construct a new organizational culture of using IM for communication and problem solving. Also as a support for these findings, Mahatanankoon, (2010) expresses that instant messaging leads to creativity and influence to increase the job satisfaction. As claims of Iskandar, Arham, & Shohaime, (2017) there is significant relationship between the uses of instant messaging with performance. Instant messaging is one of the more prominent computer mediated communications which is able to boost an instant reaction, similar to face to face communication. Ou, Sia, & Hui, (2013) and Cameron & Webster, (2005) described instant messaging allows employees to communicate in real time and shows those who are online and currently available to receive messages.
According to the findings of the research two dimensions of electronic mails and CMMS have positive significant impact on job satisfaction. Since CMMS is implemented only in the Transmission division of CEB, this finding will help higher management to step forward for CMMS implementation in other divisions of the CEB also. As well as this results shows that investing on CMMS implementation in the organization is worth. Therefore, managers can pay more attention on developing facilities for electronic mailing and CMMS without any hesitation. Rastegari & Mobin, (2016) says that electronic communication between offices in an organization improve with CMMS because they can send work assignments to maintenance workforce through mobile devices and so they can operate more efficiently in the field, for timely completion of required maintenance and repairs. So this finding help mangers to decide whether they can extend their communications tools of CMMS to increase the job satisfaction more.

Managerial Implications
Quaresma, da Silva, & Marreiros, (2013) empirically studied the use of e-mail in an organizational context, using a sample of the Portuguese population with an active e-mail account assigned by the employer. The results show that most users have what is considered appropriate behavior and show the positive significant impact on job satisfaction. Therefore, in consist with previous studies this study also positively related for empirical study. Therefore, according to these findings the mangers should consider solutions for enabling a better management of e-mail by its employees by paying more attention on email security. The responding speed, easiness of expressing ideas and work easiness in electronic mails are more important in achieving higher level of job satisfaction. As well as the managers can understand by this finding there the user friendly interface, good access condition, save and re access data and making good communication among team in CMMS are more important in achieving higher level of job satisfaction.
On the other hand, the results show that there is a positive and a significant impact of instant messaging on job satisfaction. Therefore, managers should have to pay their more and more attention in order to improve instant messaging as one of the communication media in an organization. Some IM applications can use push technology to provide real-time text, which transmits messages character by character, as they are composed. More advanced instant messaging can add file transfer, clickable hyperlinks, Voice over IP, or video chat (Lee, 2011). Therefore, such findings imply managerial efforts should be paid to facilitate the good IM application than present to improve the employee's job satisfaction. Cho, Trier, & Kim, (2005) identified that IM as a double-edged sword. That means IM usage has both positive and negative impacts on employee's job satisfaction and performance. Therefore, managers have huge responsibility to identify this negative impacts and get decisions to eliminate them. However, Cho, Trier, & Kim, (2005) further states that IM can usefully increase other CMC tools and create an effective and comprehensive CMC environment in the workplace therefore it leads to better work performance of employees. So academics can do further study to find the way to use IM more effectively and comprehensively in the workplace in future.
On the other hand, the study conducted by Iskandar, Arham, & Shohaime, (2017) one of the public service departments in Malaysia with 132 respondents found that there is significant relationship between the use of instant messaging and social network with performance. Instant messaging is one of the more prominent computer mediated communications which is able to boost an instant reaction, similar to face to face communication. Ou, Sia, & Hui, (2013) and Cameron & Webster, (2005) described instant messaging allows employees to communicate in real time and shows those who are online and currently available to receive messages. Therefore, there should be a proper mechanism to increase instant messaging usage in an effective way in public sector in Sri Lanka somewhat advance than present.