Transparency goes a long way: information transparency and its effect on job satisfaction and turnover intentions of the professoriate

Abstract

Research and higher education institutions are becoming increasingly transparent with the adoption of the governance mechanisms of New Public Management and digital technologies. As transparency research has documented both positive and negative effects of transparency within organizations, it is not clear how transparency might affect faculty members and their job attitudes. To address this question, we develop and test hypotheses regarding the effect of perceived transparency on professors’ job satisfaction and intent to leave their university. Our results, based on the answers of over 1600 professors, support our hypothesized positive relationship between transparency and job satisfaction, a negative relationship between transparency and intent to leave, and an indirect effect of transparency on intent to leave via job satisfaction. Exploratory moderation analyses indicated that the effects of transparency are present across two different types of universities (research universities and universities of applied sciences). We discuss results regarding their implications for the management of higher education and research institutions as well as for the retention of faculty members.