Abstract:
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.
