Social Sustainability in Port Operations: Job Satisfaction, Organizational Climate, and Perceived Productivity Among Technical Workers in Ecuador

Job satisfaction has become a significant factor in organizational performance, particularly in operational sectors such as port activities, where efficiency, coordination, and safety are essential. Port operations provide a theoretically relevant setting because technical work is safety-sensitive, operationally interdependent, and strongly dependent on coordination, communication, and compliance with procedures. This study aimed to analyze the relationship between job satisfaction and perceived productivity among technical workers at port companies in Guayaquil, Ecuador, from a social sustainability and Happiness Management perspective. A mixed-methods approach with a convergent design was employed, integrating ordinal data obtained through an online survey with qualitative data from virtual semi-structured interviews. The survey, based on a 7-point Likert scale, was administered online to 54 port technicians, while the qualitative component consisted of virtual semi-structured interviews with five industry experts. Descriptive statistics, preliminary construct validity assessment, sensitivity analysis, power analysis, and Spearman’s correlation coefficient were used to analyze the ordinal data, while the qualitative information was analyzed using thematic analysis. The findings showed that 59.3% of participants were classified in the high job satisfaction category and 85.2% in the high revised perceived productivity category, according to predefined Likert-scale classification criteria. Furthermore, a strong, statistically significant positive association was identified between job satisfaction and the revised perceived productivity score, excluding the item that directly embedded the satisfaction–performance relationship (ρ = 0.781, p<0.001, N=54; 95% bootstrap CI = [0.633–0.881]). A stricter sensitivity analysis excluding both Items 22 and 23 also showed a strong association (ρ = 0.789, p<0.001). Qualitative results provided contextual insights into how experts perceived satisfaction-related dimensions, such as recognition, organizational climate, communication, coordination, and labor well-being, as being associated with perceived productivity in port operations. The study concludes that higher job satisfaction composite average scores are significantly associated with higher revised perceived productivity composite average scores, although the cross-sectional design does not allow causal conclusions. The findings contribute to the social sustainability and Happiness Management literature by showing how job satisfaction, recognition, motivation, organizational climate, and labor well-being are associated with perceived productivity in a highly demanding port context. Rather than treating job satisfaction only as an isolated employee attitude, the study interprets it as a workplace well-being dimension connected with Happiness Management and sustainable port operations.