The Mediating Effect of Organizational Citizenship Behavior on the relationship between Human Resource Management Practices and Job Performance of academic staff in universities of Thi-Qar and Sumer

Abstract

Job performance is always a significant concern of every educational institution particularly in the case of academic staff. This requires institutions’ management to have an efficient job performance system to evaluate and enhance the job performance of their academic staff. Unfortunately, minimal research has examined the relationship between human resource management (HRM) practices, organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB) and job performance among academics in the context of public universities of Thi-Qar, Iraq. The current study examines the effects of HRM practices and OCB on job performance among academics in the target population based on social exchange theory and the resource-based view theory. Quantitative research approach along with cross-sectional research design has been used to collect data from 450 academic staff in the target population through a self-administrated questionnaire. he response rate of 71.5% was achieved by receiving complete survey tools and returns from 322 respondents. Based on the concept of Response Rate, a response rate of 71.5% is sufficient for analysis in this study.Among the 322 questionnaires received. The collected questionnaires for unusable questionnaires (either blank or partially completed only) were examined, and 11 of the questionnaires were excluded from the analysis. With 311 profitable returns and questionnaires out of 450, the response rate was 69.1%. The results of the current study will provide empirical evidence on key issues related to the job performance of academics in Thi-Qar university. This study examined the effect of HRM practices (recruiting and selection, training and development, and performance appraisal) on the job performance of academic staff with the mediating effect of organizational citizenship behavior in public sector universities of Iraq. This study has added up to the literature by proposing a model on the mediating role of OCB in the relationship of HRM practices (recruiting and selection, training and development, and performance appraisal) and job performance among academic staff in the higher education sector of Iraq. It is concluded that lack of OCB and poor HRM policies are major problems and negatively affect the output of academic staff. The results of this study revealed that the performance of academic staff could be improved if OCB among academic staff could be enhanced by providing them many opportunities for training and development, performance.