PHD-Department of Psychology

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Browsing PHD-Department of Psychology by Subject "Academic Staff"

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    Relationship between Psychological Climate and Organizational Commitment among Academic Staff of Public Universities in Nairobi City County, Kenya
    (Kenyatta University, 2022) Kagendo, Kimotho, Susan; Christine Wasanga; Merecia Sirera
    Psychological climate has been conceptualized as an individual’s perception relating to overall view of the psychological work environment. Researchers have revealed that psychological climate has a huge covariate of occupation practices, such as organizational commitment. On the other hand, organizational commitment has been defined as the strength of an employee’s identification and involvement in an organization. In the recent past, Kenyan public universities have faced challenges such as industrial strikes, financial shortfalls and high turnover of academic staff, thus the need to find out the psychological climate of Kenyan public universities. The present study was therefore designed to study the relationship between psychological climate and organizational commitment among academic staff of public universities in Nairobi City County, Kenya. The study objectives included the levels of psychological climate, the levels of organizational commitment, the relationship between psychological climate and organizational commitment as well as how demographic characteristics moderate organizational commitment. The study was based on the Theory of Organizational Climate and the Three-Component Model of Commitment. The study adopted a correlational research approach. It was conducted among the academic staff of the five public universities (UON, KU, TUK, MMU and CUK) in Nairobi City County. The targeted population was the 5182 academic staff working in the public universities. Multistage sampling process was used to select a sample of 365 academic staff that participated in the study. A self-administered questionnaire with four subsections was used to collect data. Section A comprised the demographic data; Section B the Campus Climate Survey; Section C the challenges the academic staff face; Section D the Three-Component Organizational Commitment Questionnaire. The two scales have a reliability value of 0.79 and 0.81 respectively. Approval for research was sought from Kenyatta University Graduate School. A research permit was sought from NACOSTI. Data collected were analysed using SPSS version 23, both descriptive (mean, median, mode and standard deviation) and inferential statistics (Pearson correlation and regression analysis). The findings indicated a moderate psychological climate level of 111.7 with a maximum of 165 and a minimum of 35; and a moderate organizational commitment level of 104.2 with a maximum of 140 and a minimum of 55. In addition, the psychological climate had a moderate positive correlation to organizational commitment at (r (365) = .365, p < .001). On psychological climate, job autonomy had the highest mean at 15.73, while rewards and recognition had the lowest mean at 11.97. Affective commitment was the highest scored organizational commitment component at a mean of 31.75, while continuance commitment was the least scored at a mean of 29.45. The marital status of the participants had a significant positive correlation to organizational commitment while the age of the participants had a significant negative correlation to organizational commitment. Based on research findings, the recommendations made included having universities developing of lucrative investment programmes that would boost their income and subsequently strive to improve the psychological climate of their academic staff, for example, their remuneration and incentives. Further research was recommended in private universities as well as on other work behaviours such as organizational citizenship, turnover.