PHD-School of Business
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This collections contains bibliographic information and abstracts of PHD theses and dissertation in the School of Business held in Kenyatta University Library
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Browsing PHD-School of Business by Subject "Academic Staff"
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Item Occupational Stress Interventions and Performance of Academic Staff in Selected Public Universities in Kenya(Kenyatta University, 2023) Kinuthia, Jane Muthoni; Peter Philip Wambua; David KiiruThis study sought to investigate the effect of occupational stress interventions on the performance of academic staff in selected public universities. The study’s specific objectives, were; to identify the effect of primary occupational stress interventions, secondary occupational stress interventions, and tertiary occupational stress interventions on academic staff performance. Additionally, the mediating effect of psychological capital on the relationship between occupational stress interventions and performance of academic staff in selected public universities and the moderating effect of social support on the same relationship were determined. The theories that anchored the study included job-demand-support theory, person-environment fit theory, broaden and build theory, and cognitive dissonance theory with the main theory anchoring the study being person-environment fit theory. The study was based on the philosophical approach of positivism. The study adopted a descriptive and explanatory design which was cross-sectional in nature. The observation unit was three public universities, Egerton, Kenyatta, and Maseno universities with a total number of 3277 academic staff. The three universities were purposive selected based on their age, geographical location and student population size. Subsequently, the respondents from the selected universities were picked through a simple random sampling technique. The sample size was determined using the Krejcie and Morgan formula and was determined to be 342. Primary data were collected systematically and analyzed and conclusions were drawn from them. The research instrument used in collecting primary data was a questionnaire. The questionnaire was found to be valid in terms of face and content validity. The Cronbach alpha for all the items was above 0.7 hence had achieved acceptable levels of reliability. Ethical requirements that have been recommended for conducting empirical studies were observed such as getting authorization from the relevant bodies such as NACOSTI and the universities where the data was collected. The study also complied with the requirement of informed consent. Inferential and descriptive statistics were then used to analyze the data. Data was presented in form of percentages, frequencies, and measures of central tendency. Inferential statistics were used to gauge the nature and extent of relationships between variables by using regression analysis at a 0.05 level of significance. The findings show a positive and significant relationship between occupational stress interventions and the performance of academic staff. The results of diagnostic tests which included test for normality, multicollinearity, linearity, heteroscedasticity and sample adequacy test revealed that the data collected was suitable for regression analysis. The regression model for the direct relationship matched with the data since it was statistically significant at F (3, 215) = 142.82 and a calculated probability of 0.000 which was lower than the 0.05 significance level that was adopted by the study as the threshold. The following regression model was obtained: Performance of academic staff = 0.949+ 0.168 primary occupational stress intervention + 0.184 secondary occupational stress interventions + 0.457 tertiary stress interventions. This implies that primary, secondary and tertiary OSI explained 16.8%, 18.4% and 45.7% of performance respectively. Tertiary occupational stress intervention had the most significant contribution to performance among the three types of occupational stress interventions adopted by the study. Psychological capital was found to partially mediate the relationship between occupational stress interventions and academic staff performance. Moreover, social support was found to moderate the relationship between occupational stress interventions and academic staff performance. The findings from this study can be applied by managers, universities, and other organizations dealing with knowledge workers to improve the performance of the employees. The study proposes replicating the current study in private universities and organizations in industries other than the education sector.Item Psychological Contract and Performance of Academic Staff in Selected Public Universities in Kenya(Kenyatta University, 2023) Odengo, Ruth Anyango; Hannah Bula; David KiiruGlobally, performance of academic staff in higher education institutions is seen as a very important driver of economic development through dissemination of knowledge. Concerns have been raised about the complexity of academic staff performance in Kenyan universities. Employee attitudes and performance have been seen to be influenced by psychological contracts. However, there have been few attempts to determine the extent to which psychological contract fulfillment affects academic staff performance in Kenyan public universities. The main objective of this study envisaged examining the influence psychological contract have on the expected performance of academic staff in selected public universities in Kenya. Specifically, the study established the extent to which relational contract, transactional contract and balanced contract affect performance of academic staff at selected public universities in Kenya; secondly, determine the moderating effect of human resource policies and the mediating effect of organizational capabilities on the relationship between psychological contract and performance of academic staff at selected public universities in Kenya. This research was anchored on four theories namely the equity theory, social exchange theory, organizational support theory and the Harvard framework for human resource management. This study was conducted using descriptive and explanatory research design. This study targeted six public universities whose student population are above 15,000 and a minimum of 4 similar schools across the universities. The target population was 6 selected public universities with a population size of 6,271 academic staff. The sample size was 362 academic staff of the selected schools, in the selected public universities. Primary data was collected using a questionnaire, bearing both structured and semi-structured questions. The questionnaire was evaluated for content and construct validity, while a pilot study was carried out to determine the reliability of the questionnaire. To analyze quantitative data, descriptive statistics was used in describing the variables whereas inferential statistics established the association in the independent and dependent variable, outcomes are displayed through tables, charts, diagrams and numerical values. The study hypotheses were tested at 95% confidence level. The study findings showed that relational contract, transactional contract and balanced contract have positive and significant effect on performance of academic staff at selected public universities in Kenya. The findings further established that organisational capabilities partially mediated the relationship between psychological contract and performance of academic staff in selected public universities in Kenya. The study finally showed that human resource policies provided the necessary environment for staff to form effective psychological contract that improve performance. The study concluded that psychological contract plays a significant role in determining the performance of academic staff in the public universities, hence, fulfillment or breach of the psychological contract further determine whether the universities realize positive academic staff performance or not. The study recommends that management of the universities regularly review and discuss challenges faced by the academic staff in performance of their duties and formulate HR policies that would ensure trust and fairness in the employment relationship hence promoting formation of the right psychological contract that would yield intrinsic motivation, job satisfaction, engagement and ultimately overall performance of the academic staff.Item Workforce Diversity and Performance of Academic Staff in Selected Public Universities in Kenya(Kenyatta University, 2019) Munene, Laura GakiiPerformance of academic staff in public university has been of interest to various stakeholders in the recent past. There have been concerns of the diminishing levels of performance and the need to improve this. Employee diversity necessitates organizations to undertake various strategies to ensure that different unique individuals have a favorable environment to produce optimally. Firm’s wishing to remain viable in the competitive environment need to attract and retain diverse employees from whom they can tap different talents, capabilities, experiences and skills for optimal employee performance. Workforce diversity and workforce diversity initiatives have become one of the key drivers of employee performance. This study focused on investigating the effect of workforce diversity on performance of academic staff in selected public universities in Kenya. It was guided by the specific objectives; to determine the effect of internal dimension, external dimension and organizational dimension on performance of academic staff in selected public universities in Kenya, to examine the mediating effect of diversity initiatives and moderating effect of internal institution factors on the relationship between workforce diversity and performance of academic staff in selected public universities in Kenya. The study was anchored on role theory, expectancy theory, individual level performance model and social categorization theory as its foundations for theoretical link between the variables. Positivist research philosophy guided this research. Descriptive cross sectional research design was used to obtain data concerning the current status of performance of academic staff and the workforce diversity variables. The target population constituted 7143 academic staff from six purposefully selected public universities (University of Nairobi, Moi, Kenyatta, Egerton, Jomo Kenyatta university of Agriculture and Technology and Maseno university) from where the sample size of 379 academic staff were randomly selected using proportionate random and systematic sampling. A semi-structured questionnaire was used to collect data. The questionnaire was administered using the Survey Monkey format. The questionnaires’ had a reliability of 0.708 Cronbach Alpha coefficients. Descriptive statistics were used to describe the variables while inferential statistics were used to establish the relationships between the independent and dependent variable. Meaning from quantitative data was derived through numerical values while that from quantitative data was derived through inferences. The study hypotheses were tested at 95% confidence level. The results indicate that internal dimension had no significant effect on performance of academic staff while external dimension and organizational dimension have a positive significant effect on performance of academic staff. Diversity initiatives were also found to be a partial mediator in the relationship between workforce diversity and performance of academic staff while internal institution factors were an explanatory variable in the relationship between workforce diversity and performance of academic staff. The study concluded that workforce diversity has mixed effect on academic staff performance. Moreover, the study confirmed that diversity initiatives are valuable human resource practices that can lead to superior performance. Policy makers can use the findings of this study to evaluate how well higher education sector can be leveraged through external and internal dimensions of diversity in order to contribute to increased growth in the sector. The study suggests that future research should focus on broadening work force diversity study to other industries for further generalization of findings to broad sectors.