Job satisfaction, academic motivation, and organizational citizenship behavior among lecturers during the COVID-19 pandemic: a cross-national comparative study in Japan and Malaysia

Relationship of adaptive expertise of health professions educators with age, experience, academic rank, and their work performance during an altered academic environment

BACKGROUND

Health professionals and health professions educators (HPEs) worldwide were confronted by the COVID-19 pandemic, which disrupted standard practice and forced HPEs to develop creative, alternative modes of training and education. The ability of people to work successfully and efficiently in non-standard situations can be called adaptive expertise in which people quickly overcome changes in work requirements using their expert knowledge in novel ways. The objectives of the current study were to investigate how the adaptive expertise of a group of HPEs influenced perceived work performance in a non-standard situation and to see whether there were relationships between the level of adaptive expertise and academic ranking and work experience of HPEs.

METHODS

A descriptive, cross-sectional, single-site study was conducted using a self-reported study tool about adaptive expertise developed by Carbonell et al. (2016), and three questions were asked about participants' perceptions of work performance, amount of work done, and teaching quality. The sample consisted of HPEs from the University of Twente, Netherlands.

RESULTS

Among 123 eligible participants, 40 individuals completed the survey. Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin and Bartlett's Test of Sphericity indicated the adequacy of the sample size (KMO = 0.633, P < 0.0001). Participants were lecturers, senior lecturers, assistant professors, associate professors and full professors. The average adaptive expertise score of the sample was 4.18 ± 0.57 on a scale from 1 (low) to 5 (high). The domain and innovative skills are the principal distinct dimensions of adaptive expertise among HPEs. Professors showed higher adaptive expertise scores than the other ranks. Statistically significant correlations were found between scores of adaptive expertise and perceived work performance (r = 0.41, p < 0.05 and academic ranking (r = 0.42, p < 0.05). Adaptive expertise scores were not associated with work experience or HPEs' age.

CONCLUSIONS

Our finding of a lack of relationships between self-reported level of adaptive expertise and experience and age but significant relationships with work performance and academic ranking of HPEs suggests that adaptive expertise is not auto-generated or acquired with seniority and experience but is a 'mastery' that should be developed deliberately.

Workplace Spirituality as an Alternative Model for Promoting Commitment to Change and Change-Oriented Organisational Citizenship Behaviour

Considering that the relationship between workplace spirituality and organisational change has only recently sparked scholarly interest, the connection could be more evident, as research has only recently begun. Furthermore, there is a growing tendency to add spirituality as the fourth dimension to sustainability in addition to the environment, social responsibility, and the economy. This study contributes to the academic literature by examining the influence of workplace spirituality on lecturers’ responses to change in their commitment to change and change-oriented organizational citizenship behaviour (C-OCB). Private universities in Banjarmasin, Indonesia, were selected to research these links. To collect data from 1050 instructors, self-administered questionnaires were used, and structural equation modelling (SEM) was performed. The findings demonstrated that the workplace spirituality level, exemplified by a solid connection to a higher power, humanity, and nature, affects the lecturers’ commitment to change leading to change-oriented organizational citizenship behaviour (C-OCB), a dimension of OCB less researched. The findings offer a novel perspective on the relationship between workplace spirituality, lecturers’ attitudes towards change, and change-oriented organizational citizenship behaviour (C-OCB) in higher education. Since this result has not been examined in the context of change in higher education, several consequences and suggestions for future research emerge. More studies could be used in future research, given that the literature in this area is still in its early stages. The current work is expected to spark future research on this intriguing and fertile issue.

Do staff capacity and performance-based budgeting improve organisational performance? Empirical evidence from Chinese public universities

The COVID-19 pandemic has raised many issues for higher education institutions, one of which is the continued decline in funding and an increased emphasis on effectiveness and efficiency. Performance-based budgeting is being adopted in organisations to allocate resources more efficiently, and Chinese public universities are no exception. The present study explicitly aimed to examine the relationship among staff capacity, performance-based budgeting, and organisational performance in Chinese public universities. It also investigated the role of top management support as a moderator. A purposive sampling method was used to select a total of 271 participants who agreed to participate in an online survey. A multimethod approach combining partial least squares-structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM), the PROCESS macro and necessary condition analysis (NCA) was adopted. The PLS-SEM results indicated that performance-based budgeting had a positive relationship with university performance and served as a mediator between staff capacity and university performance. The moderated mediation results showed that top management moderated the relationship among the selected variables. The NCA results suggested that both staff capacity and performance-based budgeting are meaningful and significant necessary conditions for university performance. The combined results indicated how researchers and practitioners can identify the factors that are critical for university performance and result in the best possible outcomes. This is possibly the first study to use this multimethod approach in accounting research. Overall, this study offers valuable insights into performance-based budgeting implementation in higher education institutions and may serve as a guideline for public universities to improve the efficiency of funding, reduce costs and increase revenues.

A conditional time-varying multivariate latent growth curve model for the relationships between academics' servant leadership behavior, affective commitment, and job performance during the Covid-19 pandemic

In our study, we investigated the change patterns in academics' servant leadership behavior and affective commitment during and after the first Covid-19 lockdown (April 2020-August 2020) in Malaysia. Furthermore, we evaluated the influence of academics' servant leadership behavior on job performance through affective commitment. We applied additional analyses to determine the degree to which the two former constructs are influenced by age and academic rank. To do so, we leveraged multivariate latent growth curve (LGC) modeling in analyzing the longitudinal data collected from 220 academics at three time points over a course of four months during the Covid-19 pandemic. Our results showed that, while servant leadership and affective commitment were stable over time, servant leadership was a driver of affective commitment and job performance. We also observed that affective commitment significantly mediated the relationship between academics' servant leadership behavior and job performance. Moreover, we found interindividual differences in servant leadership and affective commitment in terms of age and academic rank at the beginning of the Covid-19 lockdown. Our multi-disciplinary research is among the limited number of studies applying a rigorous, longitudinal approach to examine behaviors (i.e., servant leadership and job performance) and attitudes (i.e., affective commitment) during the Covid-19 pandemic in higher education research.