Investigating the relationship between career development and productivity with the mediating role of self-regulation among university staff
Journal of Applied Research in Higher Education
ISSN: 2050-7003
Article publication date: 25 August 2020
Issue publication date: 7 June 2021
Abstract
Purpose
The present study aimed to investigate the relationship between career development and productivity of the university staff with the mediating role of self-regulation.
Design/methodology/approach
The research approach is quantitative-relational and is based on structural equation modeling (SEM). The population consisted of the staff of two Iranian universities in 2018 out of which 331 participants were selected using Cochran's formula and a proportionate stratified random sampling method. To gather data, the self-regulation questionnaire (SRQ), the career development questionnaire (CDQ) and a researcher-made employees' productivity questionnaire (EPQ) were used. In terms of reliability, Cronbach's alpha coefficient of the instruments was found to be 0.97, 0.84 and 0.88, respectively. Face and content validity were confirmed by a group of field experts.
Findings
The findings indicated that the staff’s self-regulation had a positive and significant effect on individual, organizational and environmental productivity factors. In addition, self-regulation had the ability to predict those factors. It was found that self-regulation had a mediating role in the relationship between career development and staff productivity. According to the results, educational institutions, especially universities, can provide their staff with the opportunity to exploit their full potentials through reinforcing their self-regulation and increasing their productivity.
Research limitations/implications
Higher self-regulation capacity among university staff helps them liberate their potential energy for disinterested selfless service to the society. Higher self-regulation capacities allow individuals to increase the energy resource for self-regulation and contribute to the productivity and quality of life. The statistical population of the quantitative section is confined only to the staff working at Iranian universities. Therefore, our results should be cautiously generalized to universities in other countries.
Practical implications
Our findings can help in empowering human resources and consequently improving education and research processes.
Social implications
Universities play a decisive role in the economic growth and development of countries because of their diverse services in the production and distribution of science and knowledge.
Originality/value
This study was conducted on university’s staff productivity, while most previous researches have been conducted in industrial enterprises. Thus, the present study seeks to fill this research gap by means of providing new perspectives and information on the factors affecting staff productivity and the relationship between research variables in higher education institutions.
Keywords
Citation
Delbari, S., Rajaipour, S. and Abedini, Y. (2021), "Investigating the relationship between career development and productivity with the mediating role of self-regulation among university staff", Journal of Applied Research in Higher Education, Vol. 13 No. 3, pp. 759-781. https://doi.org/10.1108/JARHE-06-2019-0153
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited