Abstract:
Organisations all over the globe rely on variables like human capital, excellent human
resource management practises, physical resources, and the conduct and attitude of
their workers to accomplish their goals. However, some features inside many
contemporary organisations render the workplace vulnerable to undesirable employee
conduct, which contravenes the significant organizational norms, threatening the
interests of both the organization and its members. This pervasive and expensive
behaviour is a problem which is responsible for giving an organization a negative
image to both its external and internal stakeholders. This study therefore sought to
establish the relationship between organizational performance determinants and work
behaviour among employees of public universities in Western Kenya region as
moderated by social competence. The specific objectives of the study were to
determine the relationship between organizational culture on employee work
behaviour, workplace stressors on employee work behaviour, quality of employees on
employee work behaviour and organizational justice on employee work behaviour in
public universities in Western Kenya region, and the moderating effect of social
competence on this relationship. The study was based on the Social Exchange Theory,
Equity Theory and the Job Demands-Resource Model. It used the positivist research
philosophy, and adopted the explanatory survey design. The target population
included both academic and non-academic staff of the six public universities, totalling
4,476 employees, with a sample of 506. Stratified sampling design was used to
choose 6 public universities in Western Kenya. Data was collected using
questionnaires. Piloting was done at Moi University to pre-test the research
instrument. Validity was achieved through factor analysis using Principal Component
Analysis (PCA) to extract the significant factors. All the variables were reliable. Data
was analyzed using descriptive statistics. Inferential statistics, mainly multiple
regression and Pearson correlation were used. The study found that organizational
culture, workplace stressors, quality of employees, organizational justice and social
competence all had a significant relationship with employee work behaviour. The
study also concluded that social competence significantly moderates the influence of
organizational performance determinants on employee work behaviour in public
universities in Western Kenya region. This implied that the public universities need to
entrench and strengthen strategies for the improvement of the performance
determinants and also embrace social competence in order to achieve positive
employee work behaviour. The study recommended that public universities should
strive to create a positive environment within the workplace and to stimulate strong
organization cultures, analyze their employees’ sources of stress at work and put
appropriate measures in place to reduce them to a minimum, source and maintain
quality employees, enhance justice and address perceived organizational injustices
and encourage the development of social competence among employees. The study
findings contribute to the existing body of knowledge in the field of Human Resource
Management (HRM) and Industrial and Organizational Psychology (IOP) by
justifying the need for organizations to put in place resources and procedures that
actively promote employee performance and positive behaviour.