Innovation, Training and Demographic Factors as Determinants of Academic Staff Job Performance among Private Universities

Abstract

Considering the pace of change in realm of science and technology in the business environment viz-a-viz the performance of academia in Nigeria there appears to be a large variance. This variance could account to the decline in the quality of academic outputs recorded in Nigerian institution. On this premise, this study investigated innovation, training and demographic factors as determinants of academic staff job performance among private universities.The study adopted a correlational design using a sample of three hundred (300 i.e. male=159 and female =141) academic staff were randomly selected from five private Universities in Southwest Nigeria. Reliable measuring scale with each having Cronbach alpha value of above 0.7 was used for data collection. Three research questions were raised and tested using Pearson’s’ product moment correlation and linear regression at 0.05 level of significance.The result revealed that staff innovation, training, gender are significant predictors of job performance. At prediction stage, the four factors combined accounted for 93.6% (Adj.R²= .936) variance in the prediction of academic staff job performance. While innovation was found to be the strongest factor predicting job performance, followed by training. Age and gender were not found significant. By implication innovation and training are essential determinant of academic staff job performance.It was recommended among others that, Academic staff with outstanding innovative skills should be recognized to which might go a long way in making other academic staff to engage their innovation skills in their daily activities. Annual and bi-annual training should be held and various aspect of academics to make academic staff get abreast with the crest of change in the global scene. Staff age and gender should be considered when distributing tasks among academia.

Keywords: Innovation, Training, Age, Gender, Academic staff, Job performance, Private Universities