Effect of emotional exhaustion on workplace deviant behaviour among academic staff: The role of affective commitment

Abstract

The phenomenon of workplace deviance is prevalent among academic staff of universities which are seen as role models to students. One of the significant antecedents of Workplace Deviant Behaviour (WDB) among academic staff is emotional exhaustion which is developed as a result of high job demands in the academia. Thus, this study made an attempt to investigate the effect of emotional exhaustion on WDB among academic staff. Interestingly, few studies in the literature have produced conflicting findings with respect to the relationship between emotional exhaustion and WDB, thus suggesting the need for the introduction of a moderator. The study therefore examined whether affective commitment moderates the relationship between emotional exhaustion and WDB. The study is underpinned by stressor-emotion model and social control theory. Survey research design was adopted and data were collected from 142 sample of academic staff from the faculty of education, ABU Zaria using self-administered questionnaire. Result using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) established that emotional exhaustion has a significant positive relationship with WDB. However, affective commitment was found not to moderate the relationship between emotional exhaustion and WDB. Based on the study findings, it was recommended that the federal government lifts the employment embargo so that more academic staff are hired in order to reduce workload and also, it is recommended that the university emphasizes competency when hiring staff so that academic workload will be proportionally allocated to each staff. Finally, the limitations of the study and suggestion for future research were given.