ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITTMENT AND EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE OF NON - ACADEMIC STAFF IN PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES IN WESTERN REGION, KENYA

ABSTRACT 
Currently, organizations’ interest to have committed employees has increased because there is a significant  difference  between  the  performance  of  committed  employees  and  the  rest  of  the employees. Committed employees perform well in the organization and help the organization to achieve a competitive edge over its competitors. Hence the purpose of this study was to establish the relationship between organizational commitment and employee performance of non - academic staff  in  public  universities  in  Western  Region,  Kenya;  the  study  was  guided  by  the  following objectives: To examine the relationship between affective commitment and employee performance; to  assess  the  relationship  between  continuance  commitment  and  employee  performance:  to ascertain  the  relationship  between  normative  commitment  and  employee  performance  and  to determine the moderating effect of demographic factors on the relationship between organizational commitment  and  employee  performance.  Research  hypotheses  was;  there  is  no  significant relationship  between  affective  commitment  and  employee  performance;  there  is  no  significant relationship between continuance commitment and employee performance; there is no significant relationship between normative commitment and employee performance; demographic factors has no  significant  moderating  effect  on  the  relationship  between  organizational  commitment  and employee performance. The study scope was limited to the six (6) Chartered Public Universities in Western Region, Kenya, that is; Maseno, Masinde Muliro, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, Kisii, Kibabii and  Rongo.  For  the  conceptual  framework,  the  independent  variable  was  organizational commitment  measured  by;  affective,  normative  and  continuance  commitment;  the  dependent variable was employee performance and the moderating variable was demographic factors. The theoretical framework was underpinned on the social exchange theory, behavioral approach, and the attitudinal commitment approach. Descriptive and correlational research designs were adopted in this study, the target population comprised of 3,574 non - academic staff currently working at the  six  (6)  Chartered  Public  Universities  in  Western  Region,  Kenya.  The  sample  size  was  97 respondents determined through Nassiuma’s (2000) formula. Stratified sampling was employed to group  the  respondents  into  strata  and  simple  random  sampling  was  applied  to  select  the respondents. Data was collected through the use of a structured questionnaire. Data collected was analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 26.0 was used for data coding. Descriptive statistics was employed to summarize data into percentages, frequencies, mean and standard deviation, while inferential statistics was applied when comparing two or more variables; Correlation analysis by means of Pearson Product Moment Correlation (r) coefficient was employed to determine the nature and magnitude of the relationships  between  variables  while  multiple linear regression  was  conducted to  establish  the statistical significance of the respective hypotheses. Hierarchical regression analysis was used to check  for  the  moderating  effect  of  demographic  factors  on  employee  performance.  The  major findings of this study indicated that there exists a significant positive relationship between affective commitment  and  employee  performance  (p=0.040.05) similarly, a positive  significant  relationship  was  indicated  by  normative  commitment  (p=0.0000>0.05)  in relation  to  employee  performance.  The  study  also  revealed  that  demographic  factors  has  a moderating  effect  on  the  relationship  between  organizational  commitment  and  employee performance (p=0.037