“The impact of working conditions on commitment of academic employees: A socio-affective perspective”

Academic employees face declining working conditions that may reduce the level of commitment to resource-constrained public higher education institutions. The purpose of the study is to examine whether strong social interactions at work affect academic employee commitment amid a poor state of physical working conditions in under-resourced public higher education institutions. A cross-sectional survey obtained data from 63 academic employees across six faculties at a large, under-resourced public higher education institution located in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Academic employees taught many under-prepared students, primarily from previously disadvantaged backgrounds, using limited physical resources. The linear regression ( r = –.0.52, CR = 3.21, p = < .001) results showed that stable social interactions were associated with high employee commitment in resource-constrained institutions. Academic employees remain highly committed to the institution despite the poor physical working conditions. The study extends the affective perspective by showing that employees build regular social interactions to remain highly committed and overlook limited access to physical workplace resources. Leaders ought to create regular social interaction opportunities between employees to foster high employee commitment amid inadequate physical working conditions.


INTRODUCTION
The external and internal drivers of employee commitment have been established in organizational research.The extensive use of external resources for employee development has reduced the internal desire for employees to leave an institution by remaining committed to the workplace.Using financial resources to improve physical working conditions creates foundations that support employees to increase motivation and commitment (Allen & Meyer, 1990;Ren et al., 2023).Beyond physical working conditions, more implementation of intentional social interaction opportunities between academic employees is likely to enhance the level of commitment to a resource-constrained public higher education institution in the developing world.In South Africa, academic employees face pressure to remain committed to under-resourced institutions characterized by a rising number of underprepared students, declining state financial support, and inadequate physical working conditions.
It is interesting to examine whether the commitment of academic employees depends on the strength of social interactions with peers amid a poor state of physical working conditions in a historically disadvantaged public higher education institution.Academic employees are likely to be highly committed to an institution if social interactions between peers are strong.In addition, employees may remain highly committed to an institution despite limited physical working conditions.

LITERATURE REVIEW AND HYPOTHESIS
An early stream of research on organizational commitment explored the external financial investments leaders make in employees for retention.The outcomes of developed and highly committed employees are additional to value and the organization's overall performance.Building on the earlier research stream (Allen & Meyer, 1990;Becker, 1960), later studies (Cohen, 2007;Colquitt et al., 2013) uncovered the internal psychological foundations that employees use to maintain high levels of commitment toward an organization.Employees who are highly committed to an organization show high internal motivation to perform job tasks and maintain continuous loyalty to the workplace.Both earlier and later research streams have deepened the definition and measurement of organizational commitment within organizational research.
There is consensus among scholars about defining and measuring the concept of organizational commitment in organizational scholarship.
Organizational commitment is an employee who is psychologically and emotionally attached to an organization.Highlighting the widely accepted definition shows the maturing development of organizational commitment (Becker, 1960 2022).Without commitment at work, employees may be encouraged to leave a resource-constrained organization for better opportunities, stronger social bonds, and improved physical working conditions.Hence, leaders might consider ways to strengthen employee commitment despite institutional voids in sectors such as public higher education in the developing world.
The institutional voids are often associated with the developing world, such as South Africa, which necessitates leaders to deploy limited resources to heighten employee commitment and reduce labor turnover, particularly in historically disadvantaged public higher education institutions.In resource-constrained contexts, academic employees explore alternative mechanisms to mitigate insufficient job equipment and facilities to remain committed to the institution (Bothello et al., 2019).In South Africa, the public higher education sector needs more competent academic employees to teach large numbers of students post-apartheid.There are limited appropriate facilities and classrooms to accommodate academic employees and the rising student population.The state is reducing funding of public higher education institutions, resulting in fewer teaching and research resources to deliver quality education.
In South Africa, higher education institutions have encountered student protests for more student funding, which pressure academic employees and leaders to resolve protests and deliver quality education.The disruptions further strained financial resources to replace vandalized institutional property.Academic employees contend with backlogs in resource requests such as appropriate teaching equipment and suitable learning materials, shorter assessment completion schedules, and expectations to publish research papers regularly (Council for Higher Education, 2022).In resource-constrained contexts, academic employees navigate internal and external stakeholder pressures to maintain a commitment to the organization, which may require social interactions between employees as a form of support.
There is a lack of regular social interaction opportunities between academic employees, which can promote high employee commitment amid inadequate physical working conditions in South Africa's public higher education institutions.Social interactions to maintain high employee commitment in physically challenged working conditions are under-researched.The study aims to examine whether academic employee commitment is affected by strong social interactions amid a poor state of physical working conditions in under-resourced public higher education institutions.The study hypothesizes that H1: Employees are more likely to show a high level of commitment if social interactions are strong even though physical working conditions are poor.

METHODS
The study employed a cross-sectional survey design to collect data from academic employees who worked for a selected public higher education institution in developing South Africa (Rindfleisch et al., 2008).The historically disadvantaged public higher education institution has faced resource constraints to meet academic employee needs.
There has been a shortage of competent academic employees to fulfill the rising demand for research knowledge production and teaching of large class sizes (Council for Higher Education, 2022).The selected public higher education institution has primarily focused on vocational training and recently introduced research, which further demands academic employees to publish research articles and teach underprepared students.The study's analysis level was the selected public higher education institution located in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.Based on the randomly sampled responses (150), the survey response rate (42%) was higher than the 10% to 20% response rate usually associated with online surveys in anticipation of data analysis procedures.
The data were analyzed to obtain descriptive results of frequencies (F) and percentages (%) to describe the demographic profile of respondents, such as gender, using the SPSS computer software.An analysis of variance (ANOVA) statistical analysis was conducted using Kolmogorov-Smirnov (K-S) and Shapiro-Wilk tests to obtain the mean ( ) and standard deviation (SD) scores and check for the skewness of the dataset for organizational commitment and working conditions constructs.The confirmatory factor scores were obtained to assess the validity (σ) of organizational commitment and working conditions constructs and checked whether measure items had loading higher than .70 as recommended by Hair et al. (2020).The factors for organizational commitment and working conditions construct, with an eigenvalue greater than one, were computed from principal component analysis using the rotation method varimax with Kaiser normalization on SPSS software.
After measures were adapted, piloted, and checked for common method bias resulting in minor changes of language editing, the reliability scores were drawn by conducting a Cronbach's Alpha (α) test for organizational commitment and working conditions constructs on SPSS.For the robustness of the reliability results, the collinearity tests were performed to determine the convergence and discriminate validity scores of organizational commitment and working conditions constructs.The correlation (r) test scores were drawn to determine associations between the state of working conditions and the level of employee commitment based on the dataset.A linear regression statistical analysis was conducted to determine the direction of the hypothesis of the study on organizational commitment and working conditions.The percentage (%) scores for working conditions were further analyzed to obtain scores for physical and social dimensions in pursuit of the robustness of the study.The data were analyzed to describe the demographic profile of respondents as a unit of analysis, as illustrated in Table 1.The demographic results of the dataset showed that there were more females (F = 86, n = 63, 57.1%) than males (F = 27, n = 63, 42.9%), with most respondents aged (F = 31, n = 63, 49.2%) between 50 to 65 years.Older employees may have more nuanced insights into working conditions and maintenance of commitment at work than younger employees from a different generation and time in South Africa's history of apartheid and democracy.Gender differences between respondents may highlight variations in responses to the need for frequent social interactions and the state of physical aspects of working conditions concerning the level of commitment at work.

Table 1. Demographic profile of respondents
The majority of respondents (F = 60, n = 63, 95.2%) were employed permanently and worked for the largest faculty of management sciences (F = 16, n = 63, 25.4%), with few respondents emanating from the faculty of engineering and built environment (F = 6, n = 63, 9.5%) as shown in Table 1.Permanent employees can have unique perspectives on resourcing of working conditions and level of commitment compared to temporary employees who would leave the institution when contracts are terminated.Some faculties, such as engineering, are more resource-intensive due to the equipment needed to teach and conduct research than management sciences, which are less resource-intensive and may provide insightful responses from academic employees.Overall, the demographic results in Table 1 indicated a varied profile of respondents at a selected South African public higher education institution.The gender, age, employment type, and faculty aspects were added as control variables (Z) in all statistical tests on SPSS and found to not affect the results of the study, in preparation for factor analysis procedures.
To test the validity (σ) of the organizational commitment construct, a confirmatory factor analysis was conducted on SPSS as depicted in Table 2.The confirmatory factor analysis result score (.78) was satisfactory, as recommended to be about .70 by Hair et al. (2020).The organizational commitment mean score ( ) was 2.46, with a satisfactory standard deviation (SD) score of 1.05, and a collinearity score of 0.94.Based on the results, the standard deviation (SD) was fairly close to the mean score ( ) with a high collinearity score showing convergent and discriminant validity of organizational commitment.The Cronbach's alpha (α) reliability score was 0.88, which indicated a high internal consistency of organizational commitment questionnaire items loadings.In analyzing variance in the dataset (ANOVA) using Kolmogorov-Smirnov (K-S) and Shapiro-Wilk, the data were fairly evenly distributed on SPSS.Based on the test results, the organizational commitment construct measure was reliable and valid.
To test the validity (σ) of the working conditions construct, the confirmatory factor analysis was conducted on SPSS as shown in Table 2.The working conditions validity (σ) result score (.81) was satisfactory.The working conditions mean score ( ) X   was 2.98, with standard deviations (SD) at a satisfactory 1.27, which was fairly close to the mean ( ) and a high collinearity score of 0.94, which showed convergent and discriminant validity.The Cronbach's alpha reliability (α) score was 0.88, showing high internal consistency of questionnaire items of the working conditions construct.The analysis of variance (ANOVA) using Kolmogorov-Smirnov (K-S) and Shapiro-Wilk tests demonstrated a fairly evenly distribution of data for the working conditions construct on SPSS.Based on the test results, the working conditions measure of the study was found to be valid and reliable in anticipation of correlation statistical tests.
The study conducted a two-tailed correlation (r) statistical test to analyze the association between organizational commitment (X) and working conditions (Y) constructs based on the dataset as illustrated in Table 3.The correlation (r) results showed a strong correlation (r = -.464**,p = < .001) between organizational commitment (X) and working conditions (Y) constructs, based on 63 respondents and a p-value of .001 at 95% of significance, with a 5% margin of error on SPSS.The negative correlation score (r = -.464)further demonstrated that high employee commitment (X) was connected to poor working conditions (Y) in the study.The correlation (r) results underscore that inadequate physical facilities and materials were unlikely to decrease the high employee commitment in resource-constrained contexts.
The study hypothesizes that employees are more likely to show a high level of commitment to an organization if social interactions are strong amid poor physical working conditions, as illustrated in Table 4.A linear regression statistical analysis was conducted to test this hypothesis on SPSS.The regression result (r = -0.52,CR = -3.21,SE = 0.07, p = 0.001) showed that high organizational commitment was strongly associated with poor working conditions with a high p-value at < 0.01 and 95% level of significance with a 5% margin of error.The regression results demonstrated that employees were highly committed to an organization in the wake of inadequate physical working conditions and limited access to facilities and equipment.Therefore, the regression results supported the hypothesis of the study.
For robustness of the regression results, the data were analyzed to obtain the descriptive frequencies (F) and percentages (%) of responses on social interactions between peers as part of working conditions as illustrated in Table 5.In the descriptive results of social interactions, most respondents disagreed (63.5%) with questionnaire statements "My workplace is isolated from colleagues" and "I am isolated from the workgroup of my job" as well as agreed (65.1%) with "I work with and around colleagues on my job."The descriptive results showed that social interaction was a mechanism for maintaining a high level of commitment among employees in resource-constrained contexts.

DISCUSSION
The study examined whether academic employee commitment was affected by strong social interactions and poor physical working conditions in under-resourced public higher education institu-tions.The study found that strong social interactions between academic employees maintain a high level of employee commitment in resourceconstrained workplaces.By highlighting social interactions (Ehrhardt & Ragins, 2019) as a mechanism to increase employee commitment in resource-constrained contexts, the study extends the affective perspective (Allen & Meyer, 1990) of organizational commitment scholarship.The deepening of conceptualization and application of high employee commitment by offering a social interactions dimension ought to assist academic leaders in influencing academic employees to remain highly committed in the workplace.In turn, academic employees can better deliver teaching and research to underprepared students in public higher education in the developing world.
Since social interactions between employees maintain high employee commitment, employees probably draw emotional support from peers and reduce the likelihood of employees resigning.The claim is consistent with Kim and Beehr (2020), who found that affectionately connected employees were unlikely to leave the organization.The suggestion is that, instead of promoting the individual academic work of employees as a standard of performance, the collaboration approach is better suited to promoting emotional support between peers for personal and team benefit.In this regard, academic leaders ought to allocate spaces and times for employees to socialize regularly, such as common areas, institutional days for team attendance, and public celebrations of teamwork to foster stronger social connections and sustain high employee commitment, especially in resource-constrained conditions.Note: SA = strongly agree; A = Agree; NS = Not sure; D= Disagree; SD = Strongly disagree.
While leaders have limited access to resources for investments in physical work environment improvement, building social relations between colleagues is necessary to sustaining employee commitment in resource-constrained contexts such as the public higher education sector (Bothello et al., 2019).The shortage of funding from the state which has to navigate multiple employees needs curb corrupt means of using state taxes to support academic employees, and better reporting of usage of institutional funds requires internal controls and partnerships to promote stronger social interactions between peers.Recognition and support of academic employees can be based on the extent of promotion of social interactions to keep academic employees highly committed to teaching, research, and fundraising at work.
Academic employees contend with backlogs and delays in improving facilities and equipment required to teach and conduct research, which negatively affects the quality of education in public higher education institutions.The observation suggests that resource constraints affect the provision of quality transformative education for previously disadvantaged students in public higher education in the developing world (Council for Higher Education, 2022).Leaders ought to implement unique strategies to keep academic employees highly committed and retained to provide quality education and research in public higher education institutions.Leaders should build employee social networks to improve employee commitment, even though physical working conditions are inadequate in resource-constrained contexts.
The study has combined stable social interactions as an internal driver to external driver of poor physical conditions of facilities and equipment to maintain high employee commitment in resource-constrained contexts.Academic employees pursue strong social bonds with peers to address poor access to appropriate teaching and research equipment.By socializing with colleagues at work through shared teaching and research material, employees promote a culture that fosters high employee commitment despite inadequate physical resource conditions in the public higher education sector in the developing world.

CONCLUSION
The purpose of the study was to investigate if strong social bonds between academic employees influenced a high level of commitment amid inferior physical working conditions in under-resourced public higher education institutions.The results showed that employees built strong social interactions with peers to remain highly committed despite poor physical working conditions.Leaders should deploy social interactions between colleagues to mitigate poor physical working conditions in resource-constrained contexts.The study extends the affective perspective by integrating the internal driver of social interactions with the external driver of poor physical working conditions by means of promoting high employee commitment in resource-constrained contexts.
As the study examined social and physical aspects of working conditions at the individual unit and singular organization levels, future studies can evaluate the social interactions dimension in and between teams and organizations across sectors.Beyond the affective perspective of organizational commitment, the study proposes that normative and continuance perspectives should be harnessed to examine social interaction dimensions and employee commitment.Since the study adopted a cross-sectional survey design, future studies can collect data longitudinally using multiple data sources to investigate whether gradual changes to social interactions impact employee commitment differently.

Table 2 .
Organizational commitment and working conditions validity and reliability XStandard deviationCollinearity ( ) σCronbach's alpha( )

Table 3 .
Association between organizational commitment and working conditions Note: p < .001.

Table 4 .
High organizational commitment and poor working conditions

Table 5 .
Social interactions of working conditions descriptive results