Abstract:

Job performance is one the most important and highly researched variables in social and psychological research. Based on the affective events theory (AET), job performance, as an affect-driven behavior, fluctuates over time as a response to the ebb and flow of positive and negative affective states. In this study, we explored the change pattern in academics’ job performance over a stressful period during the first strict Covid-19 lockdown in Malaysia. Specifically, we collected data from academics affiliated with the 20 public universities at the beginning of the lockdown (April 2020), end of the lockdown (June 2020), and two months after the lockdown (August 2020) and applied latent growth curve (LGC) modeling in analyzing the data using EQS 6.4 statistical package. Our results revealed that the mean of job performance at the beginning of the assessment was above the average score obtained from the measurement instrument. In addition, we did not observe a significant change rate in academics’ job performance over the course of assessment. Moreover, we explored the role of gender, academic rank, and tenure in explaining the variability around academics’ job performance and only detected differences in job performance in terms of academic rank. We further discussed the theoretical and practical implications of our findings and made recommendations for future research in this area.

Keywords:

Job performance, Gender, Academic rank, Tenure, Covid-19 lockdown, Malaysian higher education, Latent growth curve modeling.