Moderating effect of role ambiguity on the relationship of job satisfaction, training and leadership with employees' performance

Employee performance is always considered as one of the important factors of employee management that determines the success of an organization. The higher education sector of any country is considered as an important sector which needs to concentrate on achieving its goals successfully. Thus, this research aimed to investigate effect of job satisfaction, leadership and training on employees’ performance by taking role ambiguity as a moderating variable in the higher education sector of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). The model of the study was developed based on relevant theoretical background. To examine the hypothesized model, the quantitative research design was employed. The population of this study consisting of 39154 employees was divided into five groups based on the geographic regions (East, West, Middle, North, and South). This study used the systematic sampling. 600 questionnaires were distributed among the employees working in the higher education system of KSA. 366 questionnaires were returned and were usable for analysis. To test the proposed hypotheses, the Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) was employed. The results found that job satisfaction, leadership and training have significant positive impacts on employee performance. More importantly, the results revealed that training is the most important variable which is a significant predictor of employees’ performance. The study also showed that role ambiguity significantly moderates the relationship of job satisfaction and leadership style with employees’ performance in the higher education sector of KSA. Unpredictably, this study found that role ambiguity does not significantly moderate the relationship between training and employees’ performance. Role ambiguity negatively influences the relationship of job satisfaction and leadership with employees’ performance. Therefore, policy-makers and leaders of higher education institutions of KSA should focus on reducing role ambiguity.