Employee’s advocacy, employee’s involvement and organizational commitment: Insights from higher education teachers

Abstract

This study draws on social exchange theory (SET) to examine employee advocacy and employee involvement and its effect on organizational commitment in the higher education sector. We used a two-wave (2018 and 2019), multi-source, repeated cross-sectional data from 521 employeesof18 Nigerian public higher education institutions (universities, polytechnics and colleges of education)to analyze these relationships. Sstructural equation modelling analysis (SEM-AMOS) was employed to test the direct relationships, and Hayes PROCESS Macro 3.5 was used to test the multiple mediation analysis. The results show that both employee advocacy and employee involvement associated positively with organizational commitment. However, only emotional energy mediated the relationships between the higher education employees (HEEs)advocacy, involvement and organizational commitment in this population.Our study provides practical implications for higher education sector managers or supervisors by demonstrating the importance of providing HEEs with opportunities to fully involve actively in their job roles to stimulate employees’ emotional energy towards achieving their institutional goals and improve employee advocacy behaviours.Our results contribute to the literature and SET by describing how higher education sector managers can focus on employee involvement and advocacy to facilitate employee organizational commitment.