The performance of university academic staff has become an issue of concern as different governments continue to push for quality higher education globally. It is expected that universities contribute to national development by offering first-class professionals in various fields. This study sought to investigate the effect of occupational stress interventions on the performance of academic staff in selected public universities. The study was guided by: the person-environment fit theory, cognitive dissonance theory as well as broaden and build theory. Moreover, the study was anchored on the philosophical approach of positivism. The study adopted an explanatory design and a cross-sectional survey. Inferential and descriptive statistics were then used to analyze the data. Descriptive statistics were given in terms of percentages, frequencies, and measures of central tendency. Inferential statistics were used to gauge the nature and extent of relationships between variables by using regression analysis at a 0.05 level of significance. The findings show a positive and significant relationship between occupational stress intervention and the performance of academic staff.

This article is a critical review of both theoretical and empirical literature on the concept of the effect of occupational stress interventions (OSI) and academic staff performance in Kenyan universities. The review was informed by the fact that there exists limited research on this topic in the Kenyan context hence this relationship is not adequately understood. In the theoretical review section, the paper reviews four theories in relationship to the proposed study variables i.e., person-environment fit theory, job-demand-control-support theory, broaden and build theory, and cognitive dissonance theory. From the empirical literature review, the paper proposes the studying of the mediating and moderating effect of psychological capital and social support respectively on the relationship between the independent and the dependent variable. A conceptualization that hypothesizes that OSI directly affected academic staff performance and is mediated by psychological capital, while social support moderates the relationship is proposed. The proposed study assumes that the performance of academic staff depends on the practical implementation of OSI, social support, and the psychological capital of the academic staff.