The impact of COVID-19 on academic staff’s performance on Saudi Arabia universities

Abstract

This research aimed to assess the COVID-19 impact on the academic staff performance at Tabuk University, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, as well as to analyse the pandemic impact on job stress and job attitude; while considering the personality traits (emotional stability and extroversion) as moderator’s factors that either mitigate the negative impact of job stress imposed by COVID-19 on job performance; or boosts the perceived positive impact of job attitude on job performance. Two hundred ninety (290) of Tabuk University academic staff were surveyed. The structural equation modelling (SEM) that adopts the partial least square method (PLS) facilitated the hypothesis testing. The results revealed that COVID-19 has a significant positive impact on job stress. While job stress has a significant negative relationship with job attitude and job performance. Emotional stability moderates the positive impact of job attitude on performance, while job attitude mitigates the negative relationship between job stress and performance.