The Impact of HRM Practices and Leadership Styles on Administrative-Office Staff Performance in Palestinian Universities

Abstract

This study investigates the impact of HRM practices and leadership styles on administrative-office staff performance in traditional universities and university colleges in Palestine. A pilot study was conducted before data collection to check content validity and reliability, which was successfully achieved. The primary data were collected through questionnaires distributed to a purposive sample of administrative-office employees from nine Palestinian universities and university colleges across the West Bank area. A total of 256 questionnaires out of 270 were eligible for data analysis. The response rate was 0.94. The data analysis was carried out using SPSS version 24 utilizing the data analysis program: PLS-SEM version 3. The findings of this research study have reported that HRM practices (training and development, compensation and rewards, employee relations, and performance appraisal) are positively related to administrative-office staff performance. In contrast, leadership styles (transformational and transactional) were found to have no significant impact on administrative-office staff performance. The study's contribution is threefold: the "population gap" contribution, HRM Practices' theoretical-practical gap contribution, and leadership styles' theoretical-practical gap contribution, besides its practical significance. The study has reached several recommendations, the most important of which are the examined HRM practices should be reinforced and emphasized in order to increase administrative-office staff performance and boost their effectiveness and in case of future examination of the relationship between leadership styles and employee performance, the researchers may employ a mediator or focus on investigating different styles of leadership other than transformational and transactional.