Examining the Influence of Academic and Non-academic Responsibilities on Academicians’ Job-related Stress in Higher Education

Abstract

Academicians are commonly associated with academic tasks of teaching and research. However, recent scenario reveals that academicians’ workloads are not restricted to merely academic tasks. Academicians also hold administrative positions, involved with students’ development activities, community services and professional development. Shouldering with numerous responsibilities, academicians may be stressful to prioritize the assigned tasks and meeting deadlines. This necessitates serious attention to ensure that academicians can focus on the assigned responsibilities and perform their best. Thus, this study attempts to establish a relationship between academic and non-academic responsibilities with job-related stress among academicians. Through survey method, 120 usable responses received out of 391 questionnaires distributed to academicians in a public university. Using SPSS, a preliminary analysis indicates that the respondents were moderately stressful with their job. However, multiple regressions test demonstrates that job-related stress is not influenced by academic responsibilities but marginally contributed by non-academic responsibilities. The findings give insights to the university management on academicians’ reaction to their present job tasks and useful as guidance in any efforts or policy towards academicians’ workload setting. However, this study is confined to only one public university in the East coast region of Malaysia. Thus, future research may be expanded to the public universities in the West region of Malaysia with different working environment and lifestyle.