Model of faculty members' research performance in national research universities

Abstract

The objectives of this research were: 1) To explain faculty members’ qualifications, their perceptions of transformational leadership, human resource management practices, learning organization and their research performance in National Research Universities; 2) To study the effects of faculty members’ qualifications, their perceptions of transformational leadership, human resource management practices and learning organization on their research performance in National Research Universities; and 3) To develop the model of faculty members’ research performance in National Research Universities. The research methodology was the mixed methods between the quantitative and the qualitative methods. In the quantitative method, the population was 18,035 faculty members from National Research Universities. The researcher used simple sampling method and used Yamane’s formula to calculate the sample size, which were 392 faculty members. Questionnaires were sent by mail and 390 of mail were received back, which were 99.49 percent from the sample size. The questionnaires, which were created from the concepts and the operational definitions, were tested by content validity method, reliability method and construct validity method. In the qualitative method, the interview outline was created from the statistics analysis results, and then used to interview nine faculty members in the National Research Universities to explain the quantitative research findings. The research findings were: 1) Faculty members’ qualifications, which consist of academic positions and income per month, were significantly related to their research performance; 2) Faculty members’ perception of organizational transformation and knowledge management has the most positive direct effect on their research performance, followed by their research experience, their perceptions of technology application, and creating continuous learning opportunities; 3) Faculty members’ perception of transformational leadership has the most positive indirect effect on their research performance, followed by their perceptions of training and development, recruitment and performance management, and rewards; and 4) Faculty members’ perception of transformational leadership has the most total effect on their research performance, followed by their perception of organizational transformation and knowledge management, their research experience, their perceptions of technology application, creating continuous leaning opportunities, training and development, recruitment and performance management and rewards. The new theoretical findings were: 1) Faculty members’ perception of transformational leadership has no the positive direct effect on their research performance. However, this research found that faculty members’ perception of transformational leadership has the positive indirect effect on their research performance through their perceptions of human resource management practices and learning organization; and 2) Faculty members’ perception of human resource management practices has no positive direct effect on their research performance. However, this research found that faculty members’ perception of human resource management practices have a positive indirect effect on their research performance through their perception of learning organization.