INFLUENCE OF DEMOGRAPHIC ATTRIBUTES ON THE PERFORMANCE OF ACADEMIC STAFF: A STUDY OF HIGHER EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS IN A PROVINCE OF INDIA

Purpose:The performance of employee is determined by several factors such as their motivation, commitment, development, satisfaction level in their job, positive work climate and so on. One of the important factors which would determine the performance of an employee is their demographic attributes such as age, gender, education, family status, promotion, length of service, designation, etc. and these factors are inherent in each employee. Demographic attributes are acknowledged to have a deep impact on the performance level of the employee in any organization. Based on this theoretical consideration, this paper is an attempt to investigate the influence of demographic attributes of the academic staff on the level of their performance. Methodology:Demographic attributes are measured by age, gender, educational qualification, experience and promotion and performance by research and development activities of the academic workforce. A stratified random sampling technique was applied for data collection and the study was conducted in Liberal Arts and Science Colleges in Tamil Nadu Province (India). A total of 656 academic workforces were responded from all four regions (East, West, North, and South). The statistical tools of Frequency distribution, Independent T-test and one-way ANOVA with Post hoc test were applied to test the significant variation, if any, between demographic variables and the performance level of the academic workforce. Findings:The results clearly show that demographic attributes of Age, Educational Qualification, Promotion and Length of Teaching Experience have significantly influenced the level of performance of the academic workforce. However, results indicate that gender of the respondent has not significantly influenced their performance level and both male and female academic workforce equally performed well. Implication: The results of this study contribute to theoretical support about the influence of demographic factors of academic staff on the level of their performance. It also supports empirically the proposed hypotheses that contribute to understanding the influence of personal and professional variables of academic staff and their performance. Further, the influence of personal and professional variables on the level of performance confirmed or negated propositions that existed in the review of the literature. Originality/Value: There is a lack of research work in the Indian higher education sector which establish the influence of demographic attributes on the performance level of the academic workforce and this study fills this gap. Understanding the influence of personal and professional attributes of academic staff on the level of their performance would enable the educational administrators to formulate appropriate composition of academic staff and imply in the HR planning and recruitment strategy and also in other HR policies to attract and retain the highly qualified and experienced academic workforce.