A field study on organizational, professional and side job commitment among professors at German private universities

Author : Prof. Dr. Heinke Robken, Prof. Dr. Marcel Schutz, Alena Klenke

Abstract :Professors at private universities are often caught between multiple obligations. On the one hand, they feel committed to their employing university, as they teach and conduct research there, while on the other hand they are strongly committed to their academic discipline and the associated academic networks and standards. Professors at private institutions in particular, who are employed in temporary or part-time professorships, are often also involved in a secondary occupation, for example in their own company or as consultants, which represents a further source of obligation. These multiple commitments lead to different requirements and expectations, which can potentially complement, but also compete with each other. So far, it is unclear which areas professors at private universities feel most strongly connected to and to what extent the different types of commitment add to each other or are in tension with each other. It can be assumed that different types of commitment arise among professors depending on the job constellation (full-time/permanent, etc.). Finally, the question arises as to which factors promote a high level of commitment to the organization, the profession and the secondary occupation and how the different types of commitment relate to professorial involvement in research and teaching. Higher education research has not yet sufficiently investigated how the various commitment foci combine and what effects they have on the research and teaching behavior of professors at private universities. These questions are of practical importance both for the understanding of commitment theories and for the personnel management of universities. This research project aims to answer the following research questions: - To what extent do professors at German private universities feel connected to their university, their profession and their secondary occupation? - Which commitment profiles can be differentiated? - What is the relationship between the different forms of commitment? - Which conditional factors explain a high level of organizational, professional and part- time commitment? - What is the relationship between commitment and work engagement in teaching and research? Methodological approach. This study developed a research instrument using classical commitment scales (Meyer et al 1991, Lawrence et al. 2012, Livingston 2011; Jauch et al. 1978) and mailed it to all professors employed at German private higher education institutions. (n=5295). Descriptive and multivariate analyses will be used to provide information about the organizational, professorial and part-time commitment of professors at German private higher education institutions, their conditioning factors and their effects on faculty commitment in research and teaching.

Keywords :Faculty commitment, private universities, academic profession, organizational commitment, professional commitment, part-time employment, higher education research, teaching engagement, research involvement, university governance, academic networks, secondary occupation, commitment theory, work engagement, Germany.

Conference Name :International Conference on Higher Education Studies (ICHES-25)

Conference Place Amsterdam, Netherlands

Conference Date 24th Jan 2025