Technical Personality Competence and Job Performance of Part Time Academic Staff in private Universities in Kampala Metropolitan Area

Abstract

Aware of the complexity of personality, its misconception and research obscurity among part time academics as employees in private universities, this article specifically centred on technical personality. The purpose of the study was achieved by analysing this personality competence and its effect on job performance of the target university academics. Technical personality was analysed based on work competencies adapted from personality descriptors of two of the personality traits advanced in the Big five personality theory (Goldberg, 1990; Kendra, 2016) namely, conscientiousness and openness. The main personality competencies of study included intellectual competence, class teaching competencies and research supervision competence. Job performance was conceptualized and analysed in this study as task performance, contextual performance, and adaptive performance. A descriptively correlational research design was used based on the quantitative and qualitative approach. It was found out that all the technical personality competencies of the target part time university academics were largely high enough at =3.43; s=1.15 and their job performance was virtually high at s=1.19. Such technical competencies altogether significantly predicted an average 80.3% of job performance. In academia therefore, employees including the part time in any private university can have highly rated personalities in all such specific technical competencies That’s not inconsequential, because the higher the level of technical competence the better such employees would perform their jobs and vice versa.