University Teachers’ Contextual Performance: A Quantitative Analysis of Demographic Variables

1. Assistant Professor, Department of Education, Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan, Punjab, Pakistan 2. University of Baltistan, Skardu, Pakistan 3. Associate Professor, IER, University of Punjab, Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan PAPER INFO ABSTRACT Received: January 16, 2021 Accepted: March 01, 2021 Online: March 20, 2021 The core tenacity of current endeavor was to analyze the contextual performance of teachers of universities on the basis of various demographic variables such as their gender, university, department, faculty and length of service in respective university. Total 311teachers including lecturers and Assistant professors were selected as sample of the study. Out of which 231 teachers were respondents as per 74.27% response rate. To elicit contextual performance of these respondents five point Likert type scale by Koopman (2014) having 0.85 internal consistencies was administered. A quantitative analysis was conducted using Mean, Standard Deviation, Pearson’s correlational coefficient, One Way ANOVA, Independent sample t-test and factor analysis. It was accredited through analysis that overall teachers had average contextual performance. Mean score varied from above average to excellent. Gender based difference was found as female respondents were found to be more inclined to show contextual performance as compared to male respondents. Lecturers were found to be more enthusiastic for their work as compared to Assistant Professors. It is to be recommended that as a successful organization, universities will have to equip their teachers with quality performance indicators by conducting such training workshop they may motivate them to be better performer.


Introduction
Teachers are backbone of any university. Without them no university can progress. However, this progress is mainly dependent on performance of teachers (Bilal et al;.Improving teachers' performance has always been an area of concern in education sector. Because improved performance of teachers is closely related to enhanced satisfaction of employers, students, parents and other stakeholders (Kalia & Bhardwaj, 2019). Undoubtedly, effective management of teachers' performance is still a strategic tool for success of any academic institute. As per Saboor and his associates (2018) potential facets of performance domain have been categorized under task performance, contextual performance and counterproductive behaviors. Koopman (2014) further adds another form of performance in this regard that is adaptive performance along with contextual performance, task performance and counterproductive work behaviors. Teachers' performance is defined by "how effectively they influence others in ways that generate the desired institutional outcomes" (Salisu & Awang,2018.p.113).They further split performance under task performance and contextual performance in which task performance incumbents those activities which facilitate technical core of organization while contextual performance encompasses those tasks which shape the social and psychological climate of any organization while serving as the catalyst for task activities (Hunthausen, 2000).
In the same manner, Aykan (2014) also supports the idea that task performance is demonstration of teachers' those activities which are needed for task fulfillment in any university while contextual performance is comprised of teachers' emotional behaviors. Saboor et al. (2018) explain that tasks which are mentioned in job agreement for the contribution of technicalities of organization are termed as task performance. On the other hand, contextual performance is composed of all those activities that are unpaid and voluntarily accepted by employees. Any organization always needs contextual type of performance by its employees for value addition to its social and psychological spheres. Although, both task and contextual performance at work place have vital role for goal attainment of any institution however, it is always desirable by the employees to accept additional work beyond the formal work boundaries of their jobs (Cichy et al.2009).
These additional tasks and contextual behaviors include persevering with enthusiasm for tasks, attention to tasks, motivation for work, organizational commitment, volunteering for extra work, pro activity, creativity, collaboration, support for others, politeness, effective communication, following rules and regulations and defending the organization (Befort & Hattrup,2003).In view of Reilly and Aronson (2012) contextual activities are not task or goal specific but pave the way of success of any organization while facilitating functional efficacy of employees and teams.
In academic sphere, Bilal and his associates (2015) present another view of contextual performance as Proactive view in which teachers adopt smart approach by being self-starter to work and going on extra miles for a task. Therefore, contextual performance is considered as an integral component of teaching profession. Contextual performance mainly deals with such behaviors that have supplementary job proficiency. Resultantly, these behaviors contribute to "safeguard and upgrade" the psycho-social environment of universities while adopting the approach of goal accomplishment. Teachers' contextual performance refers to teachers' social and psychological behaviors consistent with their educational goals during teaching" (Hu et al;p.1078. Delgado-Rodriguez et al. (2018) highlight that very few researches are available targeting academic contextual performance of university teachers despite its proven significance for universities. Several proactive and contextual behaviors are always in demand in academic settings like helping and cooperating with colleagues, welcoming additional assignments and determination to complete them successfully, persistence with extra efforts despite difficult conditions, interpersonal facilitation, altruism and adhering to policies of universities even if it seems inconvenient. Reilly and Aronson (2012) take these behaviors as "non-traditional". As in their view, in modern time universities there is advent of virtual teams especially for project based assignments. Therefore, need of these unconventional contextual behaviors have become even more crucial? Undoubtedly, notion of teamwork itself incorporates contextual performance by the teachers covering interpersonal facilitation in work environment.
Contextual performance can elevate productivity of teachers in a variety of ways; like cooperative and courteous teachers assist their heads of department in reducing time or energy spent on group-maintenance activities. Such teachers help leaders/managers to focus on tasks that do not involve close monitoring of discipline of teachers. In this way, they give valuable feedback to institutional managers operating at all levels for improved productivity while reducing the burden of managers for employee development. Their courtesy and conscientiousness create a positive climate that spills over to all stakeholders (Reilly & Aronson;. At present, selection and promotion procedures of teachers largely prefer both task and contextual performance because both complement each other to make a perfect duo. Although, employers and managers differ in relative weightage they give to both domains when evaluating an employee's overall performance. Hence, in decisions regarding promotion or reward, value is placed on employee's tendency towards contextual behaviors (Befort &Hattrup, 2003).Contrary to it, Reilly and Aronson (2012) are of the view that teachers' evaluation system still prefer task completion and goal accomplishment. Contextual performance is equally important but oftenly it is unrewarded and unrecognized area of performance.
Various studies have highlighted the contextual performance as integral construct for different organizational settings like Bilal and his associates (2015) concluded that contextual performance of teachers of universities is predictor of their improved employee engagement. They also found connection between employee engagement and contextual performance through studies by Gorgievski et al. (2010) and Bakker et al. (2012).Further, Hetzler (2007) concluded that contextual performance is a uni-dimensional construct although may fluctuate over time as it is linked to occurrence of organizational events like meeting deadlines and having holidays which may impact the degree of contextual performance. She found agreeableness and conscientiousness as stable predictors of contextual performance. Kalia and Bhardwaj (2018) through their study identified factors that promote conceptuality in employees. It was found that age of employees significantly affected their contextual performance. The level of contextual performance in employees elevated with age range of 40-50 years which thereafter remained constant while as the annual income of employees' increases their task and contextual performance both increased. They concluded that demographic variables of age, qualification, marital status, income and annual income significantly affected contextual performance of employees.
Researchers are always in search of antecedents of these contextual or proactive behaviors and it has been found by Hosie and Nankervis (2016) that task activities can vary across different jobs but contextual activities are reported to be common to many jobs. In their study they found managers' performance as multidimensional in nature having four contextual factors; "Following, Persisting, Helping and Endorsing". Results of their study assist in establishing the structure for the subsequent appraisal of managers' contextual performance. Befort and Hattrup (2003) indicated that managers have realized the subsequent position of contextual activities in any organization which is always in form of showing extra effort by employees. Results of their study revealed that extra effort matters a lot to those managers who have more experience regardless of their age.
Contextual performance of higher education teachers demand healthy interpersonal behavior or actions that benefit universities .Contextual performance of teachers also comprises activities that may not be official work assignments, although they still make a significant contribution to their organizational effectiveness. This type of service is often not recorded in job descriptions but is considered an important part of job performance. For capacity building of higher education institutes, teachers will have to improve their contextual performance (Kappagoda, 2012). One of the most important functions of a university is making sure teachers do their jobs effectively. However, in recent years, contextual performance has been considered an integral part of overall work performance. In this global competitive world, ongoing changes in academic settings, plea that faculty members of universities will accelerate their working beyond duties mentioned in their job descriptions. Contextual performance apprehends teachers to kick start activities that contribute to their organizational well-being which causes contextual efficiency. Eventually, contextual performance elevates the overall quality of the universities (Nini, 2019).
The above stated literature presents a clear picture of importance of contextual performance while indicating that employees whether doctors, nurses, engineers or teachers have various ways of making contributions in achieving shared organizational goals. Therefore, the paramount requirement of contemporary universities is to uplift its teachers' capabilities to enable them for this global market arena. Only competent teachers along with high level contextual performance can achieve this purpose. Various research studies have been conducted in context of Business and Industry regarding contextual performance. So far very few researches have dealt with contextual performance of teachers especially higher education teachers. Although teachers' contextual performance has profound effect on overall work environment of universities while forming a harmonious interpersonal culture which ultimately enhance teachers' sense of professional identity. This study is much needed at this time in Pakistan when there is limited research about contextual performance of university teachers. Although this area of HRM needs attention of researchers and beneficiaries to highlight the position of contextual performance. There is dearth of such studies which may analyze the contextual performance of teachers of universities with specific reference to their demographics as gender, faculty, department, university and teaching experience. Although there are various research studies which mostly correlate contextual performance with other constructs like emotional intelligence, work efficacy and task performance or scale of contextual performance have been analyzed while using various statistical techniques. In this way, current endeavor is unique itself as presenting demographic based quantitative analysis. Demographic diversity has such properties which may increase or decrease contextual performance and task performance because their degree of occurrence varies. Demographics have strong influence on behavior of employees. Considering importance of filling existing gap, there is dire need to conduct this study. In addition, it is very vital to conduct research on teachers' performance, to better find itsoutcome on their improved contextual performance which may ultimately enable them to outperform at their workplace.

Material and Methods
A quantitative research design was used for the current endeavor because it focused on objective measurement and statistical analysis of mathematical or numerical data collected through surveys and questionnaires using computer techniques Target population of present study was teachers of all public sector universities of Punjab while accessible population of the study was teachers of universities of Southern Punjab. However, keeping in view the financial restrictions and time constraints only four universities out of eight universities were selected conveniently and teachers from cadre of Lecturers and Assistant Professor were selected. Total population of the teachers was 1614 including both male and female teachers out of which 311 teachers(147 male,164 females) were selected by using sample size calculator with 95% confidence level (www.raosoft.com). However,due to 74.27% response rate total respondents were 231. Overall scale was found to be valid as it measured what it supposed to measure. Reliability coefficient of contextual performance of was 0.85.In this way, scale had good internal consistency for the present study.
The data were analyzed through SPSS version 25. As descriptive statistics, Mean and Standard Deviation were used while as inferential statistics Pearson's Product Moment Correlation coefficient, ANOVA and independent sample t-test were applied for measuring the difference of contextual performance of university teachers on the basis of their gender, faculty, designation and university. Factor analysis was used to identify different factors of the scale. For factor analysis, Extraction Method, Rotation Method, KMO and Bartlett's Test and Monte-Carlo Parallel Analysis were applied for extracting components of contextual performance. Range of mean scores fall between 3.70 to 4.53, this reveals that the level of contextual performance varies from above average to excellent level. Skewness and kurtosis scores show that data of all domains follow the normal distribution.  (10) 29 (13) 120 (52) 32 (14) 24(10) Organizational Commitment 3(1) 17 (7) 34 (15) 109 (47) 41 (18) 27 (12) Extra Tasks 4(2) 21 (9) 39 (17) 96 (42) 46 (20) 25(11) Volunteer Task 11 (5) 21 (9) 25 (11) 136 (59) 24 (10) 14 (6) Table 3 shows levels of contextual performance. One hundred eleven (48%) teachers were at average level on Contextual Performance; while thirty-seven (16%) teachers were below and44 (19%) were above average on Contextual Performance.    Pearson coefficient of correlation was calculated to determine the relationship between different domains of contextual performance. The Construct of Contextual performance was divided into seven domains through exploratory factor analysis. There was significant positive strong correlation between contextual performance and Enthusiasm (r= .759, p<.01), contextual performance and Organizational Commitment (r= .686, p<.01), contextual performance and Extra Tasks (r= .815, p<.01), contextual performance and Volunteer Task (r= .573, p<.01), contextual performance and Dedication (r= .537, p<.01). There was significant positive moderate correlation between contextual performance and Cooperating with each other (r= .354, p<.01). There was significant positive weak correlation between contextual performance and Effective communication (r= .148, p<.01). There was significant positive strong correlation between Organizational Commitment and Extra Tasks (r= .594, p<.01).There was no significant correlation between Effective communication and other domains of contextual performance (p>.01).  Table 5 shows comparison of Male and Female university teachers regarding contextual performance through independent samples t-test. Results shows that there was significant difference in male and female teachers on contextual performance (CP) and its domains Enthusiasm, Extra Tasks, Volunteer Task. The mean score of male on contextual performance (M= 4.02, SD=0.30) was less than mean score of female ((M= 4.11,SD=0.26). In other domains of contextual performance i.e. contextual performance, Enthusiasm, Extra Tasks, Effective communication were different in male teachers and female teachers, in all cases mean scores of male teachers were less than female university teachers.  Table 10 shows comparison of science and social science teachers regarding contextual performance through independent samples t-test. There was no significant difference in science and social science teachers regarding contextual performance. p<.05 Table 11 shows comparison of Assistant Professor and Lecture regarding contextual performance through independent samples t-test. There was no significant difference in Assistant Professors and Lectures regarding contextual performance except on Enthusiasm. Lecturer (Mean: 4.10, SD= 0.46) were more Enthusiast as compare to Assistant Professor (Mean=3.98, SD=0.43).  Table 12 shows comparison of different universities regarding contextual performance through One-way ANOVA. There was significant difference among different universities regarding contextual performance except on Enthusiasm and Extra Tasks. WUM teachers were better in contextual performance as compared to teachers of BZU and UOE, similarly teachers of WUM were also better than UOE teachers. UOE teachers were better in Extra Tasks as compared to IUB teachers.
There was no significant difference among different universities regarding domains of contextual performance i.e. Organizational Commitment, Volunteer Task, Dedication, Cooperating and helping with colleagues and effective communication.  Table 13 shows comparison of different universities regarding contextual performance through One-way ANOVA. There was significant difference among different universities regarding contextual performance except on Enthusiasm and Extra Tasks. WUM teachers were better in contextual performance as compared to teachers of BZU and UOE, similarly teachers of WUM were also better than UoE teachers. UoE teachers were better in Extra Tasks as compared to IUB teachers.
There was no significant difference among different universities regarding domains of contextual performance i.e. Organizational Commitment, Volunteer Task, Dedication, Cooperating with, effective communication.  Table 14 shows comparison of teachers on teaching experience regarding contextual performance through One-way ANOVA. There was no significant difference among teachers on teaching experience regarding contextual performance (p>.05)

Conclusion
The present study was steered as an effort to quantitatively analyze the contextual work performance of teachers who teach at various universities. In present scenario of technological advancement, globalization and digital networking, traditional style of working of teachers is changing rapidly as they are expected not only task accomplishment but their performance should be equipped with their contextual performance as well. Keeping in view this accelerated position of facet of performance, the phenomenon of contextual performance was investigated. However, for improved precision, further it was analyzed under various factors/domains like teachers' enthusiasm for their work, their commitment towards their organization, their inclination for extra tasks, volunteering themselves for various unwanted tasks, dedication for their work, cooperation and helping with their colleagues(interpersonal facilitation) and lastly teachers' use of effective communication. Teachers' contextual performance was compared against several demographics as gender, faculty, university, designation and teaching experience.
It was revealed after analysis that means score for factor of effective communication was highest as compared to other factors which inferred that teachers use communication skills effectively with their colleagues while dealing with them. Overall, teachers showed an average contextual performance. Results are aligned with study results by Mahinay (2014) who also found 70% of teachers to have satisfactory level of contextual performance. Pearson's correlation inferred positive strong correlation between enthusiasm, extra task, volunteer task and dedication which highlight that contextually active teachers are enthusiastic, volunteer and dedicated. However in all domains of contextual performance mean score of females was high as compared to male colleagues. No significant difference was found in contextual performance of science and social science teachers and teachers of both cadre(Assistant Professor, Lecturer).However, lecturer were found to be more enthusiastic than Assistant Professors. Result is aligned with study result by Kalia and Bhardwaj (2019) who also depicted that designation has nothing to do with performance of employees. It does not play its role in augmenting the motivation of their performance. No significant difference was found in teaching experience of teachers which show that teaching experience has nothing to do with increasing or decreasing contextual performance of teachers. Contrary to this result Saleem and Imran (2014) are of the view that experienced teachers are better performers at their workplace as their experience helps them to understand the organization. Kolz et al (1998) also agree that experienced employees demonstrate improved work performance because of their deep understanding of tactics for dealing with assignments at workplace. As employees spend long time in organization they are more attached to their organization. They own their organization and this ownership is well reflected in their performance.
To cut short, contextual performance is a need of today's organizations which still be needed in foreseeable future. The organizations which are able to evoke performance of its employees on the basis of their contextual responses are considered to be successful. Contextual performance of teachers demands them to show mutual respect for interpersonal facilitation. They will have to show harmonious cooperation. This includes their gestures of appreciation for those colleagues who are awarded with scholarships. Harmonious cooperation can be spread through their willingness to shoulder the work of colleagues who need help willingness to help new freshly appointed colleagues. They will have to be communicative to discuss classroom management techniques, teaching strategies and other official assignments. More is expected of teachers as competition continues to require greater effort and productivity. Contextual performance should be considered in career advancement. Thus managers should be trained to avoid ignoring contextual behaviors when considering employees for promotional opportunities or other assignments. It is strongly endorsed for the authorities of universities to optimize performance of teachers, frame such organizational policies which may motivate employees to show contextual performance