Ebullient Supervision and Employee Commitment in the University of Cape Coast: the Role of Workplace Friendship and Employee Engagement

Abstract

ABSTRACT The study examined the influence of ebullient supervision on administrative staff commitment of the University of Cape Coast, Ghana through the intervening roles of workplace friendship and employee engagement. The study adopted the quantitative approach and explanatory design. A structured questionnaire was used to gather data from 290 administrators of the university for data analysis. The data was processed using the IBM SPSS Statistics (version 26) and SmartPLS (version 3.3.3) softwares. Inferential statistics through partial least squares structural equation modelling was used to address objective of the study. The study found that ebullient supervision and employee engagement had significant positive influence on administrative staff commitment, while workplace friendship had no significant influence on staff commitment. The study also found that while workplace friendship failed to mediate the relationship of ebullient supervision and staff commitment, employee engagement had partial mediation effect in the relationship between ebullient supervision and staff commitment. The study recommended management of the university should lay emphasis in placing persons who are ebullient to supervisory positions in the university