Iranian Journal of Ergonomics

Introduction: Since faculty members are among the most important assets of higher education institutions, surveying and identifying factors associated with these sources that can be effective on their performance and stress have gained increasing importance. Accordingly, the present study was conducted to survey the relationship between personal accountability and job performance considering the mediating effect of skills and job stress among employees of the University of Shiraz.

Methods: The statistical population of this study consisted of all of Shiraz University staff who had high school diploma, which included 726 individuals. A sample of 256 persons was chosen using stratified random sampling method. The research method was descriptive-correlative. Data were collected using Hochwarter et al. (2005) accountability, job performance (1990) of Paterson, House and Rizzo’s (1972) Job tension and political skills, and Ferris et al. (2005) satisfaction standard questionnaires. The structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to study the relationship between the latent variables and the measured ones in conceptual model.

Results: The results showed that job performance was affected by personal accountability; employees who had political skills had more accountability, which significantly affected their job performance. Job tension had a significant negative correlation with job performance.

Conclusions: According to the results, political skills and job tension affected the relationship of individual’s accountability with job performance. The results put emphasis on the necessity of reassessing the mediating roles of political skills and job tension in surveying the causal relationships of accountability with job performance.