Unleashing the university potential: Exploring the impact of staffing autonomy on organizational performance through strategy implementation

Drawing on the resource-based view, the current study examines the direct effect of staffing autonomy (SA) on strategy implementation (SI) and organisational performance (OP) in public and private universities. The study also investigates the direct effect of SI on OP. It further explores whether SI mediates the link between SA and OP. Moreover, the study examines whether the type of universities moderates the relationship among the constructs. The hypotheses were tested based on survey data from 254 leaders of public and private universities in India. PLS-SEM-based results reveal that SA has a significant positive impact on both SI and OP. Further, the results show that SI has a significant positive impact on OP. Besides, the results find that SI mediates the relationship between SA and OP. Furthermore, the multi-group analyses show that the university type has no moderating effect on the effect of SA on SI and OP, as well as on the impact of SI on OP. The results of the current study support the anticipations derived from a resource-based view. The theoretical and practical contributions are discussed, and limitations and new lines of future research are presented.