Strategic Management and its impact on university’s Service Quality: The role of Organisational Commitment

Abstract

The higher education sector in developing countries is currently facing several challenges generated by a dynamic environment and characterised by rapid technological change and increased demand. This thesis aims to examine the direct and indirect associations between the components of the strategic management, as well as its impact on service quality of university institutions within the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Additionally, this thesis tests a mediation effect regarding organisational commitment within the relationship between strategic management and service quality. This thesis employs a quantitative method, and a theoretical model is built based on thorough literature reviews concerning strategic management and service quality. With regard to the findings of the empirical research, six main constructs were successfully validated as multi-dimensional constructs. These were used as within structural equation modelling to analyse influencing factors—be they positive or negative—and the degree to which the creation and operations of such collaborations were successful. The structural paths support hypotheses suggesting that strategic management process has a direct positive influence on organisational commitment and that commitment makes a positive, though weak, contributions to service quality. However, the direct impact of strategy implementation and evaluation upon service quality is insignificant. Furthermore, the result showed a partial mediation between strategic planning and service quality, as well as between strategy formalisation and service quality. However, the relation between implementation and service quality, as well as between evaluation and service equality is fully completed. The proposed model was tested empirically using survey data obtained from those 404 senior managers and academic staff from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s Universities who were involved on this study. This thesis synthesises the Social Exchange Theory, Perceived Organisational Support theory and a relational view to explain how commitment influences the Strategic Management process as well as the attributes of Service Quality.