When Teaching Isn’t Enough: Illegitimate Tasks and Their Indirect Effects on Job Performance in Private Education

Abstract

This study explores the consequences of illegitimate tasks for teachers in private schools for intention to quit and low performance, and especially at how these dynamics affect students (graduate students) toward job readiness and career prospect. Based on 400 convenient sampling responses, we use anger, workplace conflict, and toxic workplace environment as mediator variables. The results are intended to demonstrate how illegitimate tasks are experienced as unfairly required and enacted and are thus eliciting negative emotional and interpersonal responses, thereby resulting in reduced employability. Entrepreneurial education is identified as a critical factor to moderate, providing students with the skills of problem solving, adaptability and initiative that are key to career resilience. In addition, social/family support will increased emotional stability and self-esteem and support networks will provide peer-to-peer connections, all reducing negative effects of workplace stressors. An entrepreneurial mindset is conceptualized as a mediator variable that enhances the effect, in turn, of education, support systems, and social networking on employability and, in turn, buffers the negative effects of workplace adversity. All hypotheses are directly and indirectly supported (i.e., via job performance), demonstrating that the interaction of organizational demands with work and personal abilities substantially influences job performance and career plans. The study provides important implications for educational institutions, employers and policy makers for retaining sustainable employability.