Islamic Leadership and Lecturers’ Performance: The Mediating Role of Islamic Organizational Citizenship Behaviour

The performance of lecturers, including teaching, research, and engagement, is influenced by institutional support, workload management, and leadership effectiveness. Despite this, Islamic universities often rank lower on a national scale, underscoring the necessity to improve lecturer performance to compete with leading institutions. This research investigates lecturer performance through an Islamic lens, aiming to fill the empirical gap by analysing the impact of Islamic leadership and organisational citizenship behaviour from an Islamic perspective (OCBIP). The study seeks to create a conceptual framework that illustrates how Islamic leadership affects lecturer performance, with OCBIP as a mediator. The study involved 313 participants, with questionnaires distributed using Google Forms and directed to the respondents’ official email addresses. Data analysis was performed using SmartPLS 4.0. The study’s key findings reveal that Islamic leadership significantly and positively impacts OCBIP and lecturers’ performance. Moreover, OCBIP fully mediates Islamic leadership and lecturers’ performance. The findings meet the criteria of the PLS-SEM model. The research is grounded in social exchange theory and highlights how Islamic leadership fosters OCBIP, enhancing lecturers’ performance through reciprocal positive behaviours. The inclusion of mediating roles further enhances its theoretical contributions. The results offer significant insights for lecturers, helping them identify critical behaviours and integrate psychological dimensions rooted in Islamic principles, such as Islamic leadership and OCBIP, that affect lecturers’ performance. Furthermore, the study contributes to psychological and management literature by enhancing the understanding of key factors that shape the performance of university lecturers.