Thriving in Academia: How Social Support in the Workplace Impacts on the Performance Levels of Iraqi Women University Administrators?

The current study aimed to explore the effects of social support provided by supervisors (department heads) and colleagues on the performance levels of women working in the administrative departments at Jabir Ibn Hayyan University for Medical and Pharmaceutical Sciences in an embedded model of the impact of affective commitment to career and job enrichment. With a purposive sample of (76) female administrative staff holding a bachelor's degree, the data were analyzed. Hypotheses were tested using the structural equation modeling method according to the least squares modeling method (PLS-SEM) with the SmartPLS .4 software package. The study's findings demonstrated that women working in administrative departments have a favorable and substantial degree of affective commitment to career and job enrichment when they get social support from their superiors (department heads) and colleagues.
The study also concluded that affective commitment to career and job enrichment has a positive and significant impact on the levels of performance of women working in administrative departments. The study also presented a set of recommendations, the most prominent of which are: The University must provide all forms of support to female administrators working at the university to raise their performance levels. Administrative department heads must develop and implement policies and practices to create a positive work environment, reformulate administrative functions, and expand the scope of tasks to meet women's aspirations and increase their motivation.