Beyond Job Satisfaction: Academic Staff Wellbeing as an Institutional Condition for Academic Performance in Higher Education—A Multi-Source Mixed-Methods Study

As higher education institutions respond to societal transformation and institutional reform, academic staff wellbeing is increasingly relevant to the conditions that sustain teaching quality, research productivity, and service performance. This study, the second phase of a research project, evaluated Academic Staff Wellbeing (ASW) as a reflective–reflective second-order construct and examined its relationships with Job Satisfaction (JS) and Academic Performance (AP), including JS mediation. A cross-sectional questionnaire with closed- and open-ended items was completed by 119 academic staff at a single Saudi university. Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) with 5000 bootstrap resamples was complemented by structured interviews with eight faculty members and a focus group with eight academic leaders; qualitative evidence was analyzed thematically and integrated at the interpretation stage. The measurement model demonstrated satisfactory reliability, convergent validity, and discriminant validity. ASW explained 74.3% of the variance in JS and, together with JS, 36.1% of the variance in AP. ASW was strongly associated with JS and significantly associated with AP, whereas the JS–AP relationship and the indirect ASW–JS–AP relationship were not significant (β = 0.125, 95% bias-corrected confidence interval [−0.185, 0.474]). Qualitative findings highlighted leadership, institutional support, workload, resources, professional development, workplace quality, and recognition as organizational mechanisms. Within the limitations of a cross-sectional, single-institution design and self-reported academic performance, these findings suggest that ASW may function as a multidimensional institutional condition supporting teaching, research, and service performance through multiple organizational pathways rather than primarily through job satisfaction alone.