This paper aims to examine the factors that affect the productivity of educational laboratory officials and analyze it from the perspective of social exchange theory.
This study applies a survey method involving 153 respondents from educational laboratory officials at State Islamic University and State University in Indonesia who were selected by purposive and accidental sampling techniques. Respondents filled out a questionnaire in the form of a Google Form sent by the researcher via email and WhatsApp. Data analysis was carried out using the structural equation modeling analysis tool from the AMOS 25 software.
The results found that: (1) job satisfaction is the most influential factor for productivity rather than organizational commitment (OC). (2) Islamic work ethic (IWE) has a significant negative effect on OC and has a positive and insignificant effect on productivity. (3) Islamic work culture (IWC) affects OC and productivity positively and significantly. (4) OC has a positive and significant effect on productivity. (5) OC is not able to mediate the relationship between the influence of Islamic work ethic (IWE), Islamic work culture (IWC) and job satisfaction simultaneously on productivity. Interestingly, IWE no longer has a positive effect on OC.
The limitation of this study lies in the relatively small number of respondents, so the results of the study in general do not represent the level of laboratory productivity that occurs in universities throughout Indonesia. Further research is expected to develop this research by adding other variables, such as job training, work discipline, work motivation, physical and non-physical work environment, work stress and other variables that can affect employee work productivity.
This research suggests that workers in Islamic higher education have their own character and are different from general higher education, which must be proven. These differences include the potential for religious values inherent in workers’ identities. In the opposite situation, when knowledge and understanding of IWE have not been sufficiently applied, they cannot significantly affect productivity.
