Abstract:
The study examined the effect of occupational stress on the performance of
academic professionals at the Cape Coast Technical University within the
Central Region of Ghana. Based on the conservation of resource (COR) theory,
the study also assessed the sources of occupational stress and determinants of
academic professional’s performance. The study adopted the quantitative
approach and explanatory research design. Using the Krejcie and Morgan (1970)
sample size determination table, the study randomly sampled 113 members from
the population size of 260 academic staff of the technical university. Structured
questionnaires were used to obtain data from the respondents and processed
using the IBM SPSS Statistics version 24. Using the mean, standard deviation
scores and regression analysis, the study found task performance as the major
and highest determinant of employee performance. Also, occupational stress was
found to have a significant negative relationship with employee performance at
the technical university. It was concluded that, occupational stress is a key
contributor of poor performance among the academic staff of the technical
university. The study recommended that management should adopt innovative
strategies geared towards reducing occupational stress at the institution in order
to enhance employee performance levels
