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Employee performance is always considered as one of the important factors of employee management that determines the success of an organization. The higher education sector of any country is considered as an important sector which needs to concentrate on achieving its goals successfully. Thus, this research aimed to investigate effect of leadership and training on employees’ performance by taking role ambiguity as a moderating variable in the higher education sector of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). The population of this study consisting of 39154 employees was divided into five groups based on the geographic regions (East, West, Middle, North, and South). This study used the systematic sampling. 600 questionnaires were distributed among the employees working in the higher education system of KSA. 366 questionnaires were returned and were usable for analysis. To test the proposed hypotheses, the Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) was employed. The results found leadership and training have significant positive impacts on employee performance. The study also showed that role ambiguity significantly moderates the relationship between leadership styles with employees’ performance in the higher education sector of KSA. Unpredictably, this study found that role ambiguity does not significantly moderate the relationship between training and employees’ performance. Role ambiguity negatively influences the relationship of leadership with employees’ performance. Therefore, policy-makers and leaders of higher education institutions of KSA should focus on reducing role ambiguity. Corresponding author: Shahmir Sivaraj Abdullah Email address for corresponding author: shahmir@uum.edu.my First submission received: 12th December 2017 Revised submission received: 19th February 2018 Accepted: 8th March 2018 Introduction Over the past few decades, higher education all over the world has developed momentous changes concerning its role and formation (Alshery & Ahmad, 2016; Teichler, 1988; Kelo, Teichler, & Wächter, 2006). In the early twentieth century, higher education was inadequate to a little university outside Europe, North America, and the colonies of Great Britain (Alshery & Ahmad, 2016; Rohstock & Lenz, 2011). Therefore, higher education is measured a space for free examination and the developments of the minds and a very good locus for thought, communication, dealings, and thorough for truth or exchanging idea into concensus (Alshery & Ahmad, 2016; Bagga, Erbe, Murphy, Freid, & Pomrink, 2007). Including aforementioned important functions of higher education, economic and social demands also Journal of Business and Retail Management Research (JBRMR), Vol. 13 Issue 1 October 2018 www.jbrmr.com A Journal of the Academy of Business and Retail Management (ABRM) 214 became important focuses for it. Thus, higher education is no longer limited to the purpose of training for the elite (Alshery & Ahmad, 2016). In the context of KSA Management of Saudi higher e education, all the organization and institutional levels, was a main concern; particularly academic leadership in the institutions that create difficulties (Alshery & Ahmad, 2016); Altrasi, 2014). For instance, academics leader s in KSA institutions interest for advancement in research and teaching may face with difficulties in order to actively play significant role in their institutions Excellent job performance has to be maintained and employees should be well enriched with the needed skills to guarantee that the business was not in misfortunes because of the absence of obliged attitudes at both levels, broadly and globally (Tomaka, 2001) and higher education sector is not an exemption in this context. According to Smith and Abouammoh (2013), academic staff performance and other related issues such as a student’s ability to acquire learning skills, efficient interactive delivery of knowledge, contemporary developed curriculum and overall employee performance standards is one of the major challenges being confronted by Saudi universities. In sum, the Saudi universities have not achieved the required status among international universities due to failing in achieving high-quality teaching and performance standards. Saudi higher education institutions are facing various problems and challenges to meet global education benchmarks including a partnership among departments, institutions and leadership development to bridge the gaps of quality of the employees’ outcomes (Alnassar & Dow, 2013). The experience of academic leadership development in Saudi Arabia stemmed from a strategic perspective (Smith & Abouammoh, 2013). Staff training is also regarded as on the challenges that face Saudi universities (Alshery & Ahmad, 2016; Alnassar & Dow, 2013; Ratyan & Mohammad, 2016). In addition, Kattuah (2013) states that there is a lack of skills among academic staff in Saudi universities which involve providing training programs in order to bring them to international standards. It is also argued that lack of the lecturers’ awareness level about their roles is not so clear such as research publication and community service in Saudi universities (Jdaitawi, Ishak, & Foua'd Musallam, 2013). The consequences of the role ambiguity are lower job satisfaction, less productivity, absenteeism and low commitment (Alshery & Ahmad, 2016; Al-Kahtani & Allam, 2015). Based on the previous discussion, it is clear that higher education sector in KSA has faced many issues such lower ranking of Saudi universities compared to international universities and underperformed performance of the academic staff due to their leadership issues, lack of training and their role ambiguity. Likewise, the link between training and employee performance is conflicting as many studies such as Farooq and Khan (2011), Naqvi and Khan (2013), Diab and Ajlouni (2015), Asfaw, Argaw and Bayissa (2015) and Alshery and Ahmad (2016) have proved the significant relationship between the two constructs; whereas other scholars Jones, Jones, Latreille and Sloane (2009) argued that the link between training and employee performance is complex due to the variety of their measurements. Many researchers also argue that training is not the only source to improve the job performance of employees (Murrell, 1984). Al-Gahtani (2002) states that many researchers showing various results regarding the training and job satisfaction to improve the job performance of the employee. Thus, the inconsistent findings regarding the relationship between these variables, namely, leadership and training and employee performance shows that there is an urgent need to examine these relationships in the context of higher education sector in KSA to take a broad view the previous results. 2. Literature review and hypothesis development 2.1 Leadership and employee performance There are numerous approaches to characterize leadership. In view of 54 specialists from 38 nations, the leadership management is about affecting, propelling, and empowering others to contribute to the viability and the accomplishment of an organization (Alshery & Ahmad, 2016, McShane & Glinow, 2010). “The leadership is additionally characterized by Robbins and Judge (2007) as the capacity to impact a gathering toward the accomplishment of a vision or set of objectives”. “A less complex definition was given by Kassim and Sulaiman (2011) where they define leadership as to be a piece of administration that includes the supervision of others”. Pater (2001) as cited in Lu & Yang’s (2010) study, state that safety Journal of Business and Retail Management Research (JBRMR), Vol. 13 Issue 1 October 2018 www.jbrmr.com A Journal of the Academy of Business and Retail Management (ABRM) 215 leadership was highlighted as a sub-system of hierarchical administration ((Alshery & Ahmad, 2016; Semedo et al., (2017). Referring to literature review, the link between job satisfaction and leadership is confirmed. For example, Lee and Wilber (1985) reported a positive relationship between job satisfaction and leadership in their investigation of cops in Malaysia separately. Holdnak, Harsh, and Bushard, (1993) discovered a positive relationship between consideration leadership behaviour and job satisfaction, and negative relationship between initiating structure leadership behaviour and job satisfaction. Leadership and job performance qualities are the most effective factors that help organisations to achieve their objectives. Leaders can impose decisions on the strength of achievable performance. The goal of all the managers is to increase the production level and to enhance the efficiency to achieve the set targets of the organisation. The positive relationship between job performance and leadership styles influence the improvement and help organisations to achieve the vision and mission with great success (Ullah & Batool, 2013). Furthermore, more recent studies confirmed that leadership styles have a significantly effect on employees’ performance (Wambugu, 2014; Rasool et al., 2015; Girei, 2015; Desderio et al., 2016). Thus, the first hypothesis is specified as follows; Hypothesis 1: There is a significant effect of the leadership style on performance of employees working in the public universities of KSA. 2.2 Training and employee performance Training can be referring to filling the paucity between the present performance and the usual desired performance (Alshery & Ahmad, 2016). Training could be given through different methods such as on the coaching and mentoring, peers’ cooperation and participation by the subordinates. The past researchers confirmed a positive connection between training and employee performance, as training brings favourable circumstances for the individual adjacent for the firm by completely influencing employee performance through the change of employee's performance and behaviour. The development of employess’ capabilities and skills should be given much attentio

Influence of leadership style, training, role of ambiguity on employee performance of higher education of Saudi Arabia (KSA)