Labour Relations Management and Academic Staff Commitment in Public Universities in Africa: The Intervening Role of Organizational Trust

Jane Michael
Moi University, Kenya
Email: janemichael8@yahoo.com

Abstract: Academic staff commitment remains a persistent challenge in public universities across Africa, where weak labour relations management, resource constraints, and eroded institutional trust have been linked to high staff turnover, yet the specific pathway through which labour relations management shapes commitment, and the intervening role organizational trust plays in that pathway, remains theoretically underdeveloped for African public university systems. This paper examinedthe relationship between labour relations management and academic staff commitment in public universities in Africa, with organizational trust as the intervening variable, guided by Social Exchange Theory and the Three-Component Model of Organizational Commitment. The study adopted a documentary secondary data review design, drawing on peer-reviewed journal articles, institutional reports, and grey literature published between 2020 and 2025, retrieved through systematic keyword searches across academic databases and institutional repositories. Inclusion criteria prioritised verifiable, recent empirical studies addressing labour relations, organizational trust, or staff commitment in higher education settings, while sources lacking traceable authorship, publication details, or empirical grounding were excluded. Findings reveal that organizational trust functions as a mediating mechanism rather than a direct driver of commitment, that contextual and structural labour relations conditions remain critical antecedents that psychological variables can complicate the trust-commitment pathway, and that public university systems in Africa remain markedly underrepresented in trust-mediation research. The study concludes that trust-building must be treated as central, not peripheral, to labour relations management in universities across African countries, and recommends context-specific policy interventions and further empirical research testing this intervening relationship directly within public university systems.