Competence and affective commitment as mediators of the effect of job characteristics on the performance of Iranian supervising engineers– supervising engineers’ perspective

The job performance of Supervising Engineers has a key role in project monitoring and controlling. The growing complexity and accelerated nature of construction projects, driven by the adoption of new technologies, have amplified the significance of job performance among supervising engineers. Therefore, this study aimed to develop a model based on job characteristics, competence, and affective commitment, to quantitatively investigate the influencing factors on supervising engineers’ performance in building projects. The proposed model was analyzed with the Partial Least-Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) method. Questionnaires were distributed among civil engineers who are members of the Iran Construction Engineering Organization (IRCEO). The majority of respondents were male and had more than 5 years of work experience. The primary contribution of this study to the existing body of knowledge lies in the comparison of the impact of affective commitment and competence on the performance of supervising engineers. Additionally, this study has identified the moderator variables within this model. While the results indicated that competence had a greater influence on the performance of supervising engineers compared to other factors (β=0.259, p≤0.05), it is noteworthy that the impact of affective commitment (β=0.258, p≤0.01) was nearly equivalent. In addition, the moderating effects of work experience, age, marital status, and family support were investigated.