Role ambiguity in academics: an organizational problematic in universities

The objective of this study was to identify the presence of role ambiguity in academics, who divide their working hours between teaching and researching, of five areas of knowledge in a university in Mexico This is a study with a quantitative approach, a non-exploratory, transactional, descriptive, and correlational design. The reliability of the instrument used was of 0.93 in Cronbach’s Alpha Coefficient. The results identified that 80.3% of the sample perceives role ambiguity more strongly on the dimensions of `Job demands´ and `Norms´. Subsequently, the analysis of variance (ANOVA) showed a significant difference in the perception of role ambiguity on the dimension of `norms´ and the areas of knowledge. Therefore, it is concluded that it is necessary for universities to draw attention to establishing precision and clarity on the normativity related to teaching and researching activities, as well as providing the adequate information regarding the institution’s expectations on job performance.