Academic Thesis for Master's Degree
Field: Public Administration, Human Resource Management Orientation
Abstract
Organizational citizenship behavior is an individual and voluntary behavior that is not directly designed by the official reward system in the organization, but it improves the effectiveness and efficiency of the organization's performance. The purpose of this research is to investigate the effect of servant leadership on the organizational citizenship behavior of the employees of Rasht National Bank branches. The statistical population of the research is the employees of the National Bank of Rasht branches in the number of 580 people, the sample size is 197 people, of which 197 people were selected as a statistical sample using simple random sampling.
This research is applied in terms of purpose and descriptive in terms of data collection, the descriptive research method is a survey type, and in terms of the relationship between research variables, it is a regression type. In order to collect the required data, the organizational citizenship behavior questionnaire based on the dimensions of Moore-Nazar-Oregon and the servant leadership questionnaire based on the dimensions of Patterson were used. In order to test the hypotheses of the research, the regression test was used with the simultaneous method.
The results of this research show that the variables of servant leadership and organizational citizenship behavior of employees have a positive and significant relationship. The correlation coefficient or intensity of the relationship is 0.903 and the value of the determination coefficient is 0.815, which means that 81.5% of the changes in organizational citizenship behavior can be explained by servant leadership.
Key words: organizational citizenship behavior, servant leadership, National Bank branches
Introduction:
With the increasing growth of various economic and social sectors in the country, the service sector is not an exception to this rule and rapidly has grown Investment in various sectors, international exchange, transportation and communication, expansion of money and capital market, deposit collection, credit distribution are among the most important services that have a deep impact on macroeconomic trends and are directly or indirectly related to the activities of the banking network. Therefore, their main concern and efforts towards growth, development and even survival have been formed. Therefore, in today's business environment, managers are seeking to identify and utilize resources and funds that are very costly due to the prevailing competitive environment, so successful and victorious managers from this field will be those who use these resources more effectively, efficiently and more efficiently. Undoubtedly, human power is considered as the most valuable asset of the organization and managers are constantly looking for ways to maximize the efforts, productivity and improve the performance of their employees, they They want people who do more than the duties of their job description, in fact, organizations are looking for a valuable generation of employees who distinguish effective organizations from ineffective ones (Podsakoff et al, 2000, p.516). Today's organizations must comply with existing norms. Therefore, there is a need for people who are willing to go beyond the formal job requirements and tasks, this action beyond the role refers to "organizational citizenship behavior [1]" (Morrison, quoted by Moghimi, 2015).
1-2) Statement of the problem:
In the last two decades, the term "organizational citizenship behavior" has attracted a lot of attention in the field of management. Especially researchers of organizational behavior have used a large part of their activities in this field, so that after twenty-five years since the beginning of studies of organizational citizenship behavior, organizational citizenship is a familiar word in all organizations. Today, the success of any organization depends a lot on the performance of employees who are not limited to their organizational role and task and act beyond the usual role and expectation in the literature of organization and management (Dipaola & Moran, quoted by Ebrahimpour, 2013).
Before 1983, the study of organizational behavior included predicting, explaining, guiding, controlling, and changing employee behaviors, and people were evaluated based on behaviors that were expected of them based on job descriptions and in accordance with official duties; But after organizational citizenship behavior entered management theories, behaviors beyond that were considered, which today are considered an integral part of performance management. These behaviors are defined by titles such as organizational citizenship behavior, extra-role behaviors, spontaneous behaviors, and voluntary behaviors. What is important in this type of behavior is their voluntary nature and it is very important to understand the difference between formal and mandatory behavior. In voluntary cooperation, people express all their efforts, insight and energy to flourish their abilities for the benefit of the organization, ignore their individual interests and prioritize responsibility in line with the collective interests. It is known as organizational citizenship behavior. This type of behavior plays a very important role in organizational effectiveness (Dipaola & Moran, quoted by Ebrahimpour, 2013), despite the fact that Barnard's writing [2] in 1983 regarding the willingness to cooperate and the studies conducted by Katz and Kahn [3] in the years 1964 to 1966 regarding trans-role behaviors, may be the basis of researchers' studies in this regard; But the term organizational citizenship behavior was first proposed by Batman and Organ [4] and today this term is more accepted among researchers. For a long time now, the importance and necessity of these behaviors have been clarified for organizations and managers, and the ground must be provided in such a way that employees use all their abilities, capacity and efforts to enhance organizational goals, and this will not be possible; Apart from identifying the factors affecting extra-role behaviors and providing a suitable platform for the implementation of these behaviors (Zarei Metin and others, 2019). Extensive studies have been conducted in the last two decades to identify the factors affecting organizational citizenship behavior, meta-analytic studies show that five factors affecting organizational citizenship behavior have been emphasized by researchers: individual characteristics, job characteristics, organizational characteristics, leadership behavior and environmental factors (Ebrahimpour and others, 1390).
Among the factors above, leadership characteristics are of special importance and reputation among organizational managers due to the existence of measurement tools, variables in the model, positive and valuable outcomes and results, and it occupies a significant part of the time, budget and attention of experts.
Primary research in this area was carried out by Oregon and his colleagues and mainly focuses on the attitudes of employees, tendencies and support of the leader. Subsequent researches in this field by Podsakoff and his colleagues have expanded the realm of leader behaviors to different types of interactive and transformational leadership (Podsakoff et al, 2000). On the other hand, servant leadership is one of the most recent approaches to leadership, the researches about which are increasing in the world and few in our country. The term servant leadership was coined in 1970 by Robert Greenleaf in an article entitled "Servant in the Role of Leader" and in strengthening it, he states: Servant leaders emphasize serving others and sacrifice personal interests for the interests of others (Greenleaf, 1977).
According to the research conducted in recent years in the world and considering the importance of servant leadership as a
management style. successful in today's organizations, as well as examining the organization's citizenship behavior as one of the important factors of the effectiveness of organizations, little research has been done in Iran, and in particular, in Bank Melli. Considering the above, examining the position of Bank Melli among major commercial competitors shows that this bank is not in a position that deserves the name of the largest Iranian bank. Therefore, the existence of a gap between the desired and existing situation makes it necessary to pay attention to the leadership style and the performance of human resources.
According to the background raised and the need to pay attention to behaviors beyond the role as well as the importance of the factors influencing these behaviors, this research helps to examine the extent of the influence of servant leadership on the organizational citizenship behavior of the employees of the Melli Bank branches in Rasht and seeks to answer the question:
Is the servant leadership style effective on the organizational citizenship behavior of the employees of the Melli Bank branches in Rasht? ?
1-3) Importance and necessity of research:
The key essence in the organization's definition of organizational citizenship behavior is that such behavior increases organizational effectiveness.