The relationship between organizational commitment and organizational citizenship behavior in the social security organization of Gilan province

Academic Thesis for receiving the master's degree "M.A."

Trend: Transformation

Abstract:

Investigating and identifying factors affecting organizational citizenship behavior can be very important for all organizations and companies, including the Social Security Organization. In this regard, the present research was conducted with the aim of determining the relationship between organizational commitment and organizational citizenship behavior in the social security organization of Gilan province. The current research method is descriptive and is considered practical in terms of purpose. The statistical population of this research includes the employees of the Social Security Organization, whose number is 725, and according to the available non-probability sampling method, 196 of them have been selected as the sample of this research. The method of data collection in this field research is the questionnaire. To prove the validity of the questionnaire, the content validity method was used to determine the reliability of Cronbach's alpha coefficient. Pearson's correlation and multiple linear regression were used to test the research hypotheses, and finally all the hypotheses were confirmed. Keywords: organizational citizenship behavior, emotional commitment, normative commitment, continuous commitment, organizational commitment. Introduction The investigation of people's behavior in work environments has long been of interest to management science thinkers. In fact, understanding the behaviors of employees in order to better perform their roles and duties will improve performance and improve organizational effectiveness. In this regard, the concept of organizational citizenship looks at the human resources of organizations from a novel perspective and recognizes them as its organizational citizens and tries to provide the ground for the emergence of this citizen as best as possible. In fact, an organizational citizen, despite his extra-role behaviors, does not seek rewards from the organization, but has self-sacrifice and believes that his extra-role behaviors are effective in the excellence of his organization, and he puts all his efforts to improve and develop his organization. In the past, researchers paid more attention to in-role behaviors in their studies to investigate the relationship between job behaviors and organizational effectiveness. These behaviors are related to official tasks, duties and responsibilities, such as: what is mentioned in the job description. But nowadays, their attention is more focused on extra-role behaviors. Extra-role behaviors are related to spontaneous and conscious activities in themselves (such as helping others) and are not directly or explicitly predicted by the organization's formal reward system, but increase the effectiveness of the organization as a whole. Successful organizations have employees who have a sense of responsibility beyond what their job requires for them and somehow dedicate themselves to the success of their organization and in this regard voluntarily spend a lot of time and energy on the following organization. On the other hand, organizational commitment is a variable that affects the organizational citizenship behavior of employees. Organizational commitment has been the focus of researchers for a long time, and since entering organizational research, many theorists have addressed it. According to the above, in the first chapter of the research, after stating the problem, the necessity and importance of the research will be discussed. Then the questions and objectives of the research are mentioned along with the theoretical framework of the research and finally, the chapter will end with the conceptual and operational definition of the variables and the statement of the scope of the research.

1-2) Statement of the problem

Organizational citizenship behavior is one of the modern concepts of management that has numerous individual and organizational effects and is one of the topics that has been widely discussed in behavioral science research (Unal, 2013). Knowing the state of this type of behavior and its development strategies plays an important role in improving organizational activities. Considering the importance of organizational citizens as one of the very important resources of the organization, their behavior can also be considered very valuable, and this is why many researchers have analyzed the behavior of organizational citizenship (Farji and Ahmadi, 2018). These studies generally state that organizational citizenship behavior has many benefits for organizations, managers and employees and can lead to resource optimization, improve organizational productivity and effective employee performance, and empower the organization against environmental changes (Wang, 2014). Today, organizations (such as the Social Security Organization) need employees who perform activities beyond their organizational role in the organization.These behaviors improve the performance of the organization and make the organization able to improve the quality and quantity of providing services to clients and also able to meet the performance criteria of the organization (Sjahruddin, 2013). Citizenship behavior has been described as behaviors that go beyond one's duties and technical skills and act as the main facilitators of tasks. Such behaviors have a deep connection with the fundamental values ??of employees, which cause behavioral motivation in them (Mahmoudi Maimand and Harandi, 2013). On the other hand, various factors affect the emergence of organizational citizenship behavior among employees, which is one of the factors of organizational commitment. Organizational commitment shows the amount of effort more than usual by employees in order to achieve organizational goals. Organizational commitment is actually a description of the psychological state, which shows that the individual wants to stay in the organization (Asiedu et al., 2014). Commitment comes from interest and loyalty to work and strong belief in organizational values ??(Salehi Sedkiani et al., 2013). It can be said that organizational commitment is the positive or negative attitudes of people towards the entire organization in which they work. In organizational commitment, a person has a strong sense of loyalty towards the organization, and through that organization he identifies himself. In organizational commitment, a person considers the organization to be his representative and wishes to be a member of it. In other words, organizational commitment is a kind of attitude about the loyalty of employees to the organization in a continuous process, due to the participation of people in organizational decisions, the attention of people to the organization, the position and well-being of the organization (Biginia et al., 2012). On the other hand, the Social Security Organization is one of the largest organizations in the country, which has a large number of clients, and these clients are in different spectrums of income, education, age, type of job, etc. are, this issue causes diversity of behavior in visitors, which unknowingly complicates the situation for employees. Considering that organizational citizenship behavior is one of the basic necessities of today's organizations and current research considers behaviors that go beyond the role and neglecting them will not be acceptable in the performance of employees, so the need for organizations to pay more attention to this category has become increasingly important, among which the social security organization is not excluded. In this research, organizational commitment and its dimensions are considered as an independent variable, organizational citizenship behavior and its dimensions as a dependent variable, and work experience and education as a moderating variable, and it investigates the relationship between organizational commitment and organizational citizenship behavior in social security workers of Gilan province. In this way, the main research question is as follows:

Is there a relationship between organizational commitment and organizational citizenship behavior?

.  1-3) The importance and necessity of conducting research

The high level of organizational citizenship behavior in an organization makes that organization an attractive environment for work and activity, because organizations with a high level of organizational citizenship behavior in them will perform better by attracting more efficient forces and reducing the number of employees who quit. For this reason, the concept of organizational citizenship behavior is proposed as one of the basic issues in the field of organizational behavior, which tries to take effective steps by providing solutions to increase the commitment of organizations, improve performance, customer satisfaction, loyalty and job satisfaction (Salimi et al., 2013). Organizational citizenship behavior has many benefits for the organization. Good organizational citizens help the organization in allocating benefits efficiently and optimally by protecting the interests of the organization. Organizational citizenship behavior increases the productivity of employees and work groups, encourages teamwork, increases communication, cooperation, and assistance between employees, reduces the rate of mistakes, and increases the participation and involvement of employees in organizational issues, and generally provides a suitable organizational atmosphere. Organizational citizenship behavior through influencing internal organizational factors such as: organizational atmosphere, improving morale, increasing organizational commitment, reducing intentions to leave the job, reducing absenteeism and destructive job behaviors, and also by affecting the improvement of external organizational factors such as: client satisfaction, service quality and customer loyalty, leads to excellent quality in the performance of employees (Dennis, 2005). On the other hand, it is very important to know the factors affecting the occurrence of this behavior. Because it is possible to increase the occurrence of organizational citizenship behavior among employees by strengthening these predictive factors.