Mohammad Reza Zabihi*, Mohammad Fadayi** *Department of Public Administration, Mashhad Branch, Islamic Azad University, Mashhad, Iran.

Transcription

1 Pinnacle Research Journals 400 Examining The Relationship between The Staffs Empowerment and Organizational Commitment (Case Study: The Staffs of Bank Maskan Branches of Khorasan Razavi Province) Mohammad Reza Zabihi*, Mohammad Fadayi** *Department of Public Administration, Mashhad Branch, Islamic Azad University, Mashhad, Iran. **Department of Public Administration, Mashhad Branch, Islamic Azad University, Mashhad, Iran. Abstract: The present study, is to examine the relationship between the empowerment (sense of competence, sense of meaningfulness, sense of self-impact, sense of having the right of selfdetermination and sense of trust in others) according to Spreitzer s model (1995) and organizational commitment according to Allen and Meyer s model (1997) in Bank Maskan branches of Khorasan Razavi Province. The research method is descriptive-correlational. The population sample of this research includes all the staffs of Bank Maskan branches of Khorasan Razavi Province (N=1200). For sampling the cluster sampling was used. By using Cochran formula a number of 291 staffs were estimated for the sample. The tool to collect data was the Spreitzer standard empowerment questionnaire (1995) and Allen and Meyer standard questionnaire of organizational commitment and SPSS software was used to analyze the hypotheses of the study. The results showed that there is a significant relationship between all dimensions of empowerment (except sense of self-impact) and organizational commitment. Key words: empowerment, organizational commitment, Bank Maskan branches of Khorasan Razavi Province

2 Pinnacle Research Journals 401 Introduction Nowadays, organizations observe many rapid and unpredictable changes in the environment. Increasing global competition, extension of information technology and changes in the demographic characteristics of human resources and customers are at the heart of the changes. In these circumstances, the managers do not have many opportunities to control the personnel and must spend most of their time and energy on identifying the internal and external environments of the organization and have the staffs to do other routine works. So, nowadays, the most important advantage sources in the organizations are committed, motivated and responsible staffs but unfortunately their potential talents are not used in many organizations. For this, the empowerment is considered as the most important challenge for the managers in the present era. As a result of these challenges, the managers must make the conditions of the organizations ready so as every person can be empowered in that; as the committed and empowered workforce is one of the necessary and essential conditions for effective performance in the modern organizations. Empowerment is a tool to give the staffs the authority as to be able to have the freedom for what they think is right, without fearing from their managers. The empowered staffs, by using the empowerment dimensions, will be able to rescue the organizations from crisis and by providing the golden opportunities in the business, prove their commitment and loyalty to the organization (Mooghali and et al, 2009, 120). Empowerment is used widely through various ways. Most of the managers in the working environment, talk about empowerment and the writers and experts advice empowerment management as the solution for the most of organizational problems. For years, the empowerment has been used in the fields such as social work, urban redevelopment and external development. In the recent years, application of this word in the organization has increased as many writers considered it as therapeutic drug and common motto in the early Shackleton (1995) defines empowerment as the philosophy of giving decision-making authority and more responsibility to more junior staffs in the organization (Najafi and Erfan 2012).

3 Pinnacle Research Journals 402 Despite of increasing attention to the staffs empowerment, our understanding and awareness of this concept is limited and few scientific studies are available regarding if the empowerment in the working context has relation with which one of the organizational variables. One of the most important organizational variables is organizational commitment in which researchers and executive managers are interested. Organizational commitment is one of the challenging issues that today organizations in Iran are grappling with. It is for the organizational commitment of staffs and managers and also their motivational issues that they spend many expenses for recruiting, hiring and training of expert staffs which are entitled as human capital and the most essential capital of the organization. Being Out of work and leaving the organization and the problems associated with lack of motivation impose huge losses to the organization. So there is no doubt that by doing wide research in this field, we should try in the direction of increasing motivations and sense of empowerment of staffs and managers and as a result improving the commitment and performance (Mohammadi 2009, 4). Meanwhile, the banking system of the present age is not exempted from this provision and to survive like other organizations, it needs to have empowered employees. Communication and interaction of this system with various factors such as government, private sector, sponsors and other international banks and the most important social, economic, political and cultural factors, all have joined hands to create a dynamic environment for the system. Creating an empowered organization in the bank can largely protect the bank set against environmental changes. It is noteworthy that such an organization, with coordinates that empowerment inventors count, rather than being a specific point at the end of a long path, it is an endless path. So empowering the staffs, means proceeding with this endless path and moving forward from one step to the next. (Javadin and others 2009, 77). Thus, it seems that managers empowerment and its increasing in the organizations, according to providing the proper ground, results in benefits for both the individuals and the organization, and can affect the organization commitment of the managers. Therefore, we in this research, are to examine the issue if empowerment is an appropriate tool to enhance organizational commitment? How are the quantity and quality of this interaction? On the other words, we would like to know in what condition, the status of empowerment and organizational commitment is and if

4 Pinnacle Research Journals 403 managers empowerment has significant relationship with their organizational commitment or not? 2- The theories of the research 2-1-Empowerment By examining the management and organization literature, we can divide the human force empowerment into three categories: A: Empowerment as delegation Empowerment is a fundamentally different way for human to work together which means that: The staffs feel that they are not only responsible for doing their own duties, but also for better performance of the entire organization. Working teams, work together continually, to improve performance and to achieve a higher level of productivity. Organizational structure is designed so that people find that they can work to achieve the desired results, not merely their duties. (Mooghali and others 2009). Empowerment is known as giving the authority to the employee to decide the appropriate decisions without first acknowledging the upper authorities (Gholamzadeh and Miadi, 2007, 30) What is meant by the above definitions is that, managers can empower employees when they provide them with information on the organization, restructure the organizational structure, replace work teams with the hierarchy, provide the learning opportunities and all these managerial measures are part of the empowerment process. B-Empowerment as a motivator Researchers defined empowerment based on the personal beliefs and orientation to the role of employees in their organization. For example, they know empowerment as the process of increasing the sense of self-efficacy in people through identification and elimination of conditions that cause incapability in staffs. Being empowered refers to the conditions for

5 Pinnacle Research Journals 404 increasing motivation of performing duties by strengthening the sense of personal efficacy. Delegation of authority or power or sharing the sources are just a set of conditions that may contribute to (but not necessarily) empowering employees, the delegation process is not enough to help the nature of empowerment. Therefore, in addition to delegation, there are other conditions for empowerment. So empowerment consists of the process of increasing sense of self-efficacy in the staffs through identification and eliminations of conditions that cause their incapability (Abdullahi, 2009, 31) C-Psychological empowerment Thomas and Velthouse (2000), in their article entitled as cognitive elements of empowerment: An analytical model of job intrinsic motivation, know psychological empowerment as a multidimensional concept and defined it as the process of duty intrinsic motivation increase. They, by completing the motivational model of Conger & Kanungo (2008), do not know the concept of empowerment only as motivation increase, but they know it as job intrinsic motivation increase and provided a more complete definition of psychological empowerment as a set of cognitive aspects of motivation (Abdullahi, 2009, 31). Among the different models of motivational and cognitive approaches, as Mashira model is more complete and includes other models, it is the basis of this study. Therefore, the empowerment dimensions according to the mentioned model are explained below: Competence: competence refers to the degree to which an individual can do occupational tasks skillfully and successfully. Capable individuals not only have the sense of competence but also they feel confident that they can do things with the necessary competence. They feel personal superiority and believe that they can learn a way of dealing with new challenges and grow. Impact: Effectiveness or impact or accepting personal consequences is somewhere that someone can affect the strategic, operational and administrative results of the business. Effectiveness is the opposite of inability to influence. This aspect refers to the degree that the individual behavior is seen differently in performing the career goals, this means that expected results in the working environment are met.

6 Pinnacle Research Journals 405 Meaningfulness: Meaningfulness is the opportunity that individuals feel that they are following important and worthy career goals, they feel that they are moving in a path in which their time and energy is valued. Meaningfulness means value of career goals and the individual intrinsic interest in the job, meaningfulness is the appropriateness of work requirements and beliefs, values and behaviors. Self-determination: self-determination means freedom and independence of the individual in determining the activities necessary to perform job duties. Sense of independence means experiencing the feeling of self-determination at the beginning of the activities and organizing the individual activities. Independent includes the activities which accompany the freedom and the experience of right of self-determination. Independence is a psychological need. Trust in others: trust relates to interest, competence, openness and trust in others. Capable individuals have the sense of trust and they are confident that they will be treated fairly and honestly, they are certain that the masters and authorities will behave them impartially, in other words, trust means having a sense of personal security (Khanalizadeh and others 2010, 24) Organizational commitment: Organizational commitment is a kind of career attitude and is the status in which the organization member knows the organization goals as his representations and wishes to remain in the membership of that organization. Therefore, to achieve the goals of the organization, he tries his best. Porter et al (1974) defined commitment as the intensity of identification of the individual with the organization and the degree of learning and participation in that organization (Saatchi et al 2008, 160) 2-2 Organizational commitment Organizational commitment is the relative degree of the individual identification with a particular organization and his involvement and participation in the organization. In this definition, organizational commitment consists of three elements: (1) strong belief in the goals and values of the organization, (2) tendency for considerable effort for the organization (3) deep wish and desire to continue the membership of the organization (Mooghali and et al. 2009)

7 Pinnacle Research Journals 406 One of the common ways of facing with organizational commitment is that they consider organizational commitment as a kind of emotional and psychological attachment. According to this method, the individual who is strongly committed to his organization, takes his identity from the organization, has active participation in the organization, integrate and enjoys the membership of the organization, so briefly, loyalty to the values and goals of the organization, a sense of belonging and attachment to stay in the organization are called organizational commitment. In the research which was done by Meyer and Allen, it was revealed that each of organizational commitment definitions refer to at least one of three aspects of emotional, normative and continuous commitment. 1-Emotional commitment: The individual takes his identity from the organization and feels a sense of belonging and attachment, and enjoys continuing membership in the organization and does not leave the organization. 2-Continious commitment: Tendency to do continuous activity based on the individual s recognition of costs associated with leaving the organization (Behravan and Saeedi 2009) 4-Relationship of Staffs empowerment and organizational commitment Regarding staffs or managers empowerment, there have been many researches, but there have been few researches about empowerment and organizational commitment. In the following we refer to the closest researches that have been done in this regard. Ebili and Nasti Zayi (2009), did a study entitled "Investigating the relationship between psychological empowerment and organizational commitment of nurses in hospitals in the city of Zahedan,. The present study, is of descriptive-correlational type and with stratified random sampling, 165 questionnaires were distributed among nurses working in two public hospitals in Zahedan in various work shifts. The results of correlation showed that there is a significant relationship between psychological empowerment and organizational commitment of nursing staff. Multiple regression analysis showed that among the psychological empowerment variables, only the variable of sense of meaningfulness has significant relationship with changes in organizational commitment scores.

8 Pinnacle Research Journals 407 Holifield (1999) has done a study entitled "Examining the relationship of empowerment and organizational commitment of teachers in advanced high schools in Texas". This study has been done on 218 teachers by two empowerment questionnaires (short and Rynhart, 1993) and organizational commitment (Moody and Stirz, 1979). The results of the research showed that there is a significant relationship between the level of teachers empowerment and their organizational commitment. Yun (1994) has done a study entitled the relationship between empowerment and job satisfaction and teachers organizational commitment in public schools. This study has been done on 114 teachers of 39 public schools (15 primary schools, 14 secondary schools and 10 high schools) by three questionnaires of empowerment, Barry Field Ruth job satisfaction index and organizational commitment. The results showed that if the teachers meet a high level of empowerment, they will feel a higher level of job satisfaction and also if the teachers meet a higher level of empowerment, they will have a higher level of organizational commitment. One of the researches related to the study, is the research of Batnager (2005) which has been conducted in India. The aim of this research was examining and measuring the relationship of psychological empowerment and organizational commitment among the managers of governmental organizations of this country. The results show that there is a positive and significant relationship between the staffs empowerment and organizational commitment. Soleimani and Motahari (2009) studied the relationship between empowerment and job commitment of principals in high schools in Semnan province. The research was done with descriptive-correlational method. The sample of the research included 135 high schools principals (72 women and 63 men). The results showed that there is a significant relationship between managers empowerment and their job commitment. So there are significant relationships between the three dimensions of empowerment (professional development, status (position) and decision-making), and job commitment. Mooghali and et al (2009) done a research entitled examining the relationship between empowerment and organizational commitment of employees in the ministry of education in the nineteen districts of Tehran. In this research, in the first hypothesis, the relationship between

9 Pinnacle Research Journals 408 empowerment and organizational commitment of the employees was examined and in the minor hypotheses, the relationship between empowerment dimensions (sense of competence, a sense of the job meaningfulness, self-impact, sense of trust in colleagues and sense of having the right of self-determination) and organizational commitment was examined. The results show that there is no relationship between empowerment and organizational commitment and the related minor hypotheses, except sense of self-impact and trust in others. Meanwhile, the degree of staffs empowerment was higher than the average level and the degree of staffs organizational commitment was lower than the average level. 5. Structure or the comprehensive model of research In order to prepare research hypothesis, any researcher needs a comprehensive model on which base to specify the relation between variables, performance and comprehensive definition as well as identifying the hypothesis variables. The model is a simple form of a statistical predicate regarding the variables relation; the route analysis is a good example for the model and a practice and preparation for the formal explanation of the model. The model helps sketching the route graph by illustrating the dependent and independent variables. Based on this, by considering the empowerment elements such as (the sense of self-competency, meaningfulness, self-impact, and self-determination and also the sense of trust in others) extracted from Spreitzer model (1995) and the organizational commitment taken from Allen and Meyer model (1997), we present the research model and hypothesis. Sense of competence Staffs empowerment Sense of meaningfulness Sense of self-impact Staffs organizational commitment Sense of selfdetermination Sense of trust in others Figure1. The comprehensive model of research

10 Pinnacle Research Journals Research hypothesis The major hypothesis: There is a significant relation between empowerment and organizational commitment among the employees of Bank Maskan branches in Khorasan Razavi province. The minor hypothesis: There is a significant relation between the sense of competency and organizational commitment among the employees of Bank Maskan branches in Khorasan Razavi province. There is a significant relation between job meaningfulness and organizational commitment among the employees of Bank Maskan branches in Khorasan Razavi province. There is a significant relation between the sense of self-impact and organizational commitment among the employees of Bank Maskan branches in Khorasan Razavi province. There is a significant relation between the sense of self-determination and organizational commitment among the employees of Bank Maskan branches in Khorasan Razavi province. There is a significant relation between the sense of trust in others and organizational commitment among the employees of Bank Maskan branches in Khorasan Razavi province. Research methodology The type of research, based on the target, is applied-descriptive and the method, based on the method of data collection, is descriptive and correlational. The purpose of correlational research is as follows; understanding complicated behavior patterns through studying the correlation among these patterns and the variables among which a relation is hypothesized.

11 Pinnacle Research Journals 410 Participants, sampling, the sample mass The participants of this research are the staffs of Bank Maskan branches in Khorasan Razavi province. In this research cluster sampling has been used. Hence, among all the banks in Khorasan Razavi, a number of them have been chosen randomly. Then, a list of some staffs have been identified some of whom were chosen randomly. In this research, by considering the goals and approach, statistical methods and the researcher s time and financial budget, according to Cochran formula, the number of sample mass was calculated 291. Data collection tools: Two types of questionnaire were used to collect relevant data for this research. The first tool, used in this research is Ms. Spreitzer s questionnaire that includes 18 questions and it is a standard tool to measure psychological empowerment which was used in most researches, and the second tool was Meyer and Allen questionnaire including 24 questions that is a standard tool to measure organizational commitment which was also used in most researches. Moreover, to determine the justifiability of the measurement tools, first the two standard questionnaires were naturalized by the use of other existing studies and related literature, then the targeted potency of trait evaluation in the questionnaire was approved by a group of experts, including university professors. In order to determine the perpetuity of the questionnaire, Cronbach's Alpha method was used. According to SPSS software, the Cronbach s Alpha of empowerment questionnaire s items is 0.87 and organizational questionnaire is 0.85 that the percentages show high perpetuity. Data analysis Descriptive statistic In this section, at first, the data s descriptive findings of 206 people from the sample (the number of refunded questionnaire), is shown in table 1. In continue we will argue the hypotheses.

12 Pinnacle Research Journals 411 Table 1: separation of sample data based on the characteristics of sociology Female (8%) Male (92%) Gender Age (14%) (39%) (29%) (18%) PhD Postgraduate Graduate Degree (4%) (20%) (76%) Over Work (13%) (9%) (15%) (34%) (29%) Experience Inductive statistic Research hypothesis: The major hypothesis There is a significant relation between empowerment and organizational commitment among the employees of Bank Maskan branches in Khorasan Razavi province. Table 2: the result of Pierson correlation coefficient test; the relation between empowerment and organizational commitment The level of correlation the number meaningfulness coefficient variables Empowerment& Organizational commitment Table 2 shows the correlation between the research variables. Correlation coefficient between two variables is In statistical view, this figure of correlation is 99% meaningful. Therefore,

13 Pinnacle Research Journals 412 the null hypothesis is rejected and it indicates that by increasing the empowerment variable, the level of organizational commitment will grow. The minor hypothesis: 1. There is a significant relation between the sense of competency and organizational commitment among the employees of Bank Maskan branches in Khorasan Razavi province. Table 3: the result of Pierson correlation coefficient test; the relation between the sense of The level of meaningfulness competency and organizational commitment correlation coefficient the number variables The sense of competency& Organizational commitment The result of table 3 shows the correlation coefficient between variables. Correlation coefficient between two variables is In statistical view, this figure of correlation is 95% meaningful. Therefore, the null hypothesis is rejected and it shows that, by increasing the sense of competency, the organizational commitment surges. 2. There is a significant relation between the sense of job meaningfulness and organizational commitment among the employees of Bank Maskan branches in Khorasan Razavi province. Table 4: the result of Pierson correlation coefficient test; the relation between the sense of job meaningfulness and organizational commitment The level of correlation the number meaningfulness coefficient variables The sense of meaningfulness & Organizational commitment

14 Pinnacle Research Journals 413 The result of table 4 shows the correlation coefficient between research variables. Correlation coefficient between two variables is In statistical view, this figure of correlation is 95% meaningful. Therefore, the null hypothesis is rejected and it shows that, an increase in the sense of job meaningfulness, the level of organizational commitment grows. 3. There is a significant relation between the sense of impact and organizational commitment among the employees of Bank Maskan branches in Khorasan Razavi province. Table 5: the result of Pierson correlation coefficient test; the relation between the sense of impact and organizational commitment The level of correlation the number meaningfulness coefficient variables The sense of impact & Organizational commitment The result of table 5 shows the correlation coefficient between research variables. Correlation coefficient between two variables is In statistical view, this figure of correlation is 95% not meaningful. Therefore, the null hypothesis is accepted and it shows that by changing the sense of impact level, the proportion of organizational commitment will not change. 4. There is a significant relation between the sense of self-determination and organizational commitment among the employees of Bank Maskan branches in Khorasan Razavi province.

15 Pinnacle Research Journals 414 Table 6: the result of Pierson correlation coefficient test; the relation between the sense of self-determination and organizational commitment The level of correlation the number meaningfulness coefficient variables The sense of selfdetermination & Organizational commitment The result of table 6 shows the correlation coefficient between research variables. Correlation coefficient between two variables is In statistical view, this figure of correlation is 99% meaningful. Therefore, the null hypothesis is rejected and it shows that by growing the sense of self-determination, the level of organizational commitment will increase. 5. There is a significant relation between the sense of trust in others and organizational commitment among the employees of Bank Maskan branches in Khorasan Razavi province. Table 7: the result of Pierson correlation coefficient test; the relation between the sense of trust in others and organizational commitment The level of correlation the number meaningfulness coefficient variables The sense of trust in others & Organizational commitment The result of table (4-6) shows the correlation coefficient between research variables. Correlation coefficient between two variables is In statistical view, this figure of

16 Pinnacle Research Journals 415 correlation is 99% meaningful. Therefore, the null hypothesis is rejected and it shows that by growing the sense of trust in others, the proportion of organizational commitment will increase. 8. Discussion and conclusion Today s world is called human resource empowerment era. Despite this, the evidences that show the failure of most empowerment plans in order to approve the managers and staff s expectations increase day by day. A lot of organizations attempt to perform it while it was exaggerated, and also without identifying and having an appropriate understanding of cases of the problems, they have started to perform the programs incorrectly and superficially or they have just relied on the slogans. A collection of these problems that carry the uselessness of empowerment efforts produced excuses for a number of people to underestimate the whole nature of empowering by signing them. However, many organizations get detrimental by the performance of the empowerment plans; it is still in the focus of most organizations. Hence, it is necessary for the organizations to try to empower the human resource and promote the organizational commitment, by a good understanding of problems, recognizing the effective issues on empowerment and underlying their performance. In present study, the relation between empowerment and organizational commitment of employees has been considered. The result has approved the relation between empowerment and the employees organizational commitment and relevant minor hypothesis except the sense of impact. In other words, each empowering elements including (the sense of competency, meaningfulness, self-determination, and the sense of trust in others) in organizations will lead to an organizational commitment. The result of present study is harmonized with Helfid (1999), Yun (1994), Batnagar (2005), Motahari & Soleimani (2009) and Ebili & Nasti zayi (2009) researches. On the other hand, the result of present study is disharmonized with the results of Mooghali & others (2009) research. By attending to the importance of leadership, its role in employees empowerment which is a cultural movement and its start is related to the managers attitude, it is suggested for the training

17 Pinnacle Research Journals 416 workshops along with the practical solutions with this title or other similar titles to be formed in order to heighten the managers knowledge and information and also by attending in these classes, applied practices and studies, the managers get familiar with the concept and principles of management, leadership styles and the employees empowerment methods in order to be able to accomplish the necessary skill in a correct and effective management and by positive and useful relationship with employees, raise the situation for bursting their talent and produce interest and commitment to the work environment. References Abdollahi, Bijan & Ebrahim Abdollahi s grandchild, Employees empowerment: The Golden key of human resource managers, Tehran: (2009 Edition). Hossein (2008). Imam University publication, Tehran: information, shared route and image language, Davoud Miadi, Ahmad Gholamzade, Abili, Kh; Nastezaie, N. (2009). Surveying the Relationship between Psychological Empowerment and Organizational Commitment in Nursing Staff, The Journals system of Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences, 8(1,2): Behravan, H; Saeedi, R. (2009). Factors affecting organizational commitment of the Gas Company s staff: The Case of the Central office in Khorasan Razavi, Mashhad. Journal of Social Sciences, 6: Bhatnagar, J. (2005).The power of psychological empowerment as an antecedent to organizational commitment in Indian managers. MDI. 8(4), Ghorbanizadeh; V. Khaleghinia; SH. (2009). Effects of Implicit Knowledge Transfer on Employees' Empowerment. Journal of Reseach in human resources management. 1(2): Holifield, Wiley, Janice. (1999). A study of teacher empowerment and organizational commitment in Texas Accelerated Schools. Unpublished Ed.D. dissertation, The University of Texas at Austin.

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