پژوهش نامه مدیریت تحول
سال دوازدهم شماره 2 (پیاپی 24، پاییز و زمستان 1399)

As a proactive orientation and transpersonal approach to the job, living a calling is a concept that has recently entered the literature on human resource management and organizational behavior. This orientation has specific behavioral and perceptual instances for the job and is defined as an important structure in the mental perception of professional success. Job crafting is one of the variables of being associated with living a calling. At the same time, one of the most important motivations for job crafting by employees is work passion.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK:

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of living a calling on job crafting moderated by job passion. Faculty members of five top Iranian universities in 2019 were considered as the statistical population of this study. They were selected to be studied because although their knowledge jobs are so important they have been less studied in association with job crafting and living a calling. The different nature of these knowledge jobs indicates the need for in-depth analysis of the under-study issue in these jobs. Academic careers have a greater capacity for being shaped proactively and academicians are likely to have more power, inclination, and opportunities to exert this conscious behavior. In addition, living a calling is expected to be a significant affecting factor in such jobs.

The present study investigated the causal effect of living a calling and job crafting in the form of task, relational, and cognitive crafting. In addition, it was to test the moderating effects of job passion on these relationships. Structural equation modeling in SmartPLS software was used to test the research hypotheses. The six-item scale of Li and Yang (2018) was used to measure living a calling. The three-dimensional variable of job crafting (including the task, relational, and cognitive crafting) was measured using the Slemp and Vella-Brodrick’s (2013) 15-item scale, each of which with five items. The Trepanier et al.’s (2014) scale of having three items for each component of harmonious passion and obsessive passion was used to measure job passion.

The results showed that living a calling had a significant effect on all dimensions of job crafting (i.e. task, relational, and cognitive crafting). Thus, when faculty members perceive their jobs as living a calling, they are more likely to change and manage the task, relationship, and cognitive boundaries of their jobs. In addition, the moderation of job passion for the effects of living a calling on relational and cognitive crafting was confirmed, but not confirmed for its effect on task crafting. In other words, job passion facilitates the association of living a calling with relational and cognitive crafting. since living a calling and relational and cognitive dimensions of job crafting are psychological factors in nature, the presence of another psychological factor is likely to reinforce their relationship. The first reason for the association of living a calling with task crafting not moderated by job passion may be the objective nature of task crafting. The second is probably the obsessive nature of job passion which leads to internal and external pressures.

 CONCLUSIONS & SUGGESTIONS:

It is recommended for knowledge organizations such as universities, research institutes, and hospitals with the majority of professional staff to internalize the living a calling as one of the important aspects of organizational culture. On the other hand, knowledgeable employees have the ability and desire to create new ways of improving their work as a living a calling, to develop relationships with others, to communicate and network outside the organization, and to perceive constantly the importance of their job for the organizational success. Given the fact that harmonious passion is based on employee's free willingness, it causes them to successfully live a calling and crafting the job. Therefore, the organizations are expected to create such a passion in their professional employees. As a research implication, future researchers are recommended to examine the components of job passion separately for living a calling to affect the components of job crafting; because the different nature of these two dimensions could have different possible effects on employees’ behavior and perception. In addition, these relationships can be investigated in another context with possibly different results.

One of the most important challenges of complicated environments for organizations is to make a balance between discovering and innovative activities called ambidexterity. Organizational ambidexterity has a positive relationship with organizational growth, technical innovation, and financial performance. Generally, those managers who have failed in implementing ambidexterity seem to be unable to utilize their capacity and provide needed resources. Of most important affecting factors, one can refer to domination of organizational silence and the lack of employees’ participation in decision-making processes. Nowadays, leading is considered as the most important role of managers, and organizations seek those managers of having ability to lead as well as integrate different organizational activities, coordinate subsidiary units, and control deviances. Therefore, studying and utilizing the ambidextrous leadership style is of special importance. Despite the importance of ambidextrous leadership in achieving organizational goals, no study has yet investigated its increasing effect on employees’ silence and the mediation role of psychological empowerment and social capital. Therefore, the current research was aimed to study the effect of ambidextrous leadership on employees’ silence considering the mediation of psychological empowerment and social capital in Pars Oil Company.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK:

Ambidexterity is the ability to simultaneously utilizing the activities of exploration and exploitation and coordinating them in a flexible manner. Ambidextrous leadership is known as the ability to create explorative and exploitative behaviors in employees through providing the possibility of flexible improvement and adjustment of these two behaviors. This leadership style consists of three elements: 1) open leadership behaviors, 2) close leadership behaviors, and 3) the ability to flexible shift between them. Social capital is defined as a set of resources embedded in the relationship between an employee and the organization or those resources which are accessible because of this relationship. Psychological empowerment is defined as a process of increasing employees’ self-efficacy by identifying the situations that cause power instability or loss of power. Finally, employees’ silence is defined as a refusal of stating the reality about the emotional appraisal of the organization to those managers and employees who seem to be capable of change or compensate the situations.

The current research was an applied study in terms of purpose, and in terms of data collection method, it was a descriptive survey. According to Cochran's formula, a total of 132 people were selected as the statistical sample by conducting simple random sampling. The data collection tool was a 52-item questionnaire of having 5-point Likert scales and 133 questionnaires were finally collected. Obtained data were analyzed using structural equation modeling in SmartPLS software.

Research findings showed that ambidextrous leadership had a positive and significant effect on psychological empowerment. In this regard, it can be said that, by providing freedom for employees to do things and providing them with feedback in the case of problems, the ambidextrous leadership style can improve employees’ behaviors and increase their capabilities. The decreasing effect of psychological empowerment on employee silence was not confirmed. The reason for this insignificance may be the absence of other intervening variables. On the other hand, ambidextrous leadership significantly affected the social capital and social capital reduced the employees’ silence. Therefore, social capital creates a common language for emotional relationships between employees, in which they can easily express their opinions and suggestions and are less inclined to remain silent.

 CONCLUSIONS & SUGGESTIONS:

According to research findings, the understudy organization should focus on improving the leadership ability of managers in different organizational levels by approaching the ambidextrous leadership style. Furthermore, future researches are suggested to study a bigger statistical population and consider moderator variables (such as age, gender, education, and organizational climate and culture) or mediator variables (such as job satisfaction, commitment, and motivation) that have the potential to affect the ambidextrous leadership-psychological empowerment relationship.

Today, change is an important factor for organizations’ survival, and as the main factor for the success of organizational change, managers and experts must be able to implement change programs. It seems that change management skills including understanding, planning, implementing, and stabilizing change can affect attitudes toward change. Thus, employees' attitudes and mental patterns have been always considered as a fundamental factor in the literature on change readiness. As big organizations, municipalities have a large number of managers, employees, and clients and provide a variety of services. Therefore, it is necessary to review and correct their employees’ mental patterns. Accordingly, this study is aimed to recognize and compare the mental patterns of employees of Mashhad Municipality towards readiness for change from the managers' and experts' points of view.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK:

The concept of the mental model is not something that has recently been discovered but can be attributed to Kenneth Crick (1943). A person’s mental model is a framework of images and attitudes that limits their field of thought and action. Some scientists consider mental models as the cornerstone of knowledge building, including the main cognitive processes of change and learning. According to Levin (1947), change is to move from a steady-state to a new better state, through a pre-made plan or a set of predicted actions and steps. Many researchers have defined various dimensions of readiness for change. In this regard, Weiss (2002) suggests cognitive and emotional components for general judgments or the same attitude. On this basis, the current research considered these two dimensions as fundamental for studying the employees’ mental patterns.

The current research is a practical study in terms of purpose; it is a descriptive study in terms of method; and in terms of approach, it is a mixed-methods study of having inductive-deductive reasoning. The strategy of the current study is the Q technique.

The seven steps of the Q method were performed and reached the following results. The prevailing mental pattern of "capacity building" of managers was interpreted i.e., both the individual and the organization must have the capacity to implement changes. The most important mental model is that the effectiveness of change is a function of cognitive evaluation of organization members from four determinants of executive capacity, including individual capacities, perception of resources, situational factors, and supportive structures.

Research findings indicated that the mindset of managers and experts is mainly cognitive and composed of 11 dominant mental patterns. By comparing several similar mental patterns between managers and experts, we can talk about the supportive mental model of managers and the mental model of supportive experts, the committed mental model of managers and the mental model of committed experts, the confident mental model of managers, and the confident mental model of experts. There is a common mentality between these two groups of human resources of Mashhad Municipality. Also, the two mental patterns of followers and expert liaisons show the high importance of social relationships and processes in the process of change and the high influence of others’ behavior and decision when facing the change.

INTROUDUCTION:

Hospitals staff have direct contact with their patients, and in many cases, they deal with patients' lives. Since patients have different cultures and backgrounds, the need for staff `s cultural intelligence to deal with multicultural situations is very necessary. These organizations are often environments for increasing stress. Accordingly, the main question of this study is whether cultural intelligence affects employees’ voice given the mediation of transformational leadership.

 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK:

Detert and Burris (2007) define employee voice as the relationship between management and employee. In other words, employees have the opportunity to express their concerns and interests. Employee`s voice can have positive behavioral results on employee performance directly or indirectly. Cultural intelligence is defined by Earley and Ang (2003) as the ability to learn new patterns in cultural interactions and to provide correct behavioral responses to these patterns. In the related literature, transformational leadership is considered as a factor which is capable of mediating the relationship between cultural intelligence and employee voice. Transformational leaders encourage their employee intellectually to explore opportunities, challenge current situations, and see old problems from new perspectives (Jyoti & Cour, 2015).

This research was a descriptive-correlation study. The statistical population was comprised of two parts: one, 35 officials of different specialized departments, and the other, 550 nurses of Shohadaye Tajrish Hospital. The main tool for data collection was a standard questionnaire and obtained data was analyzed by structural equation modeling in SmartPLS software.

Research findings indicated that cultural intelligence affected employee voice mediated by transformational leadership. In other words, by applying transformational leadership style and relying on cultural intelligence, the acceptance of positive relationships with others was facilitated, and thereby, the voice of employees can be understood in a better way. In explaining this result, it can be said that transformational leaders encourage their employees intellectually to explore opportunities, challenge current situations, and see old problems from new perspectives. Employees with more cultural intelligence solve problems more appropriately in culturally diverse situations due to their excellent competence in discovering, absorbing, and reasoning.

CONCLUSIONS & SUGGESTIONS:

Due to the effect of cultural intelligence on employee voice, it can be said that information and knowledge-based education is not enough and hospital education systems should provide metacognitive skills needed to learn in different situations. Considering the effect of cultural intelligence on transformational leadership, it is suggested to pay more attention to the issues of intercultural interactions in education. Considering the effect of transformational leadership on employee voice, it is recommended to hold workshops based on the scientific content of new theories of leadership and management in order to create necessary leadership potential for hospital managers.

In today's world, when doing work requires multiple skills, judgments, and experiences, the use of teams and workgroups has become increasingly common to achieve performance beyond the individuals’ performance. Many executive managers believe that hiring teams and workgroups allows them to achieve higher levels of performance by producing better products or providing better services at lower levels of cost and time. Therefore, collective work has become more important day by day and organizations have become more interested in creating teams and workgroups.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK:

Job-adequate skills: Teamwork is one of the most important facilitators in achieving positive and cost-effective results in the field of current organizations. A team is a group of people with different and complementary abilities and skills who strive to achieve a common goal.Role ambiguity: Role ambiguity is an aspect of job stressors that refers to a person's level of uncertainty about what his or her job functions and responsibilities are.Participative leadership: Participative leadership occurs when, instead of being assigned by a single leader, leadership plans, responsibilities, or actions are shared or distributed among group members.Team trust: Team trust is a 4-dimensional concept: 1) propensity to trust, 2) perceived trustworthiness, 3) cooperative behaviors, 4) monitoring behaviors.Team cohesion: Team cohesion is a dynamic process in which members tend to maintain intimacy, loyalty to each other, and integrity in pursuing team goals.

The research design was correlation and its strategy was structural equation modeling. The statistical population of the study included all employees of the South East Khuzestan Water Exploitation, Production, and Transmission Company in 2017, whose total number was nearly 600 people. 350 people were selected as a sample by simple random sampling method, of which 321 questionnaires were well-qualified and determined the final sample size.

 The results showed that the final model goodly fitted the data. The results also showed that job-adequate skills and participative leadership had positive effects and role ambiguity had a negative effect on team trust. Job-adequate skills and team trust also had a positive and significant direct effect on team cohesion. In addition, the results showed that job-adequate skills, role ambiguity, and participative leadership affected team cohesion through the mediating role of team trust.

 CONCLUSIONS & SUGGESTIONS:

According to the research results, managers of organizations are advised to pay attention to concepts such as role ambiguity, skills of team members, type of team leadership, and trust between team members when forming teams and working groups.

Greening is a sustainable vision for the world and helps all parts of the organization, especially, marketing, manufacturing, financial, and human resource departments. Formulating and institutionalizing green values on an extra-organizational scale causes employees to love their job and change their personal lifestyles, and on the organizational scale, it reduces internal costs, improves the employer brand, and attracts eco-friendly applicants. Therefore, it is important to pay attention to issues such as green human resources.

 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK:

Green human resource management refers to sustainable management of human capital for participating and making the environment healthy, and thus, it is currently of great importance in the field of business. In other words, it means using human resources to improve the organization's environmental actions and increase employees’ awareness and commitment to environmental issues. According to the literature, green human resource management is based on the coordination of routine human resource management activities by approaching environmental goals.

The current research is a fundamental-applied study in terms of purpose, and in terms of data collection method, it is a descriptive mixed-methods study. In the qualitative phase, the statistical population of the study was comprised of HRM and environment experts 10 of which selected as a sample using the snowball sampling method. Based on findings of the qualitative phase, a 43-item questionnaire was designed the validity of which established taking into account the opinions of experts. Its reliability, in the quantitative phase, was confirmed using Cronbach's alpha coefficients. The statistical population of the quantitative phase was comprised of experts and senior managers of companies operating in various industries of Birjand Industrial Town. According to Morgan’s table, a sample size of 130 was selected by conducting a stratified sampling method.

Based on data analysis, the first hypothesis corresponding to the effect of green causal-contextual factors on green intermediary-behavioral factors was not confirmed. The second hypothesis corresponding to the effect of green causal-structural factors on green intermediary-behavioral factors was confirmed. The third hypothesis corresponding to the effect of green causal-contextual factors on green outcomes was not confirmed. The fourth hypothesis corresponding to the effect of green causal-structural factors on green outcomes was confirmed. The fifth hypothesis corresponding to the effect of green intermediary-behavioral factors on green outcomes was also confirmed. In addition, the mediating effect of green intermediary-behavioral factors in the relationship between green structural-causal factors and green outcomes was confirmed. The green structural-causal factors also indirectly affected green outcomes through green intermediary-behavioral factors.

 CONCLUSIONS & SUGGESTIONS:

According to the obtained results, attention to causal-structural and intermediary-behavioral factors is of fundamental importance for companies operating in Birjand Industrial Town. Therefore, managers are suggested to pay special attention and place environmental issues in their strategic planning. To place the environmental issues in the company's vision and mission statement and values hierarchy would imply the importance of these issues.

In today's complex and challenging world, organizations need a competitive advantage to succeed. If human capital is considered one of the most important organizational resources, it can help the organization to achieve a competitive advantage. The purpose of this study was to analyze the structural relationships of the role of future perspective in the psychological contract. Future Time perspective (FTP) refers to individual differences in the tendency to think about future conditions and, apart from ability, produces individual differences that have greatly increased over the past decades when employee judgments over the success of the employment contract are high. That is, they are likely to offset their sense of commitment, thereby enhancing their sense of commitment to the organization.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK:

Nowadays, the most important issue for organizations is the failure to fulfill promises by employers and commitments by employees. Lack of understanding and attention to future prospects seems to result in this failure. On the other hand, human resources are the most valuable factor of production and the most important asset of any organization. This is why organizational behavior and human resources management scholars have focused on organizational commitment issues. Organizational commitment is an important factor in predicting the employees’ organizational behavior and their willingness to stay at the job. The psychological refers to employees’ beliefs about the nature of interactional relationships which determine the quality of legitimate obligations and expectations of both parties. These issues especially apply to organizations that utilize specialized and expert human capital. Understanding the content of psychological contracts in universities is necessary to completely utilize the capabilities of the country's higher education system. Therefore, the purpose of the present study was to analyze the role of future time perspective in shaping the psychological contract for Shahroud University of Technology.

The statistical population of this study was comprised of 261 full-time employees in the Shahrood University of Technology. To collect data for measuring the research variables, the Coyle-Shapiro and Conway’s (2005) Employer Contract Succession Questionnaire, Duus et al.’s (2003) Employee Inventory Questionnaire, and Long and Christensen’s (2002) FTP questionnaire were adopted. The content validity of the questionnaire was assessed by the CVR index and its construct validity assessed by confirmatory factor analysis. The questionnaire’s reliability was also evaluated by Cronbach's alpha coefficient. Obtained data was analyzed by conducting structural equation modeling in LISREL software.

The results of study showed that economic, social-emotional, and developmental fulfillment of the employer had direct and significant effects on employees’ obligations. Future time perspective also had direct and significant impact on employer’s fulfillment. In addition, FTP moderated the relationship between employer’s economic fulfillment and employees’ obligations.

CONCLUSIONS & SUGGESTIONS:

Employees’ commitment encompasses different dimensions including in-role behaviors, citizenship behaviors, and high performance. The organization’s competitive advantage is significantly depended on employees’ engagement. The findings indicated that there is a direct and significant relationship between future time perspective and employees’ commitment. Future time perspective played a moderating role on the relationship between employer economic fulfilment and employees’ commitment. According to findings, it is suggested that the managers of universities and other educational organizations to enhance the economic quality level of employees by strengthening the performance-based pay system considering the types of jobs, responsibilities, and living standards. Special attention should be given to the flexibility of the organization in terms of staff work plan and work processes. It is also recommended that managers reinforce the employees’ future prospect to enhance their understanding of employer development. Finally, it is recommended that managers take steps to empower employees who are focused on opportunities and practices.

Rudeness, impoliteness, and indecent behaviors, which represent incivility, have become a norm in almost all aspects of modern societies and have been recognized as one of the pervasive antisocial behaviors in the workplace. Behavioral incompatibilities occur when an employee treats other employees with counterproductive behaviors, which reflects the level of workplace incivility among the staff. However, experienced incivility is a level of incivility experienced by employees in the face of their colleagues. Over the past few decades, special attention has been paid to leadership and it has been recognized as the most important factor for organizational success/failure.

THEORETICAL FOUNDATION OF RESEARCH:

Passive or non-transactional leadership refers to leaders’ refraining from taking action and lack of directing the followers. The source of organizational incivility is managers, colleagues, and customers. According to the social interaction theory, the presence of a passive leader may intensify the effect of experienced compatibility on behavioral compatibility. Employees working for passive leaders deal with more of these behaviors from their colleagues in case of a positive relationship between passive leadership and behavioral incompatibility. Scholars believe that almost all employees have had a similar reaction to the experienced incivility. Working for a passive leader increases the chance of workplace incivility, which might increase this type of behavior in the employee.

This research was an applied study in terms of purpose, s descriptive field study regarding the type of research, and a correlational study in terms of the relationship between variables. The statistical population included all the staff of Omran Kar Company with a total number of 162 in 2017, all of whom were studied by census sampling. Data was collected using Avolio and Bass’s (1990) passive leadership questionnaire, Blau and Andersson’s (2005) organizational incivility questionnaire, and Cortina et al.’s (2001) workplace incivility scale questionnaire. In the end, 154 well-qualified questionnaires were analyzed, and the validity and reliability of results confirmed by content and convergent validity and Cronbach’s alpha coefficients.

According to the one-sample t-test results, t-values of 17.549, 13.278, and 12.823 respectively for passive leadership, organizational incivility, and experienced incivility showed that their mean values were significantly different from three. Overall, for all three variables, the mean value was above moderate. The effect of passive leadership on organizational incivility (t=2.43, r=0.57) and experienced incivility (t=4.84, r=0.74) were statistically significant. The effect of experienced incivility on organizational incivility (t=3.32, r=0.66) was also confirmed. Accordingly, in Omran Kar Co., passive leadership had a significant indirect effect on organizational incivility through the mediating role of employees’ experienced incivility.

DISCUSSION & RECOMMENDATIONS:

To fail in actively depicting positive social norms and preventive measures required for controlling negative behaviors can increase informal behaviors in the workplace, which leads to incivility. Situational factors that lead to informal behaviors, such as managerial methods and policies, increase workplace insecurity. According to the social interaction framework, situational factors increase the repetition of uncivilized behavioral incompatibility. Managers who actively participate in the tasks assigned to their workers are forced to solve the problems occurring due to negative and uncivilized behaviors of employees, which decreases this type of behavioral incompatibilities. In contrast, a leader who fails to intervene and punish the person at fault cannot reinforce the correct behavior implicitly indicating that unfavorable behavior is acceptable, which increases incivility. Therefore, the leadership style exhibited by managers can affect incompatibility in the workplace as an important factor.

Human resource management is always the main concern for organizations. Since the banking sector has a pivotal role in the economic development of countries, the better management of the workforce in this sector has attracted great attention for decades. The phenomenon of overqualification might stem from a mismatch between person and job and is a situation in which employees have qualifications beyond their job demands. Today, the existence of overqualified employees is a concern for managers and organizations. Perceived overqualification could directly or indirectly lead to various attitudinal and behavioral consequences and impact organizational performance. Despite huge empirical studies regarding overqualification, to the best of the researcher’s knowledge, any empirical study has been conducted in Iran’s academia. Hence, the present research can be regarded as the first empirical study in the country. The banking sector has always been appealing to job seekers for its fringe benefits. This study was to examine the effect of perceived overqualification on various job attitudes including job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and turnover intention.

 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK:

One of the main concerns of HR managers is to employ people who have the required capabilities to perform their job successfully. Overqualification is defined as possessing qualifications beyond job demands. Perceived overqualification might influence employees’ attitudes such as job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and turnover intention. According to the literature on organizational behavior, job satisfaction is considered a multidimensional variable affected by a set of intrinsic and extrinsic factors. Job satisfaction can be seen as the quality of people’s feelings about their jobs. Organizational commitment implies a sense of obligation to stay in the organization. Based on the three-dimensional model proposed by Allen and Meyer (1990), affective, continuance, and normative commitment are three dimensions of this attitude. Turnover intention indicates employees’ tendency to quit the organization. In such a situation, people probably change their jobs or leave the organization. In other words, the turnover intention might pave the way for actual organization abandonment.

The present research is an applied study in terms of purpose, and in terms of data collection method, it is a cross-sectional study. The researchers used standard questionnaires to collect primary data. Structural equation modeling was used to test the research hypotheses.

Research results confirmed the significance of negative effects of perceived overqualification on job satisfaction and affective organizational commitment as well as the positive effect of perceived overqualification on turnover intention. Hence, overqualification might lead to negative job attitudes. In line with previous research (e.g., Wasserman et al., 2018; Alfes et al., 2016), the current study found that there is a negative association between overqualification and job satisfaction. In line with previous research (e.g., Loben et al. 2015), results indicated that people who perceive they are overqualified might lack a sense of belongingness and are less affectively attached to their organization. In line with studies of Erdogan and Bauer (2009) and Maynard and Parfyonova (2013), the poor level of job satisfaction and affective commitment in overqualified employees leads to more intention to quit the organization.

 CONCLUSIONS & SUGGESTIONS:

The current study was implemented with the aim of exploring the job attitudes in overqualified employees. To reach this goal, data were collected from ten private and public banks by distributing standard questionnaires. The results of structural equation modeling for data analysis showed that perceived overqualification might affect job attitudes including job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and turnover intention. With due attention to the negative job attitudes born out of perceived overqualification, managers and HR practitioners are highly recommended to make sure that job applicants are fitted with their jobs. Moreover, future studies are suggested to consider the role of moderators including organizational support.

Although employees' voice than their silence is more valuable to organizations in today's competitive and changing world, many employees prefer silence. Therefore, the organization is not capable of investigating and correcting its errors, which refers to a problem called organizational silence. In the experts’ opinion, if employees' mouths are silenced the minds of organizations producing organizational knowledge will be fossilized. Determining the organizational silence is much more complicated than identifying behaviors such as absenteeism or sabotage. Therefore, the question is that how the organizational silence is determined and what factors are considered signals for organizational silence. In this regard, the present study identifies the components of organizational silence and factors affecting these components.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK:

Despite a 50-year time period of interest in identifying the concepts of organizational silence and voice, investigations indicated that most studies had focused on how employees' silence is formed and its causes. However, the organizational silence is beyond these concepts and more in-depth studies are needed to be understood. Organizational silence is a social phenomenon in which employees refuse to express their views and concerns about organizational problems. Silence does not mean not talking, not writing, or the like, but fleeting speeches and writings of no identity, trust, and authority. This phenomenon has destructive consequences for organizations, such as employees' worthlessness, reduced trust, motivation, satisfaction, commitment, and creativity, job turnover, lack of efficiency in organizational change processes, and flattery and distortion of reality. Organizational silence has diverse indices such as employees’ reluctance to talk about work issues, lack of sharing work information, fear of misunderstanding, absenteeism, not listening, having a negative approach, indifference to the organization affairs, constant negligence at work, unwillingness to convey bad news to top management, and Hiding problems due to fear of being victimized.

This research is a mixed-methods study. In the qualitative phase, by conducting a content analysis on literature, the most important signs of organizational silence and its affecting factors were extracted. These signs were provided to 10 Delphi members for identifying the components of organizational silence. Among the eight identified characteristics, according to the experts’ opinions, six characteristics were finally selected as components of organizational silence. A 24-item Items questionnaire was designed for these components. Lavache’s content validity ratio (CVR) was used to evaluate the questionnaire’s validity. Since the calculated CVR values for all the items were greater than 0.62, the questionnaire’s validity was satisfactorily confirmed. The Cronbach's alpha coefficient of 0.731 also indicated its adequate reliability.

Out of eight characteristics identified for organizational silence, six components were finally selected as its components: Flattery, constant nagging and complaining about the situation, yes-manship, indifference to assigned tasks, decreased willingness to participate in none-compulsory activities, feeling frustrated and bored. In the second phase of Delphi, out of 11 identified factors, six were selected as the affecting factors: authoritarian and patriarchal leadership style, repressive organizational culture, low organizational commitment, bureaucratic and cumbersome rules and procedures, conservative personality of managers, tall organizational structure. In addition, five important consequences of organizational silence were identified to be the reduced effectiveness of organizational decisions, resistance to change, blocking the path of providing feedback, lack of analysis of ideas, increased dissatisfaction, and decreased organizational motivation. According to these findings and back to the research literature, adopting a systemic approach, the conceptual model of organizational silence was proposed.

CONCLUSIONS & SUGGESTIONS:

What the clear is that, contrary to many people's beliefs, organizational silence has adverse effects on both the organization and employees. Indifferent employees resulted from ignoring their silence promote the mindset of being indifferent. As a result of such an attitude, employees will suffer from depression and other wellbeing problems. Organizational silence increases their stress and makes them feel guilty and overwhelmed by psychological problems.

 Today, the higher education system is faced with many economic, political, and societal changes. Rising international competition, diverse students, increasing demand from industrialized societies, declining budgets, and rapid technological advances are among the key drivers of change in such an environment. In other words, change is a necessity for higher education, not an opportunity. Organizational culture is one of the factors through which the necessary changes can be easily made in the system and create new orientations in the organization. Thus, it should be noted that the success of the change process depends to a large extent on organizational culture and employees’ willingness to adapt to new work environments. Therefore, considering the importance of organizational culture in directing the change programs in organizations, especially in educational ones, the current study was to examine the relationship between organizational culture and change programs in Iranian universities.

 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK :

After reviewing previous research, it was found that there exist two other programs (change in process and results) in addition to three traditional change programs (Change in structure, technology, and human resources). These two programs were also considered in the current study. On the other hand, in order to study organizational culture, the current research considered the components of innovation, attention to detail, attention to the outcome, attention to members of the organization, attention to the team, and ambition

 The present cross-sectional research is an applied study in terms of purpose, and in terms of method, it is a survey. At first, this research has reviewed the literature on organizational culture and change programs in universities. Needed data to test the relationship between these two variables was collected by a questionnaire and then was analyzed.

 The focus of this study was on a comparative investigation of the relationship between change programs and organizational culture in Azad, public, and Payam-e-Noor universities. In this regard, five types of change programs (human resource, restructuring, technology, process, and results change program) were identified. The structural equation model of the research was evaluated and fitted. Finally, organizational culture and its relationship with change programs were compared in different universities.

CONCLUSION & SUGGESTIONS:

The results of comparative investigations showed that there is a significant difference in the mean value of all dimensions of organizational culture except for attention to detail and attention to members. This implies the difference in organizational culture and change programs between different universities. Also, results indicated that, in public and Payam-e-Noor universities, there is a positive, strong, and significant relationship between organizational culture and change programs. But in Azad Universities, the above-mentioned relationship is weak. It was also found that this relationship is stronger for Payam-e-Noor Universities than for public universities. The results of this research help managers to select change programs that are compatible with the specific culture of their university and will help them succeed in the process of implementing change programs. In order for this to be possible, it is recommended that university administrators consider that organizational culture as a necessary factor for implementing the change programs. They should increase their knowledge of the university-specific culture to create the necessary context for improving and strengthening the organizational culture in line with the acceptance of change programs.

Coaching is a new and applied method for human resource development with such goals as improving organizational learning. Coach-oriented organizations, in addition to developing organizational learning patterns, can provide a good platform to enrich individual and organizational goals. In higher education for improving the universities’ organizational learning, it is a major priority in policy-makers agenda to design and evaluate programs such as coaching. Farhangian University is a higher education institute that seeks for sustainable development of human resources, and consequently, values human resource training. Therefore, the main purpose of this study is to develop a model for establishing a coach-oriented organization with the approach of organizational learning at Farhangian University.

 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK:

Coaching is a method to develop human resources. It can help organizations to create a favorable position compared to their competitors, improve organizational performance, and accelerate learning. A coach-oriented organization is an organization that seeks for growing and fostering its human resources through the coaching technique. By providing factors such as coaching culture, business background, and human resource management, this type of organization prepares a platform to enjoy the benefits of coaching. Organizational learning is a set of interactions to coordinate individual, group, and organizational levels. It is a dynamic process enabling the organization to quickly adapt to environmental changes. During the process of organizational learning, an educational unit continuously improves the level of thinking of members and knowledge acquisition and dissemination. By implementing this approach, the organization moves towards learning.

This is a mixed-methods study. In the qualitative phase, needed data collected through library studies, face-to-face interviews, and the Delphi questionnaire. Delphi panel was comprised of 25 experts based on snowball sampling which is a non-random and purposeful method. In the quantitative phase, the statistical population was comprised of 396 employees of Farhangian University in Razavi, North, and South Khorasan provinces. The sample size of 196 was calculated using Morgan’s table and selected by conducting a stratified random sampling method. The questionnaire obtained from the first phase was utilized in the quantitative phase after evaluating and confirming face validity, content validity by CVI index, construct validity, and Cronbach's alpha reliability. The SPSS software was for descriptive statistics, and for inferential statistics, the structural equation modeling was conducted in SmartPLS and Amos software.

In the qualitative phase, the dimensions and components of the model were finalized after performing four Delphi rounds. In the quantitative phase, the findings indicated the model's goodness of fit. The results were based on a model consisting of 2 variables, 7 dimensions, 27 components, and 131 indicators. Dimensions such as “establishment process” and “learning levels” were the most important respectively in the variables of coach-oriented organization and organizational learning.

CONCLUSIONS & SUGGESTIONS:

The findings indicated that the establishment of coaching in the organization has an impact on organizational learning. Farhangian University was found to have the capacity of becoming a coach-oriented organization if utilizing all the processes of action, execution, and monitoring.