management
Sayyid Ali Banihashemi; Zahra Rajaei; Sayyid Hassan Banihashemi
Abstract
Abstract
The core goal of this research was to evaluate the impact of organizational support and perceived organizational justice on innovative work behavior with the mediating role of cultural intelligence in the vice presidency area of the library of Astan Quds Razavi libraries. This was a descriptive-correlation ...
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Abstract
The core goal of this research was to evaluate the impact of organizational support and perceived organizational justice on innovative work behavior with the mediating role of cultural intelligence in the vice presidency area of the library of Astan Quds Razavi libraries. This was a descriptive-correlation study in terms of nature and methodology and an applied one regarding its objective. The research statistical population included 300 employees of the deputy area of Astan Quds Razavi libraries. The statistical sample was determined as 169 subjects using Morgan's table. The content-face validity and construct validity (confirmatory factor analysis) of the research tool were examined and confirmed. The research reliability rate was also obtained higher than 0.832 using Cronbach's alpha coefficient test. The study results demonstrated that perceived organizational support has a positive and significant impact on innovative work behavior and cultural intelligence of employees (t = 3.486, t = 2.456). The perceived organizational justice was also found to have a positive and significant effect on innovative work behavior and cultural (intelligence) quotient (t = 2.910, t = 3.147). Moreover, the cultural (intelligence) quotient showed a positive and significant effect on innovative work behavior (t = 2.704). It was concluded that the cultural (intelligence) quotient mediates the relationship between perceived organizational support and innovative work behavior (t = 2.124). Finally, the cultural (intelligence) quotient was found not to mediate the relationship between perceived organizational justice and innovative work behavior (t = 1.175).
Extended abstract
Introduction
The age of the digital and knowledge economy has made numerous changes in the world of organizations and caused organizations to encounter intense competition in this dynamic environment (Jimenez-Jimenez & Sanz-Valle, 2008). Thus, all enterprises are in immediate need of the ability to stand against the environment, the ability to introduce new ideas and products to achieve a competitive advantage, and even survival (Javed et al., 2017). Therefore, if an organization intends to survive in the new paradigm of competition in such circumstances, it needs to see innovation in the organization as an essential strategy. Innovation has a special and privileged position not only in the personal and individual dimensions but also in the social and organizational dimensions (Eshkor Vakili & Nojabaei, 2022). Various methods have been introduced to get an appropriate rate of innovation according to the life cycle of organizations and other environmental and industrial factors, one of which, is to recognize and value human resources as the highest valuable organizational capital. Creating innovative work behavior in employees is known as one of the best numerous methods of fostering and enhancing the innovation rate (Adibpour et al., 2016). The current conditions have compelled managers to define an intellectual framework to conduct and lead their organizations aimed at making strategic decisions faster and hiring and recruiting more flexible human resources. Thus, innovative work behaviors of employees seem to be capable of generating a basis for innovation and improvement of the organization's performance (Sanders et al., 2010). On the other hand, one may claim that employees have a leading role in achieving organizational success, high efficiency, and performance criteria. Perceived organizational support and organizational justice have become prominently popular over the past years due to their positive impacts on both human resources and capital, and thereby, studies related to these topics have increasingly continued. The conventional view and perception of an ideal workplace is an organization with an atmosphere of justice and a supportive environment (Sen et al., 2022). Human resources nowadays serve as the main factor in creating a competitive advantage for organizations. Today, given the diverse working environments, thinkers have identified a new dimension of intelligence known as “cultural intelligence (quotient)”, which allows individuals to recognize how others think and how they respond to behavioral patterns. Consequently, intercultural communication barriers are reduced, which brings people the power to manage cultural diversity (Fayazi & Jannisar Ahmadi, 2006). This kind of intelligence enhances a person's ability to interact effectively with new cultures. Fostering cultural intelligence in a world where crossing borders has become a normal thing seems like a vital need for all people (Kabuli, 2021).
This research was designed to examine and evaluate the impact of organizational justice and perceived organizational support on innovative work behavior with the mediating role of cultural intelligence among the employees of the deputy area of Astan Quds Razavi libraries to ultimately assess the relationship between these three variables. Since management is associated with the ability to continuously adapt to people from different cultures and organizational justice and support play a crucial role in generating ideas and creativity by employees, thus, organizations may utilize the results of this research to create ideas and innovation among employees according to the components of organizational support and justice with the mediation role of cultural intelligence.
Theoretical framework
Perceived organizational justice
Some of the earliest academic research on organizational justice can be attributed to Adams (1965) who used the previous studies of Homans (1961) to consider individual reactions to the allocation of outcomes (Kramer, 2021). However, organizational justice was first introduced by “Greenberg” in 1987. This subject has been the major topic of research in the area of organization in the last decade of the 20th century (Khorasani & Kanani Neiri, 2012; Jazani & Soltani, 2016).
Organizational justice is extensively accepted as a three-factor structure composed of distributive justice, procedural justice, and interactional justice. The formation of this three-factor structure may be traced back to the mid-1960s when research on justice perceptions took place in organizational behavior and industrial/organizational psychology literature (Kramer, 2021).
Perceived organizational support
The research on perceived organizational support has been expanded due to its clear antecedents and major consequences, including the attitude, performance, and desired welfare of employees. The research has followed an increasing pace with more than 1200 conducted studies so far since the early work on perceived organizational support in the 1980s (Eisenberger et al., 2020).
Perceived organizational support is effective in motivating employees. It also enhances the employees’ expectations, which on the other side obliges the organization to pay more rewards and benefits for doing more work according to the organizational goals (Poursoltani Zarandi & Irji Naqander, 2012).
Innovative work behaviors (IWBs)
The literature on the use of innovative work behavior has grown steadily since the introduction of the concept of “innovative work behavior” in 1994 and 1998 by Scott and Bruce (1994, 1998). Innovative work behavior refers to all behaviors of employees that are related to finding, developing, proposing, and implementing innovative ideas in the organization to improve innovative performance. Innovative work behaviors are a type of voluntary citizenship behavior that employees are not necessarily expected to do in their roles and official job descriptions (Rezaei & Zamani, 2019). Innovative work behavior is defined as the conscious development, introduction, and use of new ideas within a job role, group, or organization to properly improve the role of the group or organizational performance (Akram et al. 2020).
Cultural Intelligence (CI)
Cultural intelligence or cultural quotient is a very old sharpness that was utilized whenever business or intercultural meetings were held (Abi Abdallah, 2020).
Cultural intelligence is defined as the ability to adapt to different cultural environments and contexts and the capability of performing effectively in different cultural environments. Cultural intelligence refers to the ability to effectively adapt to new cultural contexts. Beyond the simple adaptation of behavior, cultural intelligence also encompasses the development of a set of abilities or set of behaviors that facilitate effective intercultural functioning. It should be noted that cultural intelligence is not related to effectiveness in a specific culture. Rather, it is associated with effectiveness in certain situations of cultural pluralism (Sharma & Hussain 2017).
Methodology
The current research is an applied study. It can be classified as a quantitative study regarding the nature of the data used and a descriptive-correlational one in terms of the nature and method of cognition, which is one of the descriptive research methods. It is also known as a field study since the research data was collected by attending the statistical population and sample using the questionnaire tool. The research statistical population included all the employees of the vice-chancellor of Astan Quds Razavi libraries, accounting for 300 people. The statistical sample was determined according to Morgan's table as 169 subjects. The sampling method used was a simple random sampling approach. A closed-type questionnaire tool was used to collect the required data for testing the research hypotheses. The perceived organizational justice questionnaire has 18 items and 3 components of distributive justice (5 items), procedural justice (10 items), and interactional justice (8 items) (Colquitt, 2001). The innovative work behavior questionnaire with 10 items and a single component (De Jong & Den Hartog, 2010), the perceived organizational support questionnaire with 6 items and a single component (one item is reverse scored) (Eisenberger et al., 2001), and finally, the cultural intelligence questionnaire, including 20 items and 4 metacognitive (4 items), cognitive (6 items), motivational (5 items), and behavioral (5 items) components were also used for data collection (Earley & Ang, 2003). The questions were scored in the form of a five-point Likert scale with the options ranging from quite agree to quite disagree.
Findings
According to the demographic results, more than 90% of the research sample had bachelor's and master's degrees. Also, more than 65% of the sample had a range of age between 40 and 50 years with 11 to 20 years of work experience. On the other hand, about 76% of the examined human capital in the statistical sample had a perfect congruence (fit) between their field of study and their job. These factors indicated a proper statistical sample to test the statistical hypotheses of the research.
The factor analysis results revealed that the factor loading of all components is greater than 0.4 and the value of the statistic (t) is higher than 1.96. Therefore, the components had good validity. The significance coefficients (t) were used to examine the fitness of the research structural model, which were higher than 1.96 and their significance was confirmed with a confidence level of 95%. According to the fitted model, the value of the coefficient of determination (R2) demonstrates how many percentages of the dependent variable changes are explained by the independent variable. This value was obtained as 0.420 and 0.388 for the dependent variable of innovative work behavior and the cultural intelligence variable, respectively, indicating a moderate-strong intensity. Also, the Q2 predictive relevance criterion, which determines the model's prediction power, was achieved for the dependent variable of innovative work behavior and the cultural intelligence variable as was 0.191 and 0.261, respectively, indicating a moderate-strong intensity. Finally, the goodness of fit index value of GOF, as a general measure of model fit, was obtained as 0.514 in the fitted model, suggesting a strong fitness model.
Discussion and Conclusion
This research was designed to evaluate the effect of organizational support and perceived organizational justice on innovative work behavior with the mediating role of cultural intelligence. The research findings demonstrated that “perceived organizational support has a significant impact on innovative work behavior with the mediating role of cultural intelligence”. Thus, organizations need managers with a high cultural intelligence given the importance of the cultural intelligence role as a mediator since organizations recognize culturally competent managers as a source of competitive advantage and strategic capability. Hence, organizations increasingly show the need for managers “who can quickly adapt to multiple cultures and work well in multinational teams” (Jyoti & Kour, 2017).
Thus, managers are recommended to increase their knowledge in the field of culture and intelligence and also think about the behaviors of their employees and determine what intellectual and behavioral biases their employees have and what unique behavioral characteristics they have compared to others in the workplace. Having information about such things enables the managers to intelligently foster and cultivate the employees' behavioral and motivational manifestations intellectually and provide the ground for innovation by supporting them and expanding interaction with these individuals. The second main hypothesis was rejected in this research; i.e., according to the results, the “perceived organizational justice with the mediating role of cultural intelligence has no positive and significant effect on innovative work behavior”.
Since this hypothesis was rejected, one can conclude that the components of cultural intelligence, including cultural knowledge, cultural care, and cultural behavior do not positively and optimally exist regarding the employees in the studied organization and such a behavior can be seen in some managers and employees. Creating inappropriate behavior in a cultural environment, failure to employ the capacity of employees as well as employees with high cultural intelligence, and also failure to understand intercultural issues and intercultural differences among employees would reduce positive interaction and communication among employees. In such circumstances, employees may not have the motivation and sense of participation and they will not be able to identify the issues and problems of the organization and provide creative solutions and innovative work behavior to solve these problems intelligently. Thus, it is suggested that the managers of the organization try to create appropriate behaviors in the environment of the organization and identify individuals with higher cultural intelligence based on their knowledge and awareness. They are also recommended to enhance interest, self-confidence, and cultural compatibility in the organization by cultivating the cultural intelligence of their employees.
