The purpose of this study is to provide a structural model of the effect of knowledge leadership and perceived organizational health on work enthusiasm, emphasizing the mediating role of organizational intimacy in public libraries of West Azerbaijan province. This research is of applied type; and in terms of method, descriptive-correlation. The statistical population of the research includes 160 public library employees of West Azerbaijan province, of which 113 people were selected as a statistical sample based on Cochran's formula and stratified random selection. The data collection tool in this research includes four standard questionnaires. In order to ensure the existence or non-existence of a causal relationship between the research variables and to check the suitability of the observed data with the conceptual model of the research, the research hypotheses were tested using the structural equation model. In this research, structural equation modeling and the partial least squares (PLS) method were used to test the hypotheses and model fit. The research findings showed that knowledge leadership has a significant effect on work enthusiasm and organizational intimacy, and perceived organizational health has a significant effect on work enthusiasm and organizational intimacy. In addition, at the 95% confidence level, organizational intimacy plays a mediating role in the effect of knowledge leadership and perceived organizational health on work enthusiasm.
Extended Abstract
Introduction
In today's era, due to the vast amount of information and the competitive environment, all organizations need to pay attention to new leadership approaches for their survival. One of these new leadership approaches is knowledge leadership (Zarei et al, 2021). Knowledge leadership is a process through which the organization produces wealth from its knowledge or intellectual capital (Deylami & Pourrashidi, 2022). In fact, one of the most important leadership models that can be effective in developing ethics, increasing employee trustworthiness, promoting social capital, and improving employee creativity and innovation is knowledge-based leadership (Mahmoudi et al, 2021).
Today, organizations are considered as living organisms that have an identity independent of their members; in such a way that with this new identity they can influence the behavior of employees. This personality and identity can have "organizational health" or "organizational disease" (Soltani Bahram & Alizadeh Aghdam, 2021). The existence of health in the organization causes the durability and survival of the organization in its environment and adaptation to it and the improvement of skills for further adaptation (Teimouri et al, 2021). Therefore, organizational health explains how an organization deals with the health of its employees, what priority it gives to the well-being of employees, and to what extent healthy working conditions are promoted in the organization (Kaluza et al, 2020).
On the other hand, work enthusiasm is one of the concepts of positive psychology in the field of work and the most prominent positive organizational concept, as a structure of behavioral, emotional and cognitive aspects (Sepahvand, & Bagherzadeh Khodashahri, 2021). Work enthusiasm is considered as an effective force in creating a feeling of empowerment in doing the job and consequently increasing the strength and intellectual ability of employees in the work environment and the process of improving the status of the organization as an effective and efficient factor (Zahed Babolan et al, 2021).
Furthermore, one of the factors related to organizational health and work enthusiasm is organizational intimacy. Leaders who express intimacy with their employees can create an atmosphere where diverse groups feel accepted, supported, and able to participate fully (Zivkovic, 2022).
Theoretical framework
Knowledge leadership: Knowledge leadership plays an important role in promoting organizational knowledge, absorbing and transferring it, organizational performance, organizational effectiveness, organizational learning, organizational culture, creating insight and managing knowledge and information (Mahmoudi et al, 2021). Knowledge leadership is a social process in which leaders support other members of the organization in the learning processes required to achieve the goals of the group and organization (Jafari et al, 2021).
Perceived organizational health: The term organizational health was first used by Miles in 1969. In his opinion, organizational health refers to the durability and survival of the organization in its environment and adapting to it, as well as improving and expanding its ability to adapt more (Soltani Bahram & Alizadeh Aghdam, 2021). Organizational health refers to a situation beyond the short-term effectiveness of the organization and refers to a set of relatively long-lasting organizational characteristics. (Mollaei et al, 2022).
Work enthusiasm: Work enthusiasm is the need to use all physical, cognitive and emotional dimensions of a person to perform work roles (Dehghanpour Farashah et al, 2021). Work enthusiasm is a positive state of mind that maintains the work and is related to it, which manifests with power, dedication and attraction, and it can be considered a positive and emotionally motivating state of mind that is related to the mental well-being and health of employees, and is considered as point against job burnout (Seifi et al, 2021).
Organizational Intimacy: Regarding organizational intimacy, it should be mentioned that work intimacy and work relationship in the manager-employee equation is almost known as a tool to improve work, while intimate relationships are defined as communication methods in the workplace (Jaberimanesh et al., 2019). In general, intimacy in the organization can be a combination of revealing and expressing, compatibility, integration, resolving conflicts, self-following and similarity, and it makes a person achieve a degree of personal growth in the work environment so that he can establish a sincere relationship with others. (Moradi & Keshavarz, 2021).
Methodology
The current research is applicable in terms of purpose, and descriptive of correlation type in terms of method. The statistical population of the research was 160 employees of public libraries in West Azarbaijan province. The size of the statistical sample was estimated to be 113 people based on stratified random sampling and according to Cochran's formula. The data collection tools in this research include four standard questionnaires of Danesh Vitala (2004), organizational health perceived by Klingel and Layden (2001), work enthusiasm by Bakker and Utrich (2008) and organizational closeness by Walker and Thompson (1983). The data analysis of the current research was done using the structural equation modeling method based on PLS3 software.
Discussion and Results
In order to investigate the hypothesis of the research, the modeling of structural equations, the method of structural equation modeling with the help of spss software was used to test the hypotheses from inferential statistics. Then pls software was used to test the hypotheses or conceptual model of the research, and the results showed that the path coefficient between the two variables of knowledge leadership and work enthusiasm is β=0.249. The significant coefficients between these two variables were p=0.001 and t=3.206, which shows that this relationship is significant; and knowledge leadership has an effect on work enthusiasm. In addition, the path coefficient between the two variables of perceived organizational health on work enthusiasm is β=0.158. The significant coefficients between these two variables were p=0.037 and t=2.093, which shows that this relationship is significant and perceived organizational health has an effect on work enthusiasm. According to the results, the path coefficient between the two variables of knowledge leadership on organizational intimacy is β=0.563. The significant coefficients of these two variables were p=0.000 and t=9.013, which shows that this relationship is significant and knowledge leadership has an effect on organizational intimacy. On the other hand, the path coefficient between the two variables of perceived organizational health on organizational closeness is β=0.431. The significant coefficients between these two variables were p=0.000 and t=6.764, which shows that this relationship is significant and perceived organizational health has an impact on organizational intimacy. According to the results, it can be said that the path coefficient between the two variables of organizational intimacy on work enthusiasm is β=0.573. The significant coefficients between these two variables were p=0.000 and t=5.997, which shows that this relationship is significant and organizational intimacy has an effect on work enthusiasm. In addition, the results showed that organizational intimacy plays a mediating role in the effect of knowledge leadership and perceived organizational health on work enthusiasm.
Conclusion
This research was conducted with the aim of providing a structural model of knowledge leadership and perceived organizational health on work enthusiasm, emphasizing the mediating role of organizational intimacy in public libraries of West Azerbaijan province. According to the findings of the research, knowledge leadership has a positive effect on work enthusiasm and also the positive effect of knowledge leadership on organizational intimacy was confirmed. The results of this study are in line with the findings of Jafari et al. (2022), Mahmoudi et al. (2021), Zarei et al. (2022), Banmairuroy et al. (2021) and Chaithanapat et al. (2022). In this regard, one of the subjects that can help the organization in this matter is knowledge leadership. One of the solutions for sharing knowledge among employees and as a result the success of organizations is that the knowledge in the organization is well managed and the knowledge leaders of the organization perform well with their internal and external characteristics and the influence they have on the people inside the organization..
On the other hand, the research results showed that perceived organizational health has a positive effect on work enthusiasm. In addition, the positive effect of perceived organizational health on organizational intimacy was confirmed. These results are consistent with the research findings of Soltani Bahram & Alizadeh Aghdam (2021), Hoseini pozveh et al. (2021) and Ramezanpour (2020). Based on these findings, we can conclude that organizational health is one of the important aspects of organizational climate that affects many variables and is not only the organization's ability to perform tasks effectively, but also includes the organization's ability to grow and improve continuously. In healthy organizations, there are committed, responsible, conscientious, motivated and high-performing employees.
Another result of the research was that organizational closeness plays a mediating role in the effect of knowledge leadership on work enthusiasm and at the 95% confidence level, organizational closeness plays a mediating role in the effect of knowledge leadership and perceived organizational health on work enthusiasm. Therefore, we can say that intimacy is very important in the organization. The presence of intimacy can solve many problems or prevent them from occurring in the organization. This is the reason why organizations try to create this intimacy or support its signs in different ways. Ever since the importance of intimacy among organizational colleagues became clear, organizations started thinking about supporting, promoting and encouraging intimacy in the organization based on the recommendations they received. They simply agreed that intimate people talk more easily, solve their problems by themselves, do not betray each other, and finally, organizational intimacy is a prerequisite for work enthusiasm. This finding is in line with the research results of Mahmoudi et al. (2021), Shakeri (2020), Salari (2019), Azmi (2018) and Zivkovic (2022).