Amir Nikkar; Ali Shirazi
Abstract
1- INTRODUCTION Nowadays, human resources are considered the most valuable organizational capital. One of the best methods to maintain and promote this resource is improving its quality of work life which refers to employees' perception of work conditions and fulfillment of personal ...
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1- INTRODUCTION Nowadays, human resources are considered the most valuable organizational capital. One of the best methods to maintain and promote this resource is improving its quality of work life which refers to employees' perception of work conditions and fulfillment of personal and work needs. On the other hand, transformational leadership style and managers' emotional intelligence are among the most important factors affecting employees’ quality of work life. Transformational leaders, using their emotional skills, positively impact followers and increase their commitment to organizational goals and vision. To improve followers’ quality of work life, leaders must accurately apply and develop emotional intelligence skills and competencies. Since employees' performance is influenced by managers’ attitudes and they learn emotional behaviors from their managers, leaders need to have emotional intelligence. The main purpose of this research is to determine the impact of managers’ transformational leadership on employees’ quality of work life as well as to investigate the mediating role of managers' emotional intelligence in the Water and Wastewater Company of Mashhad. 2- THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK Transformational leaders have a significant influence on their followers and stimulate them toward specific objectives by determining their roles and assigned duties. Transformational leadership style consists of four components, including idealized influence, intellectual stimulation, inspirational motivation, and individualized consideration. Emotional intelligence refers to the capacity to recognize and manage the emotions of own and others. It consists of two major dimensions, including personal and social competencies. Social competencies include social awareness and relationship management. The concept of quality of work life is a philosophy to make employees more effective at the workplace by improving their psychological well-being and job involvement. Numerous pieces of research confirmed the relationship between employees’ quality of work life and outcomes such as satisfaction and commitment. Furthermore, previous studies indicated that transformational leadership style impacts managers’ emotional intelligence which in turn affects employees’ quality of work life. 3- METHODOLOGY This research is categorized into applied and descriptive-survey studies from in terms of purpose and method. The statistical population comprised employees who work in the Water and Wastewater Company of Mashhad. The statistical sample consists of 224 employees who were selected with simple random sampling based on Cochran's formula. Needed data was collected using a questionnaire, items of which ranged on a 5-point Likert-type scale. Finally, 225 well-qualified questionnaires were returned. The face and content validity of the questionnaire were evaluated and approved by management experts. In addition, its construct validity was examined and confirmed via confirmatory factor analysis, and its reliability via Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient. Data analysis was performed by conducting structural equation modeling in Amos software. 4- RESULTS & DISCUSSION Based on obtained results, the transformational leadership style significantly affected the managers' perceived emotional intelligence which in turn affected employees’ quality of work life. This shows that managers can improve their emotional intelligence competencies and their employees’ quality of work life through this leadership style. The significance of the impact of transformational leadership on employees’ quality of work life was rejected. Accordingly, it can be suggested that factors such as excessive administrative bureaucracy and bureaucratic organizational culture in governmental organizations may prevent the impact of transformational leadership on employees’ quality of work life. Overall, the role of managers perceived emotional intelligence in the relationship between transformational leadership and quality of work life was full mediation. 5- CONCLUSIONS & SUGGESTIONS In general, it can be stated that the managers' transformational leadership and emotional intelligence help them to effectively stimulate the employees towards organizational goals and provide an appropriate environment for improving their quality of work life. Accordingly, the managers of the target organization are recommended to hold courses by inviting expert consultants for training the skills and competencies of transformational leadership and emotional intelligence. Furthermore, they should provide a suitable environment to support employees’ participation and communication. Expansion of informal relationships allows the employees to express their opinions and emotions in line with enhancing trust between employees and managers. We recommend future researchers investigate the moderating role of organizational culture and compare the results with that of the current research. Additionally, they are recommended to examine the impact of managers’ emotional intelligence on their performance in the future.
Hoda Jannesar ahmadi; Ali Shirazi; Fariborz Rahimnia; Alireza Khorakian
Abstract
INTRODUCTION
The need for change in today's organizations in the one hand and 70% rate of failure in implementing the organizational change programs on the other caused many scholars to search on reasons for success and failure of organizational change. Although it is generally stated that effective ...
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INTRODUCTION
The need for change in today's organizations in the one hand and 70% rate of failure in implementing the organizational change programs on the other caused many scholars to search on reasons for success and failure of organizational change. Although it is generally stated that effective leadership is the key to successful change, many scholars have pointed out the lack of empirical research in this regard. Burke (2008) suggests that the impact of leadership on organizational change is not refined in the literature and there exists little scientific evidence on leadership influence. Similarly, Higgs and Rowland (2005) stated that only a few studies generally described the leader's initiatives in the process of change, and the literature in this field suffers from the lack of empirical research. Ford and Ford (2012) also pointed out the lack of definitive research on the association of leaders’ initiatives with change success. Since many studies have emphasized the role of leadership in organizational change success, the present research is accordingly to identify the leaders’ initiatives in successfully implementing the change programs.
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Today's organizations are constantly changing. Although both practitioners and scholars are concerned about the change in organizations (Blackman & Kennedy, 2011), managing the organizational change is not a simple process and few organizations are successful in implementing it. Aarons et al. (2015) suggest that leadership plays an important role in effectively implementing innovation and change. In addition, precise evidence on the role of leaders in the change success is now increasing (Higgs, 2003). In Yukl's (2010) opinion, the most important task of leaders is to achieve organizational success. Hence, the ability to effectively leading the organizational change is considered as one of the desirable skills for managers of current organizations (Szabla et al., 2014). Leaders and managers of organizations should be aware of the environmental trends, crises, and developments in place of their work. They should be flexible and adaptable in creating, predicting, encouraging, and responding positively to change. Without leadership, planned organizational change will never be realized (Dumas and Beinecke, 2018).
Hamed Mohammadi Shahroodi; Ali Shirazi; fereshte sadeghi
Abstract
Given the increasing competition between organizations and employees, paying attention to tasks and behaviors beyond them is one of the major concerns of organizations and their members. Unfortunately, extra roles in some organizations, especially international companies, are rare. Hence, Organizational ...
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Given the increasing competition between organizations and employees, paying attention to tasks and behaviors beyond them is one of the major concerns of organizations and their members. Unfortunately, extra roles in some organizations, especially international companies, are rare. Hence, Organizational Citizenship Behavior can increase the organization's ability to recruitment and retain qualified and efficient employees. On the other hand, it is necessary to note that Organizational Citizenship Behaviors do not occur in all situations, and some individual and organizational characteristics contribute to emerge and spread of these behaviors. Although attention to cultural intelligence has grown among international organizations in recent years, they need to consider variables such as cultural intelligence and the mediating role of Cultural Empathy in solving the problem of promoting extra role behavior. This lack of attention to the role of Cultural Intelligence as well as the empowerment role of Empathy is one of the gaps in international organizations. this research addresses the role of Cultural Empathy in improving Employee Citizenship Behaviors so that it can be determined that in order to promote extra role behaviors, people just needed to have high Cultural Intelligence, or both Cultural Intelligence and Cultural Empathy contribute to Citizenship Behavior.
Elham Behpour; Ali Shirazi; hamed mohammadi shahroodi
Abstract
1- INTRODUCTION
With the advancement of new technology and industry and their related problems, disorders and mental illnesses such as physical problems have increased dramatically, and since the mental health of students is very important, it is essential that the psychological issues of this massive ...
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1- INTRODUCTION
With the advancement of new technology and industry and their related problems, disorders and mental illnesses such as physical problems have increased dramatically, and since the mental health of students is very important, it is essential that the psychological issues of this massive group be addressed. In this regard, psychologists in recent years have attached great importance to the strategic roles that people’s coping styles play in the physical and mental health. Coping styles are the cognitive and behavioral skills that a person employs in order to control overwhelming internal and external welfare needs. One of the styles that have been extended recently is the spiritual and religious coping styles. Spiritual intelligence is one of the concepts that has been proposed and developed in the light of the interest of psychologists in the field of spirituality, and incorporates the spirituality and intelligence structures into a new structure.
Conscious use of spiritual intelligence in a person's life can lead to increased relationship with self, others and the bigger world. Spiritual intelligence is the foundation of individual’s beliefs that affects his/her performance and increases his/her flexibility in the face of problems. In order to fertilize the students’ intelligence, the examination of the relationship between positive thinking and intelligence can be critical, and the spiritual intelligence is not an exception because the spiritual intelligence has the ability to modulate and even remove the effects of mental stresses and feelings of emptiness in students. Hence, with regard to the expanded role of spiritual intelligence in human life and according to the fact that students in each nation construct and develop their future and that their mental health is important, this study aimed to investigate the impacts of spiritual intelligence on positive thinking among the students in Ferdowsi University of Mashhad (FUM).
2- THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Spiritual intelligence consists of two components: understanding and communicating with the origin of the universe and spiritual life (existence). Understanding and communicating with the origin of the universe means believing in the fact that we human beings are spiritual entities and that the physical life in this world is temporary. Thus, such people understand and believe the superior spiritual being (i.e., the God) and recognize their place in the presence of the God. Spiritual life, as the other component of spiritual intelligence, means that people with high spiritual intelligence have the capacity to devote a part of their daily activities to spiritual practices, which helps understanding ethic issues in their lives. Positive thinking refers to the positive orientation (desired outcome) in interpretations of past and current events and positive expectations of the future in the fields of individual assessment of their abilities to communicate with others, with the God (superior) and with the entire universe (nature). Positive thinking causes people to better develop their skills and to establish constructive interactions with their environment. Considering the purposes of this study, assumptions are as follows:
The primary hypothesis: Spiritual intelligence has impact on the positive thinking of FUM students.
The secondary hypothesis 1: Understanding and communicating with the origin of the universe has impact on the positive thinking of FUM students.
The secondary hypothesis 2: The spiritual life has impact on the positive thinking of FUM students.
3- METHODOLOGY
This study is a descriptive-survey study and was done in 2015 in the Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences at Ferdowsi University of Mashhad. The study population included all students (i.e., 1965 individuals) in this faculty who had been studying political sciences, law, accounting, management and economics, in all the three bachelor, master and doctoral programs (in the second semester of 2015-2016).
4- RESULTS and DISCUSSION
In order to examine the research hypotheses, the results of the multiple regression analysis showed that positive thinking affects the spiritual intelligence, thus, the main hypothesis of this study was confirmed. Additionally, the hypothesis of the impacts of the spiritual life on the positive thinking was confirmed, but the impacts of the understanding and communicating with the origin of the universe (as the other component of spiritual intelligence) on the students’ positive thinking was not confirmed. Although in this study there is a significant relationship between the component of communication with the origin of the universe and positive thinking (according to Pearson’s correlation coefficient), this hypothesis has not been confirmed. These findings clearly indicate that the intervention of the spiritual intelligence increases the positive thinking.
5- CONCLUSIONS and SUGGESTIONS
In general, according to the results obtained in this study, spiritual intelligence is a good predictor for positive thinking among students of Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, and according to these results, we can conclude that people will interpret the life events optimistically based on the spiritual life and enjoyment of spiritual communication and learning the religious teachings. In addition, taking advantage of human virtues and interpretive experiences that reinforce positive emotions, they will become more patient about unpleasant events and deal with problems more logically, resulting in a deep feeling of relaxation.
One of the limitations of this study is that the samples (students) are cross-sectional and specific. Therefore, the results of the study are generalizable only to this population. Hence, more research in this area and in other samples from different classes of the society is recommended. It also recommended that researchers who are interested in the subject of this research study the impacts of spiritual intelligence and positive thinking in other areas such as prevention of depression, anxiety, mental health improvement, academic achievement and coping with stress in students. It is also recommended that training the positive thinking skills and optimism as well as spirituality be done as a regular and compiled program in the form of workshops and training courses for students in order to strengthen and promote feelings of happiness, self-esteem, and enabling people.