An Analysis of the Effect of Bureaucratic Culture on the Invisibility of Employees with the Mediating Role of Passive Leadership: A Case Study of Lorestan Province Governmental Organizations

Although Iranian government organizations suffer from excessive manpower, they are not adequately effective and are not capable of fulfilling their essential missions. In other words, invisible employees have become the dominant phenomenon of today's governmental organizations. Many factors have contributed to the ineffective use of manpower, including bureaucratic culture and passive leadership. This research project studied the effect of bureaucratic culture on the invisibility of employees with the mediating role of passive leadership in governmental organizations of Lorestan province. This cross-sectional, descriptive–correlational study is applied in terms of purpose. The statistical population of the study was comprised of 1317 employees of different governmental organizations of Lorestan province. Based on the Morgan table, a sample of 297 employees was selected using stratified random sampling. In order to measure the variables of the research, Denison’s bureaucratic culture questionnaire (1990), Brian and Holtz’s passive leadership questionnaire (2017), and the invisible employee questionnaire by Mohammad Yari et al.  (2018) were used. The reliability of the questionnaires was confirmed by Cronbach's alpha, and then the structural equation modeling in PLS software was used for data analysis. The results of the study showed that bureaucratic culture, both directly and through passive leadership, leads to the invisibility of employees in government organizations of the Lorestan province.