The Role of Military Service in the Development and Manifestation of Citizenship Behaviors (Case Study: Tehran University Students)

This study aims to compare the incidence of organizational citizenship behaviors between military served -students and non-military-served students. In the quantitative part of this mixed descriptive study, 350 participants (216 served and 134 unserved) were selected from among male students of Tehran University and Podsakov et al. (1990) organizational citizenship behavior questionnaire were distributed among them. To collect qualitative data, 15 students were selected and unstructured interviews were used to collect data. Findings of the quantitative section of the study showed that students who have completed military service exhibit more organizational citizenship behaviors than other students, especially in terms of Sportsmanship, Civic virtue, Conscientiousness. Qualitative data analysis showed that military service fosters positive traits such as hardship tolerance, responsibility, personality maturity, and increased self-control, reinforcement of religious beliefs, punctuality and orderliness. Also, the results of the triangulation of the findings showed that the findings of the quantitative section were consistent with the findings of the qualitative part of the study, which provided sufficient explanation for the higher level of citizenship behaviors of the served students. It can be said that military service leads to personality, moral and social development in individuals so that military served -students play their roles in society better than other people.