The effect of job embeddedness on organizational citizenship behavior and job performance (study case: Secondary School Teachers in Najaf Abad)

Education plays a vital role in refining and improving the choice and quality of lives, augmenting social and economic productivity, and also instigating the process of empowerment. Education not only helps in the development of intellectual skills and knowledge but also in the effective growth and development of the economy. Teachers take the role of parents in the school. They, undoubtedly, influence the formative years of the students. They are vested with the utmost responsibility of molding the future citizen of the country. They influence the formative years of the students. Teachers are the most fundamental resources for improving student learning and molding them into efficient and responsible individuals. Retaining teachers are an important aspect as far as the organization and the community, at large, are concerned. It is important to pay attention to the aspect of teacher retention. There are various factors that might collectively play a role in deciding whether to stay or leave an organization. The study of these factors, known as job embeddedness. Job embeddedness is the closeness of the network of relationships formed by all work-related situations within and outside the organization and from non-subjective and non-work-based factors, providing a fresh perspective on our understanding of organizational behavior. The concept of job embeddedness was first proposed by American psychologist Mitchell in 2001 and introduced into employee active resignation research. A study by Mitchell (2001) found that job embeddedness is more predictive of employee turnover than traditional attitude variables. JE comprises three dimensions: fit, links, and sacrifice. Ng and Feldman (2009) describes the organizational fit as “the degree of similarity or compatibility between the individual and organizational culture, overlap between the individual abilities and organizational demands, and match between individual interests and organizational rewards”. According to Felps et al. (2009), “fit is the individual’s perceived compatibility with the organization and with the community. The fit is defined as an employee’s perceived compatibility or comfort with an organization and with his or her environment”. According to the theory, an employee’s personal values, career goals, and plans for the future must “fit” with the larger corporate culture and the demands of his or her immediate job (e.g. job knowledge, skills, and abilities) We posit that the better the fit, the higher the likelihood that an employee will feel professionally and personally tied to the organization. Poor person–organizational fit, employees are likely to leave the organization. A person’s fit with the job and organization relates to attachments to the organization. Links are the formal or informal connections between a person, institutions, or other people (Lee, Mitchell, Sablynski, Burton, & Holtom, 2017; Mitchell, Holtom, Lee, Sablynski, & Erez, 2001). JE theory proposes that a number of links attach an employee his or her family together, that includes coworkers and non-work friends, groups, and the community in which he or she lives. The greater the number of links between the individual and the web and the more important those links is, the more a worker is bound to the job, the supervisor, and entities in the organizations such as teams (Lee et al., 2004; Mitchell et al., 2001). Sacrifice refers to the ease with which the links can be broken upon quitting work or moving to another home or community. It is the perceived cost of material and psychological benefits that would be given up upon leaving the job or community (Ng & Feldman, 2009). It is the opportunity cost of turnover, which is the perceived cost of physical or psychological convenience sacrificed when leaving a current job. Sacrifice is the perceived cost of material or psychological benefits that may be forfeited by leaving one’s job. Leaving an organization likely promises personal losses (Shaw, Delery, Jenkins, & Gupta, 1998; Taunton, Boyle, Woods, Hansen, & Bott, 1997). Job embeddedness has positive and important effects for organizations, but it is one of constructions the least studied in the education system. Managers can by taking strategies identify ways of influencing job embeddedness on organizational variables and use its results in line with organizational interests. In industrial and organizational psychology, organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) is a person's voluntary commitment within an organization or company that is not part of his or her contractual tasks. Organizational citizenship behavior has been studied since the late 1970s. Over the past three decades, interest in these behaviors has increased substantially. Organizational behavior has been linked to overall organizational effectiveness, thus these types of employee behaviors have important consequences in the workplace. Organ's (1988) definition of OCB has generated a great deal of criticism. The very nature of the construct makes it difficult to operationally define. Critics started questioning whether or not OCBs, as defined by Organ, were discretionary in nature. Organ (1997), in response to criticisms, notes that since his original definition, jobs have moved away from a clearly defined set of tasks and responsibilities and have evolved into much more ambiguous roles. Without a defined role, it quickly becomes difficult to define what is discretionary. Job performance assesses whether a person performs a job well. Job performance, studied academically as part of industrial and organizational psychology, also forms a part of human resources management. Performance is an important criterion for organizational outcomes and success. job performance as an individual-level variable, or something a single person does. This differentiates it from more encompassing constructs such as organizational performance or national performance, which are higher-level variables. Thus purpose this research was the effect of job embeddedness on organizational citizenship behavior and job performance in teachers. Research type was descriptive correlation and statistical population consisted all of secondary school teachers in Najaf Abad in academic years 2019-20 (N=1064) that by using Monte-Carlo and stratified randomized sampling 270 ones were chosen as sample. To gathering data’s used from three questionnaire job embeddedness in 12 items, organizational citizenship behavior in 15 items and job performance in 27 items in form of a five-degree Likert spectrum. Content & construction validity was used to measure questionnaires validity. Questionnaires reliability through Cronbach alpha coefficient obtained equal to 0.74 for job embeddedness, 0.88 for organizational citizenship behavior and 0.82 for job performance. Data’s analysis done in descriptive level (frequency, percentage, mean & standard deviation) and inferential level (one sample t-test, regression coefficient & structural equation modeling) by using Spss22 & Amos Graphic software’s. Finding showed mean of all of job embeddedness, organizational citizenship behavior and job performance in different components were bigger than average. Regression coefficient showed that job embeddedness have capability both organizational citizenship behavior and job performance in teachers. Path analysis showed that the effects of job embeddedness on organizational citizenship behavior and job performance in teachers are positive and significant.