Investigation of procrastination prevalence and its causes among university managers and employees

The objective of this study is to measure procrastination prevalence and investigate its likely causes. For this purpose, a sample of 133 managers and employees of a large Iranian university was randomly selected. Appropriate statistical analysis including One-sample T-test, ANOVA, and Friedman were utilized to analyze research data that was gathered by Tuchman questionnaire as well as relative cause factors questionnaire. The result of our research shows that the prevalence of procrastination among managers and employees under study account for 17.6%. However, no significant differences exist among managers and employees of different ages, educational background, job position and tenure. It was also noticed that there is a significant difference of procrastination prevalence between different genders. Furthermore, the findings of this research show that among 20 factors classified as personal, organizational and environmental, personal factors appear to be the main cause of procrastination prevalence. According to the findings, lack of work preference (personal factors), weakness of organizational performance appraisal (organizational factors), and family problems (environmental factors), are the most important factors that cause procrastination.