Does Perceived Organizational Politics Mediate the Relationship between Job Satisfaction and Organizational Citizenship Behavior? Insights from Bangladesh

Abstract

Purpose: This study mainly aims to investigate the connection between job satisfaction and organizational citizenship behavior of bank employee. Another objective of this study is to check out the mediating impact of perceived organizational politics of bank personnel on the connection between their job happiness and citizenship behavior. Research design, data and methodology: Snowball sampling is utilized in this study, which is done among bank personnel at different public and private banks across north-eastern region of Bangladesh as well as information is accumulated through the use of a five-point Likert-scale questionnaire. IBM SPSS v22, Andrew F. Hayes process macro v3.5 and SmartPLS 3 are used to complete descriptive and inferential statistics. Results: The study results explore that employees' political perception has a negative influence on organizational citizenship behavior where bank employees' job happiness has a positive impact on structural citizenship manners and negative impact on perceived organizational politics. Surprisingly, perceptions of organizational politics were found to have an insignificant mediating effect on the connection between job satisfaction and organizational citizenship behavior. Conclusions: The present study reveals that satisfied bank personnel shows positive and constructive actions toward their organization where their political perception has an insignificant mediation.

1. Introduction

Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) has become an important issue in the business world because it has the potentiality to improve the efficacy and efficiency of individual employees, work groups, and the entire organization as well as job satisfaction (JS) has substantial positive association with structural citizenship manner which is another subject of this study and this association has recently been discovered to be proven (Intaraprasong et al., 2012; Podsakoff & MacKenzie, 1997; Prasetio et al., 2017; Talachi et al., 2014). Meanwhile, there is no single study on examining the action of perceived organizational politics (POP) in mediating the link between work satisfaction and citizenship conduct. As a result, this study aims to extend the prevailing literature by revisiting the existing liaison between employment contentment and citizenship behavior and newly examining the intervening effect of POP on occupation satisfaction and citizenship actions.

The Perception of Organizational Politics (POP) indicates employees’ behavior that is completely self- serving, contradictory to organizational objectives, mission and vision. In recent times, POP has become worthy business issue as well as threat to business success, since it shapes a number of unexpected eye-catching organizational outcomes like employees’ job burnout, job displeasure, and turnover objectives (Chang et al., 2009; Meisler et al., 2020; Miller et al., 2008). Over the last three decades, political behavior of employees has drawn the attention of researchers and practitioners, leading to a number of significant studies on perception of organizational politics and its associated dimensions of business. Organizational politics, according to a number of experts, can be characterized as improper activity by employees in order to obtain personal benefits rather than administrative paybacks at the price of organizational resources (Beehr & Gilmore 1995; Ferris et al., 2000; Khan et al., 2019; Mansbridge, 2018). When, Nica et al. (2016) stated that Organizational Politics is a perception of a political environment in which employees are more concerned with self-service than with organizational well- being. Hence, POP is a type of employee emotion that directs employees to be more self-centered, and it has a number of dysfunctional effects, such as turnover, absenteeism, job burnout, and job dissatisfaction (Chughtai, 2013; Shaikh et al., 2020).

Job satisfaction is an emotional response of employees toward their jobs that results from an evaluation of all job characteristics, such as financial and non-financial rewards, supervisor’s co-operation, relationship with co-workers, and opportunity to promotion, organizational development, job security, etc. “Cranny et al. have stated that job contentment means the emotional reaction of a worker has towards his/her job after a comparison of the outputs he/she expects or desires with real outputs” (1992). Employees' inner fulfillment and enjoyment when they complete a specific assigned task can be defined as job satisfaction (Swaminathan & Jawahar, 2013). On the other hand, according to Scanlan and Still (2019), employees’ job satisfaction derives from supportive colleagues, low levels of work stress, supportive supervisor, and promotional opportunity. The term “Job Satisfaction” indicates affirmative feelings, emotional response, and happiness of employees toward their job that results from evaluation of a number of job characteristics (Awal et al., 2020; Mousazadeh et al., 2018). Job Satisfaction explores some important work behavior, such as employees’ citizenship behavior, absenteeism, intention to leave, etc. (Mount, 2006; Tazekand, 2013). According to Akter et al. (2017), employees’ job satisfaction is characterized by a number of factors like job security, working conditions, supervisor quality, and promotional opportunity, and the level of job satisfaction is positively co-related with employees’ performance as well as organization’s overall success.

An organization is a group of people who work together to achieve a common goal in order to reach the organizational mission and vision. It also denotes a location or an institution where individuals collaborate to collect necessary resources in order to achieve a given goal in a logical manner while maintaining a system. (Utami, 2021). Surprisingly, a lot of research has been done over the last four decades to observe the nature, antecedents, and effects of organizational citizenship conduct. Citizenship actions clearly indicate unrestricted employees’ work behavior that results in their effective and spontaneous performance of organizational functions (Klotz et al., 2017; Organ et al., 2006). “Organ argues that organizational citizenship behavior has five key dimensions including conscientiousness (e.g., working hard), sportsmanship (e.g., being positive at work even when times are tough), civic virtue (e.g., engaging in the life of the organization), courtesy (e.g., respecting the rights of coworkers), and altruism (e.g., helping others)” (1988). Actually, citizenship manner of employees explores the complete unofficial and informal support of employees toward the achievement of organizational objectives out of their daily routine job (Organ, 2018).

This study primarily aims to add something new to the current literature on the subject and offer strong recommendations for practitioners, academics, and policymakers to fill in genuine knowledge gaps, keeping the following objectives in mind.

The study has the following objectives:

A. Examine the association between job pleasure an d citizens' organizational behavior and; B. Inspect the mediating impact of supposed organi

B. Inspect the mediating impact of supposed organi zational politics in connection with occupation s atisfaction and organizational citizen behavior of bank personnel.

2. Literature Review and Hypotheses

2.1. Theoretical Underpinning

To understand the conceptual paradigm of an individual’s attitude and behavior in his or her work setting, the Social Exchange Theory (SET) is widely employed (Khan et al., 2019; Tahlil, 2016). The above-mentioned theory can be used to explain the relationship between job happiness and corporate citizenship. SET tells us that employees try to establish an exchange based relationship with their superior and organization on the basis of trust, loyalty and mutual commitment (Emerson, 1976).

On the other hand, Job Demands-Resources (J-DR) Model reveals that employees’ negative work behavior results from unfavorable working conditions, but if resources are available to employees, this problem will not be extreme (Bakker & Demerouti, 2007). “Crawford et al. have discovered that employees will be more conscious of performing jobs out of their formal work assignment if they know that procedural justice of their organization has a connection with politics” (2010). This study applies Job Demands-Resources (J-DR) Model to connect-rephrase corporate citizenship action with awareness of business politics.

2.2. The Relationship between Employment Happiness and Perceived Business Politics

Previously, several studies looked into the relationship between perceived corporate politics and job satisfaction. Yusof et al. (2018) have found that POP and job happiness have a significant negative association, and another study revealed that employee work satisfaction is negatively impacted by perceived corporate politics, though this relationship is moderated by psychological outcome (Abbas et al., 2012). Employees’ perceived organizational politics is a negative predictor to their level of employment satisfaction (Chang et al., 2009).

As a result of the aforementioned findings, the following hypothesis is proposed:

H1: Employment pleasure/satisfaction is negatively influenced by perceived organizational politics

2.3. An Association between Perception of Corporate Politics and Citizenship Behavior

Mensah (2013) revealed that the established connection flanked by employees’ citizenship action and understanding of institutional politics is strongly negative. Another study explored that organizational citizenship conduct and perceived organizational politics have a negative association, which is moderated by two types of resources, one of which is contextual, and the other is personal (Clercq & Belausteguigoitia, 2017). They also concluded that the adverse outcome of corporate politics can easily be mitigated by means of accelerating contextual as well as personal resources. At the same time, Hsiung et al. (2012) conducted an empirical study and found that it is still unclear what the linkage is concerning perception of business politics and employees’ citizenship conduct. As such, POP may have a positive or negative impact on OCB.

Accordingly, the second hypothesis is to evaluate the link between understanding corporate politics and corporate citizenship deeds in light of the aforementioned literature review is as follows:

H2: Employees' organizational citizenship conduct is negatively influenced by perceived organizational politics.

2.4. The Relationship between Occupational Satisfaction and Company Citizenship Comportments

George and Jones (2012) have examined the relationship between job satisfaction and organizational citizenship behavior and found that employees’ job satisfaction is highly co-related with their OCB. Another critical study has found that job satisfaction has a significant impact on corporate citizenship behavior and has a positive relationship with it (Indahyati & Sintaasih, 2019). Job satisfaction, corporate citizenship activities, and employee performance all have a favorable correlation, according to a recent study (Gunay, 2018). “Organ & Ryan showed that there is a strong positive association between job satisfaction and the factors such as courtesy, gentleman ship, civic virtue affecting organizational citizenship behavior” (1995). A number of researchers have had previously supported the idea of a constructive bond in the middle of work satisfaction and company citizenship actions (Gurbuz & Yuksel, 2008; Yesilyurt & Kocak, 2014).

After reviewing the above literature, this study has developed the following hypothesis between job satisfaction and institutional citizenship manners:

H3: Employees’ job satisfaction has an affirmative and noteworthy impact on business citizenship activities.

2.5. Mediating Effect of Perception of Business Politics on Employment Satisfaction and Corporate Citizenship Manners

Many studies have revealed that corporate politics is a negative factor in motivating employees to conduct informal job assignments outside of their normal work routine in order to achieve organizational goals, which is frequently referred to as business citizenship movements (Chang et al., 2012; Parker et al., 1995). Another study has also found that organizational citizenship behavior is adversely correlated with perceived organizational politics (Atta & Khan, 2016). At the same time, previous studies have shown that employee work satisfaction is inversely related to their views on company politics. Hassan et al. (2017) explored that job satisfaction is adversely associated with perceived organizational politics.

After reading the literature on the study issues in depth, it is clear that no single study has ever been done to investigate the mediating effect of employees' views about business politics on the relationship between professional fulfillment and the OCB relationship. So this research mainly attempts to fulfill the above indicated gap to extend the standing works. The last hypothesis of this study is as follows:

H4: The association between career satisfaction and corporate citizenship deeds is significantly mediated by awareness of institutional politics.

Figure 1: Theoretical Framework

3. Methodology

3.1. Participants

Banks operating in the north-eastern part of Bangladesh (districts including: Jamalpur, Sherpur, Nettrokona and Mymensing) are considered as the study area where virtual snowball sampling technique is used to collect data. Basically, email and social media are used to distribute questionnaire link to respondents. The rationality of choosing Bangladeshi banking sector for the study is that the chosen sector of this country is offering huge employment opportunity and success or failure of it partially depends on employee’s satisfaction, citizenship behavior and their political perception.

Total 239 respondents have responded during the period from 20 June 2021 to 30 June 2021. By checking out, outliers and disengagement, a total 227 responses have been selected for descriptive and inferential analysis.

3.2. Measures

All the items of questionnaire have taken from previously published work in this domain.

3.2.1. Measurement of Job Satisfaction

Job satisfaction of bank employees as the study subject is measured with 6-item scale suggested by Agho et al. (1992), and Brayfield and Rothe (1951). These 6 items are (1) “I find real enjoyment in my job” (2) “I like my job better than the average person” (3) “I am seldom bored with my job” (4) “I would not consider taking another kind of job” ( 5 ) “ Most days I am enthusiastic about my job” and (6) “I feel fairly well satisfied with my job”. The responses to all of the questions are on a five-point scale going from "strongly agree" to "strongly disagree." The six items are rated on a five-factor Likert scale ranging from "Strongly disagree" to "Strongly agree", where 1 indicates “Strongly Disagree”, 2 indicates “Disagree”, 3 indicates “Neutral”, 4 indicates “Agree” and 5 indicates “Strongly Agree”.

3.2.2. Measurement of Organizational Citizenship Behavior

Employees’ citizenship manner is measured with 23 items previously used by Nawaser et al. (2015). These 23 items are divided into the following 6 dimensions: 1. Civil participation (from item 1 to 4); 2. Tolerability (from item 5 to 8); 3. Dutifulness (from item 9 to 12); 4. Sacrifice (from item 13 to 16); 5. Respect (from item 17 to 20); and 6. Loyalty (from item 21 to 23). The sample items from the first, second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth dimensions are respectively as follows: “I try to preserve popularity and reputation of my organization”, “I respect others' right in using common resources like organizational facilities”, “I don't use illegal and illicit techniques to influence and control clients”, “I allocate time willingly for helping my coworkers who have job problems”, “I pay attention to effects of my behavior on my coworkers”, and “I am committed to my organization's mission”. All the items to measure organizational citizenship behavior are evaluated using a five-factor Likert scale ranging from "strongly disagree" to "strongly agree": 1 represents "Strongly Disagree," 2 represents "Disagree," 3 represents "Neutral," 4 represents "Agree," and 5 represents "Strongly Agree."

3.2.3. Measurement of Perceived Organizational Politics

Employees' perceptions of institutional politics are studied by means of 15 items with three dimensions of an extended model of political perception re-developed and used by Kacmar and Carlson (1997) that had previously been created by Kacmar and Ferris (1991) “General Political Behavior” is the first dimension where one sample item is “There has always been an influential group in this department that no one ever crosses”. “Go Along to Get Ahead” is the second dimension where one sample item is “Sometimes it is easier to remain quiet than to fight the system”. Finally, “Pay and Promotion Policies” is the third dimension where one sample item scale is “Since I have worked in this department, I have never seen the pay and promotion policies applied politically”. All of the 15 items are measured with the help of five points Likert scale ranging from “Strongly disagree” to “Strongly agree”: 1 for “Strongly Disagree”, 2 for “Disagree”, 3 for “Neutral”, 4 for “Agree”, and 5 for “Strongly Agree”.

4. Analysis and Discussion

For the purpose of data analysis and exploring results, IBM SPSS v22, Process Macro v3.5 by Andrew F. Hayes, and SmartPLS 3 are used properly. Analysis part of this paper is divided into two parts including descriptive and inferential.

4.1. Descriptive Statistics

In this section, demographic characteristics of the participants are investigated and explained. SPSS-v22 is used to generate all of the information for descriptive statistics. To begin, the analysis' findings look at descriptive statistics of participants based on their gender. Out of 227 participants, 70-percent male and 30 percent female have participated in this study.

The data analysis result depicts descriptive statistics of study participants based on total time duration they have spent in their current position. It is seen that 84.1 percent of the participants have less than 15 years of working experience while 15 percent of the participants have less than 25 years and only 0.9-percent of the participants have less than 35 years of operational involvement.

The outcomes of the investigation reveal that the most opinions received from the 155 participants whose age is less than 55 years comparing to 39 respondents participated in this study are less than 35 years old. At the same time, 33 participants that make up 14.5 percent of total respondents are less than 65 years old.

Finally, study result explores the descriptive statistics of participants according to their gross salary scale. 174 participants (76.7%) earned a monthly salary below TK. 75,000, 36 participants (15.9%) received a monthly salary below TK. 55,000, and lastly 17 participants (7.5%) received a monthly salary below TK. 35,000.

4.2. Inferential Statistics

4.2.1. Reliability and Validity Analysis 

To ensure validity and reliability, Table 1 shows the results of composite reliability, average variance extracted (AVE), and Cronbach’s Alpha. According to Hair et al. (2014), the acceptable value of composite reliability and Cronbach’s Alpha is larger than 0.70, and the standard result of AVE to confirm convergent validity is 0.50 or more. Table 1 presents the acceptable outcomes of composite reliability, AVE, and Cronbach’s Alpha for all measures of the study model. Table 1 shows that measurement model of this study is statistically valid and it has internal consistency (See Table 1 below).

Table 1: Reliability and Validity Analysis of Measurement Model

From Table 2, it can be seen that among the three variables of the hypothetical model of this study, an affirmative and significant association has extrapolated between job contentment and corporate citizenship actions (r: 0.711; p<0.05). On the other hand, perceived organizational politics is negatively and significantly related with dependent (r:-.249; p<0.05) and independent variables (r:-.223; p<0.05). The square root of AVE is compared to co-relation from latent variables to verify discriminant validity. To confirm discriminant validity, the square root of AVE must be greater than the latent variable correlations.

Table 2 shows that discriminant validity is explored among three variables of the study model. More specifically, square root of AVE of job satisfaction is 0.775, which is greater than the co-relation between JS and OCB (R: 0.711) and is also greater than the correlation between job satisfaction and POP (R: -.223). On the other hand, the square roots of AVE of POP and OCB are 0.875 and 0.713, respectively, which are higher than the correlation between POP and OCB (R:-.249). Therefore, observed data has discriminant validity (See Table 2 below).

Table 2: Mean, Standard Deviation, Correlation and Square Root of AVE

With help of SmartPLS 3, the indicators remaining after observing component matrix are used to develop the structural model among the latent variables. The indicators with value of less than 0.40 can be discarded from the latent variable (Kacmar & Carlson, 1997). According to this cut-off point, the items (indicators) 1 & 3 have been discarded from job satisfaction scale as an independent variable. Items 3, 7, 8, 10 & 11 have been removed from perceived organizational politics scale as a mediating variable. On the other hand, items 1, 2, 3, 4, 10, 14, 15, 17 & 22 have been deleted from organizational citizenship behavior scale as a dependent variable.

Figure 2: Structural Equation Model

To test the hypotheses, this study has used regression analysis (PROCESS MACRO v3.5 by Andrew F. Hayes), and the analyzed results are given below.

4.2.2. Testing Hypothesis-One Table 3 displays that co

Table 3 displays that co-efficient value between institutional politics and work fulfillment is negative (β:- .1077). This result indicates that POP has an adverse consequence on employment happiness, and this negative relationship is statistically significant (p<0.05). This finding supports hypothesis-1 stated earlier that employees perception of company politics has a statistically important & negative influence on their work contentment. More broadly, the above finding states that if bankers are dissatisfied with their jobs in terms of pay, work-life balance, promotion, supervision, and so on, they always think about self-service, personal benefits rather than organizational benefits, which is known as perceived organizational politics (See Table 3 below).

Table 3: The Consequence of Occupational Pleasure on Perceived Institutional Politics

Note: JS-Job Satisfaction, LLCI-Lower Level Confidence Interval, ULCI- Upper Level Confidence Interval, df-Degrees of Freedom, MSE- Mean Squared Error, Se-Standard Error.

4.2.3. Testing Hypothesis-Two & Three

Table 4 shows the results of the regression model that explores the co-efficient between employees’ citizenship conduct with job satisfaction and their politics perception. From the model summary, r-squared value indicates that 51.42 percent data fits the regression model. A higher r squared value is necessary to ensure a better fit of the model. From table 4, it can be seen that employment satisfaction has positive and significant impact on organizational citizenship behavior (β: .6443; p<0.05; LLCI: .5563; ULCI: .7322). Thus, this result supports hypothesis-3 that job satisfaction has positive influence on organizational citizenship behavior. The correlation between perceived organizational politics and organizational citizenship conduct, on the other hand, is negative (β: -.1838), and this finding satisfies hypothesis-2 because the existing co-efficient between POP and OCB is statistically significant (P<0.05).

Table 4: The Consequence of Personnel Job Satisfaction and Their Political Viewpoint on Citizenship Deeds OUTCOME VARIABLE:

From the above findings, it can simply be determined that if the bank staffs are well gratified in their jobs, they will show OCB where they work hard, help co-workers, remain positive at work even when times are tough, and give unofficial support to fulfill organizational objectives out of their official work assignment. But if the employees have clear perception about organizational politics (giving full priority on fulfilling personal interest with the cost of organization rather than achieving organizational objectives), they will not show citizenship behavior in their workplace.

Note: JS-Job Satisfaction, POP-Perceived Organizational Politics, LLCI-Lower Level Confidence Interval, ULCI- Upper Level Confidence Interval, df-Degrees of Freedom, MSE-Mean Squared Error, SE-Standard Error.

4.2.4. Testing Hypothesis-Four

Table 5 basically shows the result regarding hypothesis 4 which is concerned with examining mediating effect of staffs’ political viewpoint on the relationship between occupational happiness and their citizenship movements. Here, the indirect consequence of employment gratification on OCB (mediated by POP) is positive but insignificant (IE=-0.0198 and BootSE=0.0258) since lower level confidence interval is less than zero (-0.0054). According to Hair et al. (2016), if the VAF (Variance Accounted For) is less than 20 percent, there is no mediation; if it is greater than 20 percent but less than 80 percent, there is partial mediation; whereas complete mediation is indicated by a VAF of more than 80 percent. Nitzl and Hirsch (2016) stated that VAF is the ratio between indirect to total effect of mediation. Since VAF, in this study, is less than 20% (- .64.43%), there is zero or insignificant mediating effect in this study. Precisely, POP has an insignificant mediation the job satisfaction and OCB relationship. So hypothesis 4 is not supported by the study result (See Table 5 below).

Table 5: Total, Direct and Indirect Effects of X on Y

Note: LLCI-Lower Level Confidence Interval, ULCI- Upper Level Confidence Interval, MSE-Mean Squared Error, SE-Standard Erro

5. Discussion and Conclusions

This research adds new insights to the existing literature by examining the mediating effect of perceived company politics on the relationship between employees' professional happiness and their citizenship behaviors in the Bangladeshi banking industry through focusing on banks operating north-eastern part of this country. By considering theoretical model, the prevailing study result extends existing literature. The current study findings indicate that work fulfilment is affirmatively and meaningfully co-related with employees’ citizenship behavior in the banking industry of Bangladesh. If employees of a bank are satisfied with his or her job characteristics such as task and duties, compensation, advancement, bonding with colleagues, and quality of supervisors, they perform their routine job out of their formal tasks and duties mentioned in the job description. “Yesilyurt and Kocak argues that there is a positive connection between work happiness and organizational citizenship behavior among an organization's employees” (2014). The outcomes of this paper also reveal that employees’ political insight has an unfavorable influence on employees’ work satisfaction and on their corporate citizenship behavior (Atta & Khan, 2016; Clercq & Belausteguigoitia, 2017; Hassan et al., 2017). However, the new finding from this research is that the connection between staffs’ occupational pleasures with their citizenship activities isn’t mediated by bank employees’ perception of organizational politics. This study mainly tries to address two objectives. The

This study mainly tries to address two objectives. The first objective is to look into the connection between work satisfaction and organizational citizenship behavior, while the secondary goal is to look into the intervening role of perceived institutional politics in an association in the middle of job happiness and organizational citizenship activity. To fulfill these two objectives, this article uses only primary data, which are collected from 239 bank employees working in the north-eastern part of Bangladesh using a five point Likert scale questionnaire. Collected primary data of 227 respondents after screening initially are analyzed by using a number of methodological studies such as correlations, regression (process macro v3.5 by Andrew F. Hayes), and descriptive statistics. Data analysis explored that bank personnel’s job gratification has a statistically significant and favorable impact on their citizenship engagements, while perceived organizational politics has no mediating effect between work happiness and citizenship conduct association.

Process macro analysis shows that professional gratification has a statistically substantial and negative impact on professed business politics that has a harmful and significant effect on structural citizenship behavior of the bank employees in Bangladesh.

This paper tries to draw the attention of the bank authorities and financial policymakers on the basis of the study findings to offer a number of suggestions to boost employees’ citizenship behavior : (a) ensure bank employees’ job satisfaction at their workstation by offering an attractive compensation package, confirming comfortable work environment, establishing fair promotion policy, developing good relationship with co-workers, improving quality of supervision which ultimately boost employees’ citizenship behavior within organization; (b) suppress organizational politics and its various dimension to increase bank employees’ level of job satisfaction and ultimately boost their citizenship behavior.

5.1. Practical Implication of the Study

The findings of this study may be helpful to the human resource manager of banking and other sectors to increase employees’ citizenship behavior by uplifting their level of job satisfaction and by suppressing their political attitude in their workplace. Hopefully, the findings of this study will assist banking policymakers in reducing staff turnover and absenteeism while also enhancing employee productivity, work engagement, and corporate responsibility.

5.2. Research Limitation and Forthcoming Investigation Directions

This study is conducted at different private and government banks operating in north-eastern part of Bangladesh. Insufficient time and budget are the main barriers for not being able to prepare this article on all banks operating in Bangladesh. Therefore, the study results may not be the mirror of real scenario of all banks in Bangladesh completely. That’s why, future researchers are highly encouraged to conduct more theoretical and empirical studies on the similar issues focusing on all banks operating in Bangladesh.