The Effect of Demographic Characteristics on Organizational Citizenship Behavior in the Selected Teaching Hospitals in Tehran

.


INTRODUCTION
Competition plays a significant role in the survival and success of organizations.Optimization of the function and performance of staff have become a major consideration.Despite the vast application of recent information in technology, studies show that organizations still encounter problems with the efficient and accurate functioning of various departments.It is strongly believed that the optimal performance of organizations will be attained if the staffs perform beyond their defined duties (Kakhaki and Gholipour, 2007).
In the past, the functions of employees, based on the viewpoints of the classic schools of thought in management, were evaluated based on the job description and the duties employees were expected to perform.However, nowadays their functions are evaluated according to their performance in the organization and what they do beyond that which is an enforceable requirement of the job description (Bolino and Turnley, 2003).This suggests that when employees perceive that they are well-treated and participated in the organization's destiny; they will be obliged, in return, to exert extra efforts or perform non-required behaviors *Corresponding author.E-mail: irankandi@yahoo.com.
within an organization.It is also predictable that employees do demonstrate more cooperative and collaborative behaviors, or become supporters of their supervisors (Organ, 1988(Organ, , 1990)).Empirical research on ethical leadership also supports the importance of manager trustworthiness for discretionary citizenship behaviors (Chiaburu and Audrey, 2008).By Organ's (1988) definition, that OCB consists of positive types of behavior that are not part of the formal job description, OCB should be limited to extra-role behaviors.It is also defined as individual's behavior that is discretionary not directly or explicitly recognized by the formal reward system, and that promotes the effective functioning of the organization.Podsakoff et al. (2009) believes that the organization will benefit from encouraging employees to be engaged in OCB, because it has shown to increase productivity, efficiency and customer satisfaction, and reduce costs and rates of turnover and absenteeism.
Though OCB is a spontaneous initiative taken by staff, you are able to promote OCB in your workplace through employee motivation, as well as giving them the opportunity to display OCB; that is, creating a workplace environment that not only allows for, but is conducive and supportive of OCB (Organ et al., 2006).Kadar Khan and Abdul Rashid (2012) in a study provide guidelines to help universities to further understand how to encourage OCB among academicians.Also Chowdhury (2013) believes that in today's business OCB can play an important role in sustainability of the organizations.
There are conceptual similarities and differences between the various forms of OCB constructs in literature (Organ et al., 2006;Deww, 2011); however, research findings have categorized the constructs into seven categories (Podsakoff et al. ,2000) as follows: 1. "Helping behaviors", firstly related to helping other employees voluntarily including mediating, encouraging and/or showing philanthropic behaviors (Podsakoff et al.,2000) and the secondly to helping others overcome job difficulties (MacKenzie et al.,1993;Gordon, 2009;Yiing and Zaman, 2009).2. "Sportsmanship" Organ (1990) defined it as employees' willingness to tolerate less-than-ideal organizational circumstance without complaining (Castro et al. ,2004) and blowing problems out of proportion .Mackenzi (1993) and Podsakoff (2000) have elaborated on the significance and the consequences of sportsmanship in comparison with other behavioral dimensions of OCB. 3. "Organizational loyalty" consists of loyal boosterism and organizational loyalty (Graham, 1989) spreading goodwill and protecting the organization (George and Brief, 1992) and endorsing, supporting, as well as defending organizational objective constructs (Borman and Motowidlo, 1993;Hrebiniak and Allutto,1973). 4. "Organizational obedience" or compliance has been under investigation for a long time.This dimension shows how well the employees have internalized and followed the organization's rules, regulations and even bylaws to the extent that even in case that nobody may observe them, they would follow the rules (Graham, 1991).5. "Individual initiative" has been identified by many researchers as a dimension that shows the voluntary acts of creativity designed to enhance one's performance.It is similar to what Organ (1988) calls conscientiousness constructs.6. "Citizens" of an organization or civic virtue; ( Gelfand et al. ,2007) shows the commitment and interest of employees to the organization as a whole and their willingness to participate in meetings, especially decisionmaking meetings as well as monitoring the environment to recognize the threats and opportunities in the organization.There have been great relation between this item and items such as identity (Zarea, 2012;Aube et al.,2007) 7. "Self-development" is defined as the personal development of the employees to improve their skills, knowledge and abilities to the benefit of the organization (George and Brief, 1992).Graham (1991) has mentioned 3 dimensions of OCB: (1) organizational obedience (2) organization loyalty and (3) organizational participations.She describes the third one as "interest in organizational affairs guided by ideal standards of virtue, validated by keeping informed and expressed through full and responsible involvement in organizational governance" (Gelfand et al., 2007).This dimension is very close to the civic virtue.Other two commonly cited antecedents to OCB (Borman and Motowidlo, 1993) are as follows: 1. Employee work attitudes: Research shows that there is a meaningful relation between justice and a person ' s perception of fairness and manifestation of behavior based on OCB (Rezaian, 2006).2.Employee personality traits : Some personality researchers believe that we can describe personality based on the big five framework (BFF) (Costa and McRae,1992).They believe there is a meaningful relationship between OCB and, (1) openness to experience, (2) conscientiousness, (3) extraversion, (4) agreeableness and (5) neuroticism.Furthermore, People tend to be more cooperative and cautious on the probable problems where technology is used less extensively (Moorman and Blakely, 1995).Moorman and Blakely (1995) believe that the individualism-collective dimension is strongly related to OCB dimensions in an accounting environment setting.Susanti and Joni (2007) show that individualismcollectivism's dimension is positively related with OCB dimensions.This result supports the previous research conducted by Moorman and Blakely (1995).According to the studies, collectivists' norms and values (but not beliefs) are correlated with higher levels of employees' performance of OCB (Izzo and Withers, 2001;Hofstede, 1984).

The main approaches in defining OCB
The literature review of OCB shows two main approaches: (a) reciprocal commitment and (b) non-pre-fabricated intensives.Individuals differ from one another in forming relationship and reciprocal values.As employees who are suspicious of their fellow-workers try to take advantage of the situation for their personal interests, therefore, they become reluctant to be involved in OCB (Van Dyne et al., 1994).Moorman et al. (1993) suggest that the use of fair treatment and fair procedures may be a key antecedent to promoting OCB performance.Meyer et al. (2002) in a meta-analysis show that normative commitment, i.e. the cognitive sense of belongingness to an organization, based on the evaluation of relative individual versus organizational investment has a strong predictive effect on positive jobrelated behaviors , such as OCB.They believe that the high-ranking employees have more commitment to the organization than the low-ranking ones.According to Hrebiniak and Allutto (1973), the high-ranking jobs are associated with independence, chances for more interactions and having a role in decision-making processes.These behaviors increase one ' s commitment to the organization.

OCB and globalization
In developing countries where great improvement is of high importance, organizations have to pave the way in a way that all employees including high and low ranking ones are inclined to improve the standards of the organizations.
Organizations can attain such advancement better and faster when the principles pertaining to OCB are identified and the necessary requirements for implementation of these principles are provided (Rezaian, 2006;Organ and Ryan, 1995).In most countries, some dimensions of OCB are recognized and implemented.However, the identification of all of the required dimensions is necessary to help employees demonstrate their capabilities in all antecedents of OCB (Wanxian and Weiwu, 2006).
Research pertaining to cross-cultural differences show the difference between the perception of OCB dimensions among different nationalities (Blakely et al., 2005).There have been many studies showing the meaningful relationship between demographic variables, including age (Griffin, 2003); job position; (lam et al.,1999;Morrison,1994); and sex (Kidder and McLean Parks, 1993 ;Organ and Ryan ,1995 ;Sun ,2001;Zin-Abadi, 2009); and OCB dimensions.Moreover, other studies have indicated that in countries such as Turkey, where people work collectively (Smith et al., 2006) social relation and helping behaviors of people have a great effect on the improvement of organizations (Gelfand et al., 2007;Katz and Kahn, 1978).In addition, Katz and Kahn (1978) show that collective management has a great influence on blue-collar employees.Helping behaviors make white-collar employees more optimistic to equity, justice and fairness.Another study by Wanxian and Weiwu (2006) in China shows that supervisors who are aware of principles of OCB demonstrate more commitment to the organization.Abdul Rahman (2012) and Mohamed Abdalla et al. (2013) show the effect of sex, marital status, age, academic qualification, duration of service and monthly income on OCB.
There is still much more to know about the impact of OCB on the success of organizations.The present study aims to investigate OCB in some selected hospitals in Tehran.The research question is as follows: Is there a significant relation between OCB dimensions and some demographic characteristics (including sex, marital status, academic qualification, type of profession, age, salary and wages, ethnicity, type of employment, department/office, job position, and duration of employment,)?

MATERIALS AND METHODS
This is a descriptive-analytical study in which the OCB criteria were used to determine the association between OCB and demographic characteristics of the employees in the selected hospitals.There are some training hospitals in different districts of Tehran.The main two medical universities under which many teaching hospitals work in Tehran are Tehran and Shahid Beheshti.In order to reduce factors that could bias the results of the test and also to assure a good representation of each part of the population, the sample selection was carried out in two stages 1) Cluster sampling 2) Simple random sampling.Based on cluster sampling five teaching hospitals from different districts were chosen.According to Krejcie and Morgan table from among 9449 hospital staff 368 people were randomly chosen and the questionnaires based on SRS method were distributed among the selected people.The sample subjects were the staff members of 6 teaching hospitals in Tehran including Imam Khomeini, Hazrat Rasool, Valiasr, Modares, Tala-ghani and ShohadaTajrish hospitals.
From 9449 employees on the selected hospitals, 368 people were selected as the sample size.(Out of 368 questionnaires distributed, 333 (90%) were filled out and collected).The instrument used in this study to arrive at an OCB score for each employee was a questionnaire developed by the researchers.The thirty questions were scored using a Likert scale ranging from 1 to 5. (1=strongly disagree, 2=disagree,3=I have no idea, 4=agree, 5=strongly agree).The validity of the questionnaire was confirmed by the academic staff of Tehran and Shahid Beheshti universities of medical sciences.The reliability of the questionnaire was obtained through split-half method.The questionnaire was given to 30 staff members and a reliability of 0.919 (based on Cronbach Alpha formula) was arrived at.
The questionnaire was composed of two sections.The first section was related to the demographic characteristics and job information of the employees and the second to the seven OCB dimensions including helping behavior, sportsmanship loyalty, obedience, individual initiative, civic virtue and self-development.In order to emphasize the role of demographic characteristics, one OCB score was arrived at for each employee.In fact, all the dimensions of OCB were not separately analyzed and a mean score was used for each employee.To test the study hypotheses, OCB dimensions were compared with demographic characteristics in the selected hospitals through the use of Kruskal Wallis Test.This test is most commonly used when there is one nominal variable and one measurement variable, and the measurement variable does not meet the normality assumption of an ANOVA.The level of significance was considered α ≤ 0.05.However, in order to double check the result of the comparison one-way ANOVA analysis (P-value ≤ 0.05) was applied to the data too (It is a technique used to compare means of two or more samples _using the F distribution.This technique can be used only for numerical data).There was no difference between the results obtained by one-way ANOVA and Kruskal Wallis Test.

The research hypothesis was as follows
There is a significant relation between demographic characteristics and OCB dimensions (sex, marital status, academic qualification, type of profession, age, salary and wages, ethnicity, type of employment, department/office, job position, and duration of employment,).

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Collected data were analyzed and summarized in Table 1.

Sex
Support was found for the study hypothesis that OCB is closely associated with sex (α≤ 0.040, p<0.05)Zin-Abadi (2009) claims that women teachers feel more responsible in the schools than men and his study shows that commitment to the organization differs from career to career.Rezaian (2006) shows that lack of justice in the organization in dealing with men and women is one of the reasons leads to discouragement of women in performing OCB.Wanxian and Weiwu (2006) maintain that sex, being female, is positively related to in-role citizenship in different enterprises in North China.The study supports the idea that gender is a significant factor in OCB performance and women demonstrate less OCB than men.One reason we can call for the difference between men and women in Iran in this respect can be the fact that women employees do not trust men and because women are skeptical to unfamiliar things they present OCB less than men employees do (Rezaian, 2006).

Marital status
The study supports the idea that married employees have a higher level of commitment to OCB (α≤ 0.047, p<0.05).This notion is justified by this viewpoint that, in general, married people show more commitment to life and work.Robbins and Judge (2009) claim that personal individual characteristics such as age, sex, and marital status affect some variables such as job satisfaction, turnover, and performance.

Academic qualification
The staff members with MS degree had the highest level of presentation of OCB among the employees (α≤ 0.000, p<0.05).To justify the reasons for this difference as a result of the education levels the following points are important: The employees with higher level of education use higher technology at workplace.The reason behind it may be the facts that the more educated the employees are, the more and easier they can use the new technology.To justify the behavior of specialists and PhD holders in not performing OCB, Katz and Kahn (1978), George andBrief (1992), andMackenzie at al. (1993) believe that the volunteer behavior of employees is for self-development.Some PhD holders and specialists seem to be reluctant to learn new things, thereby not volunteer to take part in the development of the organization.
Subcultures are created among different levels of employees.As it was mentioned in the introduction, different cultures lead to different behaviors in the organization.According to sociologists, subcultures are values and norms which are different from what the majorities do.
These subcultures can be identified based on age, gender, race, social class, and some other factors (Rezai and Sabzikaran, 2012;Hoveda and Naderi, 2008).So the formation of some subcultures among specialists may lead to a culture against OCB.Hoveda and Naderi (2008) show that since there is a lot of burden on the shoulders of specialists and educated people from the society, they complain about the problems of everyday life and consequently they do not show sportsmanship in their behaviors.

Types of profession
Among the employees who work according to the three different types of job contracts, those not working on shift working or daily wage-working basis show high levels of OCB performance(α≤ 0.030, p<0.05).Kossek and Michel (2011) maintain that studies show working at night shift, especially rotating shifts or a swing shifts, even when by choice, is generally bad for health due to disruption of sleep patterns; often there is less control over the ability to develop an established sleep schedule and consequently the performance of workers are affected by sleep disruption (Kossek and Michel, 2011).(1994) and Wanxian and Weiwu (2006) who believe that the long period of working experience in the organization has positive effects on the employees' performance.
Since the employees under age 25 present OCB in the lowest level, it can be concluded that age and years of experience play an important role in OCB.The research finding is also in accordance with Yung Chou et al. (2011) who showed that as an IT professional becomes older, he or she demonstrates higher levels of OCB.

Level of salaries and wages
The study shows that the employees who receive more than $450 monthly have the best OCB performance (α≤0.037,p<0.05) and the ones who get less than $150 have the worst OCB performance.Some studies show that the employees who receive more salaries have more job satisfaction and, therefore, have better OCB performance (Marvdasht Azad University, 1998).

Ethnicity
Blakely at al. (2005) show that there is a significant difference between people from different ethnicities on OCB.However, the result of this study doesn't show a significant difference between ethnicity and OCB (α≤ 0.083, p<0.05).The reason may lie in the fact that employees in the selected hospitals have been living for years in Tehran (the capital) and have internalized the general Iranian culture.

Type of Employment
Staff members are employed based on different forms of working contracts.With regard to the ordinal rating, the mean score of employees who work based on periodic contracts is more than the other six groups of employees (α≤ 0.000, p<0.05).The reason for such a high level of OCB performance may be attributed to the fact that they are newly-employed, get relatively good salaries and have recently got more job security.This type of employment is very similar to the situation of a full-time employee.Contrary to the research finding, Stamper and Dyne (2001) claim that part-time employees exhibited less OCB in helping people than full-time employees.

Department/office
The employees who work in the personnel administration office (staff affairs) show the highest level of OCB performance compared to other employees in other 36 workplaces(α≤ 0.000, p<0.05).The reason for which can be attributed to receiving fewer complaints about their jobs and usually having greater freedom of action leading to better presentation of OCB (Lawler,1990).

Job position
The study shows a high correlation between OCB performance and holding top positions, e.g.hospital CEOs (α≤ 0.000, p<0.05).Lawler (1990) says the freedom of choice that high ranking employees have increases the personal desire to monitor the environment and, thereby, to show more commitment to the organization's objectives.Hrebiniak and Allutto's (1973) statement is also in support of the present study's findings.He believes that high job status is associated with independence as well as more interactions with others and that it leads to an increase in commitment to organization (Wanxian and Weiwu, 2006).

Duration of employment/job experience
Among the six different age groups, the employees with more than 31 years of working experience show the highest level of OCB(α≤ 0.030, p<0.05).This may be because the employees who have been with the organization for a long time know how to help others and can easily pave the way for helping others and solve their problems.Meyer and Allen (1984) believe that attitudes would become consistent with people over time.In addition, Mearaj (2010) believes that employees who had spent 21 years or above in the work field are more likely to show different Organizational Citizenship attitude.So the number of years with an organization would increase commitment to the organization and thus higher OCB performance.

Conclusion
Despite the vast application of recent information in technology, studies show that organizations still have problems with the appropriate functioning of different departments.It is strongly believed that the optimal performance of organizations will be attained if the staffs perform beyond their defined duties.The new definition of job performance has become an indispensible part of job evaluation and is called organizational citizenship behavior (OCB).The study investigates the association between OCB and demographic characteristics of 333 randomly selected employees from 6selected hospitals in Tehran.To test the study hypotheses, the relation between OCB dimensions and demographic characteristics was investigated by using Kruskal Wallis Test as well as one-way ANOVA.The results show that OCB can be affected by all demographic characteristics: including sex, marital status, academic qualification, type of profession, age, salary and wages, type of employment, department/office, job position, and duration of employment, with the exception of ethnicity.

Implications for hospitals
This study helps the managers and decision-makers to reinforce positive volunteer personal and social behaviors among hospitals' staff.An improvement in the level of OCB in hospital leads to better productivity as well as more patient satisfaction and better health care delivery.Since the impact of demographic dimensions on OCB is shown in lots of studies including the present paper, managers and policy-makers can decrease or eliminate the weaknesses of the organization and promote the positive personal behaviors.They can change the rules and regulations or at least the bylaws regarding the recruitment, incentives and penalties and pave the way for better OCB performance.The findings of the study also help managers to have a better understanding of what employees are actually doing, as well as improving employee satisfaction, efficiency and effectiveness at work.To have periodic meetings with the staff, to involve the staff in making decisions, to employ the expert and sociable employees, to hold communication skill classes for the staff, to find a way to ease receiving employees and patients' complains, to hold in-service classes for the promotion of staffs' technical and behavioral knowledge, to put direct and indirect incentives and penalties are some of the ways which facilitate better demonstration of OCB.

Research limitations
Several limitations should be stated about the research.Since the topic is relatively new in Iran, there are not enough articles about the topic especially about the organizations in Iran.
The employees and the managers were not familiar with the subject and as a result reluctant to help.
The productivity indicators were not available; therefore, the researches couldn't precisely claim that the reason for some of the changes in OCB were because of demographic differences.
Two of the university hospitals involved with the research were merged without previous information on almost all the managers and presidents.The questionnaires were too long and time consuming; therefore, some employees did not have time to help the researchers.
The use of self-report in assessing organizational citizenship behavior.For example, an employee may respond his or her willingness of helping fellow worker's job on the study without actually presenting organizational citizenship behavior.Thus, self-report bias may exaggerate the findings of the present study.

Suggestions for Future studies
Regarding the limitations and findings of the study, more studies can be conducted on the following topics: The relationship between OCB and the customers' perception of quality of services.The comparison of the impacts of OCB in the state and private hospitals.A study on the group OCB in public/state hospitals.An investigation on the impact of internal and external incentives on OCB.An investigation on the impact of other cultural and structural factors on forming OCB in other organizations.The comparison of OCB with other factors related to the commitment to the organizations by using other OCB dimensions.

Table 1 .
The demographic characteristics of the subjects.
AgeAmong the different age groups those who are above 50 show more commitment to OCB (α≤ 0.030, p<0.05).The result of the study is in accordance with Van Dyne et al.