Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

• Seyedreza Pourghafari ¹
• Alireza Manzari tavakoli ²
• Sanjar Salajeghe ³
• Mahdi Dehghani soltani ⁴

¹ PhD Student in Public Administration, Islamic Azad University, Kerman, Iran

² Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, Islamic Azad University, Kerman, Iran

³ Associate Professor, Department of Public Administration, Islamic Azad University, Kerman, Iran

⁴ Assistant Professor, Management Department, Vali Asr University, Rafsanjan, Iran

Abstract

The purpose of the research is to investigate the effect of organizational culture on employee voice through the mediation of employee empowerment in the headquarters of the Bank of Agriculture and its branches in Tehran using the Fuzzy DEMATEL technique. The current research is descriptive-exploratory practical in terms of its purpose, and its data analysis is mixed. In the qualitative part, content analysis was used, and in the quantitative part, the fuzzy DEMATEL method was used. In the qualitative part, an in-depth, semi-structured interview was conducted between 16 experts who were identified using a targeted snowball method, which includes four dimensions for organizational culture: customer orientation, orderliness, expertise, and ethics; 4 dimensions for employee empowerment, including training, dynamics, responsibility, and feedback, and four dimensions for employee voice, including beneficial, usefulness, compatible, and warning. In the quantitative phase, the internal dependence and mutual effects of the mentioned criteria were examined by distributing a questionnaire among nine informants who were identified using the targeted snowball method and the fuzzy DEMATEL technique. The results showed that the criteria of education, responsibility, beneficial tone, morality, orderliness, specialization, dynamism, and warning tone are among the effective criteria, respectively, and the criteria of feedback, beneficial tone, customer orientation, and consistent tone are among the effective criteria.
Introduction
In today's competitive environment, to achieve organizational goals, the relationship between managers and employees must be so that subordinates can easily and without worry share their constructive opinions and ideas to increase efficiency (Bahrami & Kayani, 2019). Consequently, whenever employees believe that they can create essential changes in their environment by expressing their opinions and ideas, they will benefit their organization by expressing them (Ali et al., 2018). This behavior of their "voice" has been accepted by many organizations (Shuja'i et al., 2019). With a comprehensive review of the "voice" literature, it can be stated that the main goal is to give all the employees in the organization the opportunity to regularly share their problems and concerns with the managers and superiors of the organization (Sargolzaei & Kikha, 2020). Shan et al. (2020) stated in their research that organizational culture is one of the factors known to encourage the voice of employees and has a great effect on encouraging the voice of employees in an organization; therefore, the lack of appropriate culture in the organization can be an obstacle to create the phenomenon of voice (Sholekar & Shoghi, 2017). According to the latest research, the role of organizational culture and the voice of employees has been underestimated by researchers (Gholampour et al., 2019).
On the other hand, Viveros et al. (2018) consider voice as a precondition for employee participation in the organization and related to empowerment. Empowerment is attributed to a process in which the manager helps employees acquire the necessary competence to make decisions without dependence. In addition to being effective in the functioning of people, this process will also affect their personality (Sina et al., 2021). Although employee empowerment has been proposed as an antecedent of employee voice behavior in the literature, little effort has been made to investigate the effect of empowerment on voice behaviors to provide prompt service to important stakeholders, and few studies have investigated how empowerment affects employee voice behaviors. (Park et al., 2021). The issue that caused this research to be done in the Agricultural Bank was the need for more attention to the points of view of some employees, experts, and experts of the bank regarding the work processes by their superiors. The result of this behavior, in addition to creating dissatisfaction among clients and the loss of social capital at the community level, has reduced the loyalty of current customers to the Bank of Agriculture. If the prevailing trend continues, the current customers will not have the recommendation to encourage other customers to use the services of this bank, and this factor will cause the decline and decrease of the bank's profitability in the long run.
Research Question(s)
How does organizational culture affect employee voice through the mediation of employee empowerment? Moreover, what are the practical and influential relationships of the discussed indicators in the mentioned model?
Literature Review
Organizational Culture
In recent years, organizational culture has become an important topic in scientific research, and researchers are always eager to recognize and measure organizational culture to understand from what angle people look at their organization (Kirimi et al., 2018). Therefore, it is necessary to identify organizational culture to manage culture and transformation (Abbaspour et al., 2017). The research considers organizational culture as a set of values, shared norms, beliefs, and opinions governing the organization (Zarei et al., 2021). It shows the spirit of the organization, its way of thinking and functioning, its values, the ethics and purpose of the organization (Shirazi et al., 2021).
 
 
Empowering employees
"Empowerment" is defined as employees' perception of the degree of freedom of action and the opportunity the manager gives them to make decisions and commitments (Khorakian et al., 2021). According to Ranjbar and Abbaszadeh Sohron (2021), empowerment means injecting strength into employees. The benefits of empowerment can be divided into two categories: 1. Organizational benefits: Empowering employees in organizations causes flexibility, quality improvement, and cost control. 2. Individual benefits: Empowering employees gives more motivation to perform tasks and reduces conflicts in the individual and group dimensions, and people can have more control over their surroundings. (Afshon, 2018:; Boiri, 2018).
Employee voice
In 1970, Hirschman used the word "Voice" for the first time and defined it as "any effort to create change instead of running away from objectionable issues." He stated that employees react to inappropriate situations by leaving the organization or expressing their displeasure (Ghafurian Shagerdi et al., 2017). A comprehensive study of the literature about voice has defined this term as the verbal expression of information, opinions, and ideas about work with the positive motivation of participating in efforts in an altruistic and passive way in the organization (Bahmani Choubbasti et al., 2018). Research on the voice of employees has shown various benefits from making employees speak, the most important of which are improving team performance, increasing team creativity, increasing employee job retention, saving economic and social costs, increasing quality and innovation in products and services, encouraging employees to propose new ideas to solve problems, improving management decision-making, increasing organizational compatibility and ensuring better development opportunities for the organization (Nazir et al., 2021).
Methodology
This research was a mixed type of research done in qualitative and quantitative phases. The content analysis method was used in the qualitative part. In this research, 16 experts of the target community with expertise in the management field were present. They were identified using the targeted snowball method, and interviews were conducted in-depth semi-structured until the theoretical saturation stage. In the quantitative part, the fuzzy Dimetal method was used. Some selected reporters should complete the fuzzy DEMATEL questionnaire. In multi-criteria decision-making styles, there is no need for a large number of samples, and the number of people depends on the composition and topic of the panel of experts (Azizian et al., 2019: 168). In this section, nine journalists with education related to public administration were selected using the targeted snowball method.
Results
In the prevailing conditions, the participation and expression of employees' views in organizational decisions and activities is a successful procedure in the competitiveness of organizations, especially financial institutions and the money market, which requires a suitable foundation for employees. Considering the importance of the topic, it was tried to investigate the effect of organizational culture on employees' voices through the mediation of employee empowerment using the Fuzzy Dimetal technique. In order to know the main and sub-components of the considered model, interviews were conducted until theoretical saturation and in a targeted snowball method with the informants of the Bank of Agriculture, which led to the identification of 4 criteria for each of the research variables, which are which include customer orientation, ethics, orderliness and specialization for organizational culture structure; training, dynamism, accountability and feedback for the employee empowerment structure and beneficial, beneficial, consistent and warning voice for the employee voice structure. This research drew conclusions by drawing the shape and size of D+R and D-R. Finally, the degree of influence and effectiveness and the intensity of influence and effectiveness of the indicators were determined, written as follows.

Influential indicators

 

1. Training: It is the most influential and important criterion compared to other criteria, which shows that training is important for empowering managers and employees, respectively, to master the processes of effective listening and voice expression in work processes.
Responsibility: which is in the second rank of influence and importance. Commitment and responsibility make employees easily comment and propose solutions for problems that slow down or stop the growing process of the system based on work experience.
Beneficial and warning voices are in the third and eighth levels of influence and importance, respectively. The information, knowledge, ideas, and opinions of employees are a vital factor for the organization because by expressing their voice, employees release their thoughts, and all their focus will be directed to their work.
Morality: It is in the fourth category of influence and importance. The existence of morality in the organization by creating positive psychological security and the feeling of support and value the management towards the employees will motivate the employees to express their opposition to the management and their views and points of view.
Orderly thinking: It is placed in the fifth influence category. Discipline helps employees to behave in a controlled and responsible manner and follow the guidelines specified by the organization.
Specialization: It is in the sixth category of influence. Specialist employees with experience in their work area have constructive views and points of view that originate from their professional and working knowledge, and this individual factor, which is internal, is the origin of their opinions.
Dynamics: It is placed in the seventh category of influence; Dynamic employees themselves identify problems and take action to solve them and are considered an important determining factor in the success and effectiveness of the organization.

 

Effective indicators
1. Feedback: It is the most effective measure; Organizations can benefit from the benefits of employees' voices when they announce performance feedback to employees and ask for their views and opinions, especially feedback that challenges the organization's procedures and policies.
2. Beneficial voice: The second category is the effective criterion. When the conditions and platform for voice expression are provided in the organization, employees willingly express their problems and personal desires, which indicates a sense of security and a friendly and intimate relationship with superiors; on the other hand, it shows the hierarchical organizational culture with low power distance.
3. Customer orientation: The third category is the influence criterion; paying attention to the customer's needs, which is expressed in the form of voice and expressing views and suggestions from employees, should be placed as the main part of the goals and values of the organization.
Compatible voice: The last category is the measure of effectiveness. This type of voice is a non-participatory behavior based on the employees' feeling that they cannot change the current situation. This tone of voice causes the emergence of agreeable statements and simply supports the status quo.

Discussion
 
This research determined that the dimensions of training, responsibility, beneficial voice, morality, orderliness, specialization, dynamism, and warning voice have the highest influence on the voice of employees and cause its development.
 
Conclusion
 
The research results showed that to develop the voice of employees, it is necessary to improve the dimensions of training, responsibility, useful voice, morality, orderliness, specialization, dynamism, and warning voice.
 
Acknowledgments
This article was extracted from a doctoral dissertation entitled "Explaining the relationship between organizational culture and employees' voice through the mediation of employee empowerment in Iran's state banks in order to provide the desired model (case study: Bank of Agriculture headquarters and its branches in Greate Tehran)." We want to express our gratitude to the Applied Research Center of the Agricultural Bank and all the professors who helped develop this research.

Keywords

• Agricultural Bank
• Organizational Culture
• employee voice
• employee empowerment