Iranian Journal of Ergonomics

The economic success of the last decade for organizations with minimal opportunities and the failure of organizations with the best material capabilities on the other hand has shown the significant role of non-material and spiritual factors in their success. Organizational ethics is seen as an important factor in organizational performance (1). Ethical culture involves the application of beliefs and criteria about right or wrong individuals or groups (2).
Moral culture plays a major role in promoting moral behavior. Ethical behavior in practice is what is accepted as good or right versus bad or bad in a social context (4). Ethical culture is associated with organizational citizenship behavior (6). Ethical culture must promote appropriate conditions for social relations to be developed, ultimately enhancing employee organizational citizenship behavior (7).
In recent studies, leading supervisors ethically has been tied to organizational citizenship behavior at both the individual and group levels (3). The importance of trust has been emphasized in justifying the relationship between supervisor moral leadership and organizational citizenship behavior at the individual level (13).
A variable that can mediate the relationship between ethical culture with the emergence of ethical behavior and organizational citizenship behavior is individual-organization fit. Individual-organization fit is generally defined as a measure of the fit between employee and organizational beliefs, norms and values ​​(14) and goals (15). Given that employees tend to prefer ethical environments (20 and 21), ethical culture should enhance individual-organization fit by enhancing perceptions of procedural and distributive justice (12). Individual-organization fit mediates the relationship between ethical and organizational culture (3).
This study seeks to investigate the impact of ethical culture and individual-organization fit on ethical behavior and organizational citizenship behavior.
 

Figure 1: Conceptual model of research

This was an applied study in terms of aim, and descriptive and correlational in terms of data collection and specifically based on structural modeling. The statistical population of the study consisted of all employees of Urmia University with a high school diploma (503). The sample size was 217 according to the statistical population according to Morgan table. The sampling method was proportional stratified random sampling.
Data collection tools were Ethical Culture questionnaire of Trevino et al., Kernodle’s questionnaire of OCB, Organ and Konovski questionnaire of Citizenship-Organizational bwhavior and Godkin & Lucero questionnaire of Person-Organization, reliability of which was reported 0.91, 0.91, 0.73 and 0.91 respectively by Cronbach’s alpha coefficient.
Descriptive and inferential methods were used to analyze the data and LISREL 8.5 software was used to establish causal variables.
 

Table 1 shows Demographic information of the participants.
 

Table 1. Demographic information of the participants

Table 2 shows the mean and standard deviation of staff scores in each of the research variables.
 

Table 2. Descriptive statistics of mean and standard deviation of the variables under study

Raw means were converted to the Likert-type mean (assumed average 3) for more objective comparison.
 

Table 3. Correlation coefficients of research variables

The Chi-square value for judging the linearity of the present structures was 1079/02 at the significant level P-value<0.01. The value of x2 on the degree of freedom is 2.34. Given that the ratio of the Chi-square to the degree of freedom is less than 3, it can be said that the obtained data correspond to the hypothetical model. The root mean square error of the approximate error is 0.072. According to the model's overall fit evaluation indices, especially the ratio of Chi-square to degree of freedom equals 2.34, CFI index 0.94, GFI index 0.90, IFI index 0.94, NNFI index equal to 0.94, RMSEA equal to 0.072 and other indices, it can be said that the final model fits well.
 

Table 4. General structural model fit indices

 

Figure 2. Software output based on standard coefficients



Figure 3. Software output based on t coefficients

According to the data, the greatest effect of ethics culture on individual-organization fit was observed with a coefficient of 0.88 (t=11.89, ß=0.88). After that it is about the effect of individual-organization fit on citizenship behavior with a coefficient of 0.75 (t=9.67, ß=0.75).
 

Table 5. Impact coefficients of current variables with the mediating role of individual-organization fit.

The results showed that ethical culture does not have a direct and significant effect on ethical behavior and organizational citizenship behavior, which is inconsistent with the research of Kish-Gephart et al. (5) and Mokhtari (30). The results showed that ethical culture has a direct, positive and significant effect on individual-organization fit. The research of Valentine, Godkin & Lucero (22) showed that by developing and enhancing ethical contexts, employees can be more adapted to the workplace and the organization.
According to the findings, individual-organization fit has a significant causal effect on ethical behavior. In the study of Ruiz-Palomino & Mart´ınez-Can˜as (3), it is also concluded that individual-organization fit influences the ethical behavior and intentions of individuals. According to the researchers' report that the internal mismatch between the individual values ​​or the values ​​expressed in the organization is not beneficial to ethical decision making, it can be concluded that the greater the fit, the greater it is likely for us to see ethical behavior in the organization.
Analyses showed that individual-organization fit has a significant positive effect on organizational citizenship behavior. This result is in line with the results of Abbasi et al. The results showed that individual-organization fit theory can be a useful tool for shaping and enhancing organizational citizenship behavior.
According to the analyses, ethical culture indirectly influences ethical behavior by mediating individual-organization fit. The results are in line with the results of Hoffman & Woehr (23).
Based on the findings, it can be concluded that ethical culture indirectly promotes organizational citizenship behavior and ethical behavior in the organization. Also, by acknowledging the mediating role of individual-organization fit, ethical culture has a significant effect on the job outcomes of organizational citizenship and ethical behavior. Therefore, the University must pay attention to the role and impact of ethical culture in the relationship between the above variables and improve the ethical culture in order to provide the necessary conditions for organizational citizenship behavior, ethical behavior and individual-organization fit in the university setting.

 

The researchers would like to thank the staff and staff of the University of Urmia for helping us with this study.

 

The authors declared that there are no conflicts of interest.