Investigating the Impact of Organizational Indifference on Organizational Inertia with Regard the Mediator Role of the Organizational Silence

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 Assistant Professor of Public Administration, Payame Noor University, Tehran, Iran.

2 Faculty member of Educational Science, Payame Noor University, Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

Abstract
Nowadays Organizations are seen as open systems, if they avoid learning and change, will face organizational inertia and ultimately organizational inefficiency over time. The purpose of this research is to analysis the role of organizational indifference on organizational inertia.
The present research is purposeful, applied and field survey. The statistical population of this study is all official staff of khorasan University of Medical Sciences. The sample was selected by simple random sampling method, according to the Morgan table and number of indicators in structural equations. The research data were collected through a questionnaire. Structural equation modeling and SPSS and Amos software were used to analyze them.
The results show that organizational indifference has a positive and significant relationship with organizational inertia. It was also revealed that four components of organizational indifference (indifference to the manager, organization, colleague, client, and work) also have a significant effect on the organizational inference of the employees.
: Considering the destructive results of organizational inertia in the long run, managers need to pay attention to factors such as the indifference of the organization and prevent its formation at the university.
Introduction
 Nowadays, organizations are considered as open systems, if they avoid learning and making changes over time face organizational inertia and ultimately organizational inefficiency, so the purpose of this study is to investigate the role of organizational indifference on organizational inertia with the mediating role of organizational silence.
Organizational inertia is considered as the resistance against environmental changes (Liu, Wu & Ma, 2008). Organizational inertia refers to incompatibility with environmental changes due to institutionalized stability in organization (Zhou and Wu, 2010). Organizations and companies in which high organizational inertia is institutionalized tend to establish standard procedures and performance (Cheng and Chen, 2013).
Steffi (2014) identifies the consequences of organizational inertia. Dimensions of organizational inertia used in this study are:
Insight inertia: means not understanding the changes that occur in the organization's environment. (Liu, Wu & Ma, 2008).
 Practical inertia: Inertia in practice and action is related to not enough analyzing the environment.its occurs when managerial responses to environmental changes are very slow. (Sepahvand, Aref Nejad, Shariaat Nejad, 2017).
Psychological inertia: Organizational resistance to change is often referred to psychological inertia that refer to the inner desire of individuals to refuse changes. (Godkin, Allcorn, 2008).
In order to improve individual and organizational outcomes, paying attention to organizational indifference and exploring strategies and mechanisms to reduce this phenomenon is one of the issues in organizational development (Torkzadeh et al., 2016). Organizational indifference has been identified as the cause of organizational destruction and inertia (Raeichi Ghadrali & et al, 2010). Dimensions of organizational indifference that have also been used in this study are (Danaeefard & et al, 2011):
Indifference to the manager: avoid accepting responsibility, refusing to comment or use abilities, avoiding accountability and participating in meetings under external force
Indifference to the organization: doing personal affairs during office hours, personal use of the organization's facilities (telephone and internet, etc.), not saving on the consumption of office supplies (paper, pen, etc.) and not being compassionate in doing organizational affairs.
Indifference to the client: Limiting the service to the client to a certain time during office hours (services until noon) Not answering the phone and so on
Indifference to the colleague: not participating in group work and sometimes understimates the work of others and avoiding friendships or just paying attention to the weaknesses of others and even magnifying the weaknesses of others.
Indifference to work:to have low level of accuracy in work and lack of seriousness and pursuit of tasks and lack of desire for innovation and creativity at work, low speed of doing task or engaging in unnecessary conversations with others.
Another cause of organizational inertia is the silence that institutionalized in the organization. Some times, people are silent to avoid conflict (Perlow & Williams, 2003). its a potentially dangerous barrier to organizational change and development; especially for pluralistic organizations, (Tanhaei & et al, 2014). silence is the opposite of the voice (Van Dyne, Ang Botero, 2003: 136) and expressed in the literature by sociologist Albert Hirschmann in 1970. Many organizational characteristics affected by it (Dimitris, & Vokala, 2007). Dimensions of organizational silence in this study are (Dyne & et al 2003):
Obedient silence: A type of silence due to low self efficacy.
Defensive silence: not telling the truth due to fear and self-defense.
Case study
study the statistical population of the study is all staff works at the Khorasan University of Medical Sciences. According to Morgan table and the formula for the number of indicators in structural equations, 469 people were selected as a random sampling method.
Materials and Methods
This research, based on the purpose, is applied and it is a field survey in which the relationship between variables is analyzed based with SPSS and Amos statistical software, that the total reliability of all item questionnaires is reported approprite. It’s analysed with the structural equation modeling method
Discussion and Results
the results show that organizational indifference has a positive and significant effect on organizational inertia and also organizational silence has a positive and significant effect on organizational inertia and its mediating role is confirmed.  and the mean equality of some variables between the two gender groups of men and women are not accepted and inertia has a significant difference between the two gender groups.
Conclusion
Due to the destructive consequences of organizational inertia in the long term, which leads to: unresponsiveness to environmental changes, reduced efficiency, increased costs and reduced organizational revenue, slowed down activities and poor planning. the sound policy making in confronting with Organizational indifference and organizational silence is vital and lead to organizational dynamics and match with environmental changes.

Keywords


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