Teachers ’ organizational citizenship behavior : A causal relationship model

This research aimed to examine the direct, indirect and overall influences as well as validate the appropriateness of the causal relationship model of teachers’ organizational citizenship behaviour under the Office of Khon Kaen Secondary Educational Service Area 25. A total of 300 teachers were selected as research samples utilizing multistage random sampling technique. A survey quantitative research design was employed using questionnaire as an instrument to collect data thus developed evident from theories. The instrument comprised of five sections including demographic factors, factors influencing organizational citizenship behaviour namely job satisfaction, organizational commitment and servant leadership and organizational citizenship behaviour. Data was analyzed by using the mPlus program. Results of the study indicated that causal relationship model of teachers’ organizational citizenship behaviour is appropriately fit in accordance with the statistic values ( χ 2 = 76.461, χ 2 /df = 1.274, CFI = 0.994 , TLI = 0.990, SRMR = 0.027 and RMSEA = 0.030). In addition, result of the study revealed that all the three independent variables have significant direct influence toward organizational citizenship behaviour. Organizational commitment (β = 0.748) and servant leadership (β = 0.195) have positive, significant and direct influence but job satisfaction (β = -0.303) has negative, significant and direct influence on organizational citizenship behaviour at 0.01 level. School administrators should emphasize on servant leadership, organization commitment and job satisfaction in order to have overall influence on organizational citizenship behaviour.


Introduction
Currently, the operations of both governmental and private organizations in Thailand are encouraged to build confidence among the members of the society.In order to achieve this purpose, good membership behaviour is the major concern of the organization.Therefore, organizational members have to acquire organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) to support the operations of both governmental and private organizations.The factors contributing to OCB are identified as job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and servant leadership.Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) is referred as the discretionary behaviour that emerging beyond the roles set by the organization but not recognized by the formal reward or punishment.OCB consisted of five main components namely altruism, compliance with organizational rules and regulations, cooperation with organizational operations, patience and perseverance towards happenings with willingness, and loyalty to the organization.
According to the past studies that related to OCB concepts, theories and their findings, indicated that job satisfaction of organizational members was affected by organizational effectiveness and members' happiness (Robbins, 2001).In addition, job satisfaction was found to be strongest correlated with organizational commitment thus was identified to have direct influence on retention of organizational members (Shashi, Bharti & Ptamod, 2010).
Besides, organizational commitment is another factor that found to be correlated and had direct impact on organizational citizenship (Schappe, 1998).Organizational members who are committed would like to dedicate to their work beyond what have been assigned to them in order to give a return to the organization.On top of that, Wisuttikum (2011) found that organizational leadership is another key factor that affecting organizational commitment.In short, success of an organization is depending on how the leader understands the needs of its organizational members.Hence this type of leadership is referred as servant leadership (Laub, 2014).There are three independent variables to be identified to fit into a causal relationship model of OCB of teachers.They are job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and servant leadership.Job satisfaction in this study was defined as love and admiration of oneself needs, measured from four components like advancement opportunities, income, characteristics of tasks, and relationship with colleagues.
Meanwhile, organizational commitment is referred to the strong dedicated feeling of teachers to the school organization that arising from teachers' loyalty and love to work for the beneficial of the organization.On top of that, teachers would like to be retained the organizational membership.Organizational commitment in this study is included two components namely compliance with organizational requirements and hope to retain the organizational membership.Servant leadership is a leadership style that enhances teachers to acquire OCB.There are four components of servant leadership involved in this study namely foresight, dedication, people development, and community building.
Today our school society has changed in all respect primarily because of the change in social and cultural environment.School organizational members are shifting from cooperation towards a competitive behavior.The helping attitude amongst school principals and teachers has also been influenced by these changes.In this scenario OCBs (extra role behavior) is very important for any school.More importantly, a majority of the existing study on the determinants of OCBs needs to be conducted in Thailand.Therefore it is essential to explore the relative effects of the various potential variables that are predicted to have causal relationship of OCB model.In this line of reasoning, it is quite important for a school to be aware of the factors that may affect OCBs.

Problem statement
The Revised National Education Plan (2009)(2010)(2011)(2012)(2013)(2014)(2015)(2016) was highly emphasized on the educational personnel development in order to be able to facilitate quality learning among learners (Office of the National Education Commission Education, 2003).However Thai education still fails to attain the quality required by this national plan.This showed that teachers were not responding to requirement because of teachers have other workload on top of teaching (Rakpolmueng & Madirokkowit, 2004).Therefore teachers' efficiency in their working behaviors is questionable.
Past research has found a positive correlation between job satisfaction and organizational commitment (Mathieu & Zajac, 1990).Furthermore, vast majority of research indicates a positive relationship between job satisfaction and commitment (Aranya, Kushnir & Valency, 1986).Generally research supports a positive association between commitment and satisfaction the causal ordering between these two variables remains both controversial and contradictory (Saimir & Jonida, 2013).However Kalleberg and Mastekaasa (2001) found that previous research on the relationship between job satisfaction and organizational commitment has not shown any consistent and easily reconcilable findings.Tett and Meyer (1993) highlighted that satisfaction is a cause of commitment to maintain and assume a satisfaction-to-commitment model.A second commitment-to-satisfaction model holds that commitment contributes to an overall positive attitude toward the job (Tett & Meyer, 1993).
However, the empirical research on the relationship between servant leadership, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment to OCB are scarce and quite new in Thailand thus required more research being conducted to explore in depth on this area particularly on the causal relationship model.As a result this study desires to fill up the gap.

Aim of the Research
The main aim of this study is to validate the appropriateness of the causal relationship model of OCB of teachers under the Office of Secondary Education Service Area 25, Khon Kaen, Thailand.The following are the specific objectives of this study: a.To validate the appropriateness of the causal relationship model of OCB of teachers according to the evident data.b.To examine the direct, indirect, and overall influences of the causal relationship on the teachers' OCB.

Research assumptions
This study was examined according to the seven assumptions as below: a.The causal relationship model of OCB is appropriate and in accordance with the evident data.b.Job satisfaction directly influences OCB.c. Organizational commitment directly influences OCB.d.Servant leadership directly influences OCB.e. Job satisfaction directly influences organizational commitment.f.Servant leadership directly influences job satisfaction.g.Servant leadership directly influences organizational commitment.

Method
Researchers used a survey design which focusing on collecting quantitative data by utilizing a questionnaire as an instrument to collect data.For this study, the sampling method used is stratified sampling by setting the ratio between the sample unit and the number of parameters or variables at 20 to 1 (Aungsuchot, 2010).According to the research assumption model, there were 15 observable variables.Therefore, the identified sample size was 300 respondents.These 300 samples were selected from a total population of 3,278 teachers from 84 schools under the Office of Secondary Education Service Area 25, Khon Kaen province, Thailand.Researchers sent 350 questionnaires by air mail to the 84 research school administrators.Subsequently researchers went to the research schools to collect the questionnaires personally.Only 322 completed questionnaires had been successfully collected, given the response rate as 92 percent.Research variables in this study consisted of four latent variables.OCB acted as internal latent while job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and servant leadership were external variables.There were 15 observable variables derived from both internal and external latent variables.There were five observable variables derived from OCB such as willingness to assist others, compliance with organizational rules and regulations, cooperation with organizational operations, patience and perseverance towards happenings with willingness, and loyalty to the organization.
Likewise job satisfaction comprised of four observable variables, they are advancement opportunities, income, characteristics of tasks, and relationship with colleagues.In addition, organizational commitment was consisted of two observable variables namely compliance with the organization's requirements and hope to retain the organization's membership.Finally, there were four observable variables from servant leadership namely foresight, dedication, people development, and community building.
The survey questionnaire was administered.It is consisted of five sections including demographic information of respondents, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, servant leadership and OCB.This questionnaire was then sent to a panel of experts for comments and feedbacks.The panel of experts was selected using the criteria based on their expertise in the area of leadership for validation purpose.From the feedback by the panel, some modifications were made to the original instrument.Pilot testing of the instrument was carried out.It could be concluded that the instrument was reliable and good to use as the Cronbach alpha value indicated that all the research variables had high Cronbach alpha values ranging from 0.759 to 0.931.The Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) and mPlus program was utilized to analyze the statistical data.

Conceptual framework
The variables in this study are elucidated in Figure 1.The variables include job satisfaction, organizational commitment, servant leadership, and OCB.This study utilizes Podsakoff, Mackenzie, Moorman, and Fetter's (1990) OCB dimensions which are altruism, conscientiousness, sportsmanship, courtesy and civic virtue.Altruism is the discretionary behavior that have the effect of helping a specific other person with an organizationally relevant task or problem.Conscientiousness is the discretionary behavior on the part of the teachers that go well beyond the minimum role requirements of the organization, in the area of attendance, obeying rules and regulations, taking breaks, and so forth.Sportsmanship refers to the willingness of the employee to tolerate less than ideal circumstances without complaining while courtesy is the discretionary behavior on the part of an individual aimed at preventing work-related problems with others from occurring.Likewise, civic virtue refer to the behavior on the part of an individual that indicates that he or she responsibly participates in, is involved in, or is concerned about the life of the organization.1, the correlation results between the latent variables and OCB showed a significant and positive relationship (p<0.01), with strength of association as moderate to substantial.As indicated in Table 2, the OCB was significant, positive and moderate to substantial correlated with the organizational commitment and servant leadership (r = 0.396; p<0.01).Although job satisfaction was found to have moderate to substantial correlation with OCB but the r-value is comparatively lowest among the three latent variables (r = 0.322; p<0.01).This means that, to a moderate to substantial, an increase in the latent variables is associated with an increase in OCB. Job satisfaction measured from the four observable variables shows the highest factor loading value (β = 0.840), followed by relationships with colleagues (β = 0.732), advancement opportunities (β = 0.530), and income (β = 0.372) respectively. Organizational commitment measured from the two observable variables shows the highest factor loading value and prediction coefficient in the variable of compliance with organization's requirement (β = 0.865) and the lowest value for the need to retain membership (β = 0.692). Servant leadership measured from four observable variables shows the highest factor loading value and prediction coefficient in the variable of people development (β = 0.944), followed by dedication (β = 0.866), foresight (β = 0.838), and building community (β = 0.779). OCB measured from the five observable variables shows the highest factor loading value and prediction coefficient in the variable of altruism (β = 0.849), followed by love and loyalty to the organization (β = 0.848), patience and perseverance (β = 0.771), compliance with organizational rules (β = 0.733), and cooperation in organizational activities (β = 0.727).

d. The direct, indirect, and overall influences on OCB
In Table 4, OCB and servant leadership had no significant positive influence on OCB.Job satisfaction had negative influence on OCB.However, job satisfaction had significantly positive influence on organizational commitment at 0.01 level.Servant leadership had significantly positive influence on job satisfaction at 0.01 level.

Discussion
On this line of reasoning, this study was conducted to examine the causal relationship model of OCB of teachers under the Office of Secondary Education Service Area 25, Khon Kaen, Thailand.The findings of this study revealed that job satisfaction had negative direct influence on OCB.This finding is contradicted with past research findings from Podsakoff, Steven, Philip & Brian (2009).Podsakoff et al. stated that a rather high coefficient of correlation between OCB and overall organizational performance (r c = 0.43) through meta-analysis.Subsequently, this finding was supported by Shashi et al.'s findings (2010).Their findings indicated organizational commitment and job satisfaction are significant predictors of OCB of middle level managers in India.
In addition, organizational commitment shows positive direct influence on OCB.This finding was found to be consistent with past research findings from Shashi et al. (2010), Arti, Atul Dutt, and Kuldeep (2011), Rifai (2005), Feather and Rauter (2004), and Podsakoff, MacKensie, Paine, and Bachrach (2000).Shashi et al's finding showed that job satisfaction and organizational commitment toward explaining variance in OCB, with the strongest correlation associated with organizational commitment.Arti et al.'s study showed that normative commitment were positively correlated with OCB (r = 0.258; p<0.05).Furthermore normative commitment has significant impact on OCB (β = 0.269, p<0.05).However Rifai (2005), Feather and Rauter (2004), and Podsakoff et al. (2000) claimed that affective commitment is significant predictor of OCB.Furthermore, Organ (1988) claimed that when job satisfaction and perception of fairness are measured together, the latter explains an increase in variance in OCB.Next, attitudinal variables (job satisfaction and organizational commitment) are significant predictors of OCB while personal variables do not predict OCBs of middle level manager.In addition, Organ also claimed that people who are satisfied and committed towards organization tend to be more display OCB than with those who are less satisfied and committed.Consequently Organ's finding was found to be partial contradicted with this study.
Finally, result from this study revealed that servant leadership shows positive direct influence on OCB.This finding has been supported by Abdu, Faridahwati and Chandrakatan (2015).Abdu Ja'afaru et al. indicated that emotional healing leader behavior is found to be strongly influencing followers' OCB in organization (β = 0.222; t = 3.362; p = 0.00).Additionally their findings also demonstrated that significant negative relationship between creating value for the community and OCB (β = -0.183;t = 2.153, p = 0.016) and leaders' conceptual skills strongly influencing OCB (β = 0.169; t = 2.796, p<0.003).However their result showed that helping subordinate grow and success was not significantly related to OCB (β = 0.022; t = 0.328, p = 0.371).

Conclusion and Recommendations
Results of this study showed that there are positive influences from organizational commitment and servant leadership but there is negative influence from job satisfaction on OCB.Therefore school administrators shall take into account the special attention and treatment to enhance latent variables that have direct, indirect and overall influence on OCB in order to deliver excellent service performance to the students.The current findings have contributed to management practice by revealing the importance of servant leadership as a significant leadership style.Certainly, increased principals' awareness about the connection between servant leader behaviour and OCB can help to motivate supervisory teachers to develop servant leader behaviour.In addition, the current findings have revalidated the significant causal relationship between job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and servant leadership toward OCB in Thailand context.
Previous studies have employed the use of other analytical tools to produce results.This study has explored a relatively different tool of analysis (i.e.mPlus) to explain the causal relationship of the constructs of this study.The use of mPlus tool provides an opportunity for testing and predictive power of the tool in a study that explores integrative relationships of job satisfaction, organizational commitment, servant leadership, and OCB.Finally, by using causal relationship model in this study, would provide a new framework for comparisons of results obtained from previous studies that used different tools of analysis.
Table 2 presented the correlation matrix of latent variables OCB.Based on De Vaus's (2002) interpretation of correlation coefficients in Table

Table 1 .
Designation strength of association based on size of correlation coefficients.

Table 2 .
Correlation matrix of latent variables OCB.
b. Factor loading values of the causal relationship model of OCBAccording to Table3, the factor loading values of the causal relationship model of OCB are as follows:

Table 3 .
Factor loading values of causal relationship model of OCB.

Table 4 .
Loading values of direct, indirect, and overall influences of latent variables.