International Research Journal of Management Sciences. Vol., 3 (4), 124-127, 2015
Available online at http://www.irjmsjournal.com
ISSN 2147-964x ©2015
The Relationship between Knowledge Sharing with
Social Intelligence and Organizational Citizenship
Behavior of Education Office in Mahmud Abad
Maryam Taghvaee Yazdi1*, Mohsen Eynali2
1
Department of Educational Management, Sari Branch, Islamic Azad University, Sari, Iran
Department of Management, Aliabad Katoul Branch, Islamic Azad University, Aliabad Katoul, Iran
2
*
Corresponding Author: Maryam Taghvaee Yazdi
ABSTRACT: Nowadays, knowledge management is one of major issues in education. Sharing knowledge, as one of
the most important main processes of knowledge management, plays a significant role in scientific progress and raise
scientific level of schools, and it is extremely important. This study was conducted to determine the relationship
between knowledge sharing with social intelligence and organizational citizenship behavior. The research was
descriptive, correlation type. to collect data, knowledge sharing questionnaire of Hisig, Tromso Social Intelligence
Scale and Podeskov organizational citizenship behavior questionnaire were distributed among 302 members of the
sample. The Pearson’s Correlation Coefficient Test was used to analyze data. The results indicate that there is a
significant relationship between knowledge sharing with social intelligence and organizational citizenship behavior of
Education Office in Mahmud Abad. There was also a significant relationship between knowledge sharing with social
intelligence and organizational citizenship behavior.
Keywords: Knowledge sharing, Social intelligence, Organizational citizenship behavior.
INTRODUCTION
Under the current competitive environment, organizations have become increasingly complex and variable. This
space is changing so rapidly as which for most organizations, the speed is greater than speed of their response and
compatibility. Continuous change of knowledge has caused new imbalance for organizations. The most important role
that can be attributed to knowledge management is to consider it as a change methodology. On the one hand,
knowledge management can influence a system by absorbing new knowledge. On the other hand, with effective
management of that knowledge can be the most important factor of organization's change (Arefi, 2012). Although some
believe that knowledge is power, but it seems that knowledge has no power itself, what gives power to people is part of
their knowledge that share with others. Today, in many countries including Iran, managers encourage to develop
knowledge management systems in organizations to exploit its useful benefits. Knowledge sharing is one of the most
important processes in various introduced structures for knowledge management, and motivating people to share their
knowledge in organizations is one of the most important priorities of practitioners of knowledge management
worldwide (Hosseini & Danaeefard, 2012). Knowledge sharing, as one of the most important processes of knowledge
management in organizations, has been considered by researchers more than any other knowledge management
processes. One of main reasons for the matter is competitiveness advantage and successful implementing processes of
knowledge sharing (Keshavarzi & Akhundzadeh, 2012).
Issues such as perception, motivation, attitude, work, etc. are cases to study root of many human behaviors in
workplace. However, in the last two decades, a new issue, named organizational citizenship behavior, has attracted
attention of many behavioral scientists, psychologists and sociologists. Batman and Organ (1983) used the term of
organizational citizenship behavior for the first time. They considered it as beneficial behaviors that were not listed in
job description, but employees show them to assist others to do their duties evidently (Hosseini & Danaeefard, 2012).
Contemporary scenario show that companies increasingly attempt to be consistent with the occurred changes. As a
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Intl. Res. J. Manag. Sci. Vol., 3 (4), 124-127, 2015
result, they have focused most of their activities to attempt toward distinct aspects that require competitive advantage
possibly. Therefore, some companies have realized that changes toward persons can be a good strategy in composition
of organization. In this regard, concept of organizational citizenship behavior is one of the most active research areas
among organizational intellectuals (Arefi et al., 2012).
In the last two decades, topic of social intelligence has been considered as one of the most important issues in
social sciences and humanities including in managerial, organizational and educational areas, and its applications and
capabilities have been considered and compared with other intelligences. In general, there are two distinct schools of
social intelligence: the first is school of psychology that considers social intelligence as a capability, and the second
school considers it outside of psychology field and enter it in social and organizational sciences. Social intelligence is
ability of interpersonal relationships and collaboration with others, using power of mind and body to communicate with
others and understand them better, encourage others to grow and develop friendly and interpersonal relationships and
awareness of how to love others and to maintain it. Social intelligence is a special feature that is reason of our success
in social relationship, and has not been achieved by training or study. In fact, healthy relationships, or in other words
“communication policy”, are a particular ability (Jahanian, 2011). On role of intelligence in performance of managers,
Goudarzi (2005) said: "people with high social intelligence should be able to use full power of their mind and body
power to communicate with others effectively (Tavakoli, 2009). Social intelligence should be able to recognize coping
art at the peak of negotiations, conflicts and mistakes.” He added: “all people need social intelligence especially
managers.” As a result, social intelligence, as a new topic, has been more important especially for those who need
communication skills every day (Rezai & Khalilzadeh, 2009). By considering importance of subject, the research seeks
to answer the question whether there is a relationship between knowledge sharing with social intelligence and
organizational citizenship behavior in Education Office of Mahmud Abad.
METHODOLOGY
The research was descriptive, correlation type. The population included all employees in Education Office of
Mahmud Abad (1360 persons). According Morgan Table, there were randomly participated 302 persons in the study.
The independent variable was knowledge sharing and dependent variables were social intelligence and organizational
citizenship behavior. In implementing the research, there was exactly explained how to answer tests to the participants,
after preliminary explanations about tools and purpose of executing the test. According moral considerations, after
consenting the people and give necessary awareness, they were assured that the received information will be only used
in this research and any abuse will be preserved. The following questionnaires were used to measure the research
variables.
Questionnaire of Knowledge Sharing: Hisig model was used to scale of knowledge sharing (Hosseini et al, 2011).
It contains three options that are answered based on Likert five-point spectrum.
Tromso Social Intelligence Scale (TSIS): Silvera, Martin, Yousin and Dahel (2001) have developed the
questionnaire to measure social intelligence. TSIS is a self-report instrument that consists 21 questions. The scale
measures social intelligence based on three subscales: 1) social information processing (SIP): this subscale emphasizes
on ability to understand and predict others’ behavior and feelings, and measures ability to understand verbal and
nonverbal messages in human relationships, understand the hidden messages and obvious messages. 2) Social skills
(SS): this subscale emphasizes on behavioral aspects such as ability to enter into new social situations and social
adjustment, and measures fundamental communication skills such as active listening, act boldly and establishing,
maintaining and violating a relationship. 3) Social awareness (SA): this subscale emphasizes on trend to non-awareness
or wonder about events in social situations, and measures ability to actively behave in accordance with situation, time
and place.
Questionnaire of Organizational Citizenship Behavior: Poodeskov et al (1990) have designed the questionnaire
(Do’ai, 2012). By using different variables associated with each dimension of organizational citizenship behavior, the
questionnaire evaluates all five aspects of organizational citizenship behavior separately. The scale consists 18 items
that measures four subscales of altruism, generosity, working consciousness, social etiquette and civility based on
Likert five-scale range. Professors and experts confirmed justifiability of the questionnaire. There was performed a pretest to assess its reliability. There were firstly distributed and collected 25 questionnaires among the considered
population. Then there was calculated reliability coefficient (Cronbach's Alpha). The coefficient was 0.751, 0.895 and
0.823 for knowledge sharing, social intelligence and organizational citizenship behavior respectively. Since the
calculated alpha is greater than 0.7, showing proper reliability of measurement tools, the data were analyzed using
Pearson correlation. In all analyses, significance level was p <0.05.
RESULTS
Results of Kolmogorov-Smirnov Test showed normal distribution of data (p ≥ 0.05). Therefore, Pearson
Correlation Coefficient was used to examine the relationship between variables. Results of the analysis indicated a
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Intl. Res. J. Manag. Sci. Vol., 3 (4), 124-127, 2015
significant relationship between knowledge sharing with social intelligence and organizational citizenship behavior
(Table 1).
Table 1. Pearson Correlation Test.
Variables
Knowledge
sharing
Intelligence community
Number
302
Statistic amount
0.615
Significant level
0.000
Organizational citizenship behavior
Number
302
Statistic amount
0.674
Significant level
0.000
There was investigated the relationship between subscales of social intelligence and organizational citizenship behavior.
There was a significant relationship between knowledge sharing and social information processing. There was also a
significant relationship between knowledge sharing and social awareness. There was a significant relationship between
knowledge sharing and social skills. There was a significant relationship between knowledge sharing and magnanimity.
There was a significant relationship between knowledge sharing and work conscience. There was a significant
relationship between knowledge sharing and social etiquette (Table 2).
Table 2. Results of analyzing correlation between knowledge sharing with dimensions of social intelligence and
organizational citizenship behavior.
Social
Social
information awareness
0.636*
0.506*
Knowledge r
sharing
p
0.000
0.000
*
significance difference on p< 0.05
Social
skills
0.339*
0.000
Altruism
*
0.423
0.000
magnanimity
*
0.300
0.000
Work
conscience
0.441*
0.000
social
etiquette
0.740 *
0.000
Polite
0.469*
0.000
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between knowledge sharing with social intelligence
and organizational citizenship behavior among employees of Education Office in Mahmud Abad. The results showed a
significant relationship between knowledge sharing with social intelligence and organizational citizenship behavior.
There was also a significant relationship between all aspects of knowledge sharing with social intelligence and
organizational citizenship behavior. There have been carried out proper theoretical and experimental studies on
knowledge sharing in organizational environments generally and learning environments specially. By examining these
studies, we find that sharing knowledge in education is directly or indirectly affected by organizational, individual,
psychological and technological factors.
Although there are not many studies on knowledge sharing in educational environments, but results of some
researches show that due to advances in technology, in recent years, teaching methods have been updated, and experts
believe that sharing knowledge related to teaching activities may help to overcome some of the current problems of
teaching. Main purpose of knowledge management and sharing knowledge is to create and organize an environment
that people develop their knowledge, share their knowledge, combined it with others’ knowledge and finally use it. The
present research indicates that there is a significant relationship between sharing knowledge and social intelligence. It is
consistent with the obtained results by Ramezanian et al (2012), Mousavi et al (2011), Rahnavard and Sadr (2009),
Matzler and Muller (2011), Noorleila et al (2009), Medasir and Singh (2008) and Wah et al (2005). The present
research shows that there is a significant relationship between sharing knowledge and organizational citizenship
behavior. It is consistent with the obtained results by Arefi et al (2012) and Hosseini and Danaeefard (2012).
Danaeefard et al (2011) showed that dimensions of organizational citizenship behavior (respectively: work ethic,
sportsmanship and social etiquette) have the greatest impact on knowledge sharing. Corporate culture, as a mediator in
the relationship, wills increases this effect more than three and a half times that reflects high importance of this variable
in the relationship.
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