Job Involvement Among Faculty Members of Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences and Its Relationships with Professional Variables

At higher education environments, faculty members are specialized human resources responsible for education and dissemination of science and knowledge in universities and higher education institutions, so the quality and development of knowledge is largely dependent on how they function, and how their work affects the quality of university activities (1). Currently, organizations, as one of the most prominent features of societies, are rapidly changing, and promoting individual and organizational performance is one of the major goals of any active organization. Therefore, it is clear to what extent the study of variables affecting their performance can guide managers in improving the performance of an organization (2). In this regard, job attitudes can be one of the effective factors in forming job behaviors, and a lot of research has shown that a positive attitude and an interest in a job (called job involvement) will lead to more efforts and thus increase the performance of the organization (3-7). Job involvement is one of the psychological structures related to work behavior that has attracted much attention in recent years and is currently considered as an important variable in maximizing organizational effectiveness (4). Job involvement is defined as the intensity of a person’s psychological replication of their job, and people involved in the job tend to have strong emotional bonds with the organization, and are less likely to leave the organization than others (5). Job involvement is one of the determinants that can create positive outcomes for organizations, for example, high levels of job involvement as a key to activating employee motivation (6), and striving to achieve organization’s goals (7, 8). Many scholars have found that job involvement is a predictor of organizational success (9). Job involvement also has important effects on job outcomes such as job performance, and organizational citizenship behavior (10, 11). In general, job involvement affects both the individual and the organization; from an organizational point of view, job involvement promotes employee motivation and increases productivity and from an individual perspective, it is a key to motivating performance and personal growth and job satisfaction (12). The speed and accuracy in achieving goals and productivity of any organization depend heavily on loyal and committed employees who create a close connection between organization goals and their individual goals, thus identifying the factors affecting job involvement can help any organization to improve its performance (13, 14). There have been numerous studies of job involvement among Iranian faculty members (15-18). However, the researchers did not find a study that assessed job involvement status of faculty members of Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences.

The purpose of this study was to determine the job involvement status of faculty members of Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences and its relationship with some professional variables.

This cross-sectional study was conducted among faculty members of Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences during 2018.

The sampling method was that the faculties (medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, public health, nutrition, nursing and midwifery, allied medical sciences) were initially considered as clusters and participants were selected by simple random sampling proportional to the size of each cluster. Data were collected based on self-reported questionnaires. Subjects were briefed about the study method and objectives, and the confidentiality of the information. All of them willingly entered the study. The sample size was estimated as 150 at 95% significance level according to the results of a pilot study. Faculty members of Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences were eligible to participate in this study.

The age range of the faculty members was 26 - 60 with a mean of 40.16 ± 8.12 years. Faculty members had a range of 1 to 34 years of job experience with a mean of 11.75 ± 9.53 years. Sixty-six (44%) were female and 84 (56%) were male. Forty-one (27.3%) were instructors, 89 (59.4%) were assistant professors and 20 were associate professors and full professors (13.3%). In terms of employment status, 58 (28.7%), 29 (19.3%) and 63 (42%) were fixed-term employees, contract employees and K coefficient employees, respectively. Sixty-five (43.3%) were clinical academic members, 84 (56%) were non-clinical academic members and one (0.7%) did not answer this question.

Job involvement had a positive and significant correlation with age and job experience (Table 1).

The mean score of job involvement was 65.11 ± 7.84. Therefore, faculty members’ job involvement was high in Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences and 81.25% of the maximum score for job involvement was obtained.

There was no significant relationship between job involvement and variables of sex, academic rank, employment status, and faculties of work (Table 2).

The aim of this study was to determine factors related with job involvement status of faculty members of Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences. The mean score of job involvement was 65.11 ± 7.84. Therefore, faculty members’ job involvement was high in Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences and 81.25% of the maximum score for job involvement was obtained. Our findings were largely consistent with other studies in Iran (15-18, 21, 22). Ghasemieh et al. (22) identified job involvement as one of the effective variables in motivating faculty members of Shiraz University of Medical Sciences with a direct impact rate of 16% and an indirect impact rate of 19%.

Our finding indicated that men’s job involvement was higher than that of women; similar to that of Yousefzadeh et al. (15). In addition, in the Hackman and Lawler study (20), men’s job involvement was higher than that of women. Given these results, it may be possible to explain the intrinsic difference between male and female tasks, and to some extent conclude that men are relatively likely to perform better and more professional roles than women. On the other hand, it may be possible to attribute this less job involvement of women to more emotional attachment to the family that mandates design of relevant studies to address these hypotheses.

In this study, job involvement had a positive and significant correlation with age and job experience. Although this correlation does not mean cause-and-effect relationships, it does indicate the fact that job involvement rates increase with increasing age and working experience of faculty members. Therefore, it is suggested to increase the engagement of younger faculty members by attending to patience (e.g., academic rank promotion) by officials.

Our findings also showed that there was no statistically significant relationship between academic rank, employment status, place of employment, and job involvement among faculty members. Although the faculty members whose academic ranks were associate professor and professor had a higher score of job involvement than assistant professors. Therefore, it appears that the university should facilitate scientific promotion of faculty members. Non-clinical and those with fixed-term employment had more job involvement, which may be attributed to the complexity of clinical faculty members and the similarity of academic promotion conditions to clinical faculty members. Instructions to clinical faculty members should be further reviewed and facilitated to increase their engagement with the process.

The present study has limitations including data collection based on a self-report questionnaire that can be associated with a percentage of errors. Also, the role of external factors on job involvement has not been assessed.