The Structural Relationships Between Organizational Structure, Job Characteristics, Work Involvement, and Job Performance among Public Servants

This study examined the structural relationships between organizational structure, job characteristics, work involvement, and job performance. A total of 268 of public servants from the agencies and departments under the Ministry of Agriculture and Agro-based Industries participated in the study. The main objective of the study was to identify the significance of work involvement as a plausible mediator between organizational structure and job characteristics and job performance of public servants. Organizational structure consisted of decision making, hierarchy of authority, job codification, and rule observation while job characteristics comprised of skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and feedback. Job performance was measured in terms of task performance and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). The first objective was to assess the construct validity of the Malay-translated version of the instruments used in the study. The research results reported that all hypothesized individual as well as overall measurement models showed adequate fit with the data collected within the Malaysian public sector context, particularly for departments and agencies in the Ministry of Agriculture and Agro-based Industries located in the northern region of the Peninsular Malaysia. Importantly, all of the Malay-translated instruments were reported to have good psychometric properties, especially in terms of construct validity and internal consistency reliability, indicating their utility in future Malaysian studies. The second objective was to examine the influence of all dimensions in organizational structure and job characteristics factors on work involvement and job performance. This study reported that task significance, feedback, and job codification had positively impacted work involvement of public servants. It was also found that skill variety had positively influenced overall job performance of the public servants while job codification negatively influenced their overall job performance. Work involvement was also found to have a positive impact on the overall job performance of the public servants in this study. It was also found that only work involvement had a significant influence on task performance but not OCB. The regression results also indicated that autonomy and hierarchy of authority had a significant influence on OCB but not task performance and overall job performance. This study reported that work involvement served as a significant mediator for the relationship between job codification and task performance, OCB, and overall job performance. Work involvement was also found to be a significant mediating factor for the relationships between task significance and task performance, OCB, and job performance. The similar result was reported for feedback and task performance, OCB, and overall job performance. Additionally, this study analyzed two hypothesized structural models. The first hypothesized structural model analyzed the second-order job performance measurement model as the dependent variable. The results indicated that 66.5 percent of the variance that explained public servants' work involvement was accounted for by the dimensions in job characteristics and organizational structure factors. However, only 17.2 percent of the variance that explained job performance was accounted for by dimensions in organizational structure, job characteristics, and work involvement constructs. The second hypothesized structural model examined the first-order job performance measurement model as the dependent variable. Similarly, the second hypothesized structural model reported that all dimensions in the independent variables explained 66.1 percent of employees' work involvement. Moreover, the percentage of variance that explained task performance and OCB were 28.8 and 2.8 percent, respectively. This also study evaluated the direct effect of organizational structure and job characteristics on the first-order and second order job performance measurement model. Based on the competing structural model, the mediating status of work involvement, i.e. fully or partially mediating, was reported. The results of the competing structural model indicated that the percentage of variance that explained task performance and OCB were 34.5 and 11.8 percent respectively. Finally, theoretical, practical, and methodological contributions as well as directions for future research were discussed