This chapter presents the finding of this study. Including conclusion, research and theoretical contributions, practical and theoretical contribution, practical implication, limitations and direction for future research.
Conclusions
In 2015 real estate agency faced the big challenge for selling houses. More and more agents decided to leave this industry, and lots of real estate agencies closed the business. In this difficult situation, the researcher tried to understand and explain what factors can help real estate agents to get through this difficult time. Positive psychology believes that individual’s positive thinking and personality is related to their behavior.
In recent years, the organizations also care more and more about employee’s personality and try to create the positive work environment. According to the research and the research result, the researcher found that Psychological Capital has a positive effect on Organizational Citizenship Behaviors. In the past research, many had reported that people with higher PsyCap had more OCB. For example, people with higher PsyCap are less likely to show job withdrawal, more willing to attending organizational activities, making suggestions to the organization, helping colleagues and self-initiated development. (Luthans, 2002; Luthans et al., 2007b; Peterson & Luthans, 2003) For a real estate agency, it is really important to recruit or train employees to have higher PsyCap. Because PsyCap makes employees stay hopeful and stay loyal to organizations even in a period of crisis.
Although the research has already shown the importance of Psychological Capital in the workplace, however, the possible influence of moderating effects between PsyCap and OCB was inadequate, therefore, the researcher used team identification and
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team cohesion as moderators in order to examine how teamwork effects on such relationships. According to the HLM and multiple regression results, team identification was not found to moderate the relationship between PsyCap and OCB both in team level and individual level.
A possible explanation for the team identification as a moderator not being significant between PsyCap and OCB is the way of team work in real estate industry.
According internal staff’s opinions, although real estate industry has teamwork, work team usually doesn’t have specific job description or job task, team members ask for others help when they need or seniors help the new staffs when they just enter to this work team. However, after the employee get more experience they don’t need other member’s help they still can develop new customer, introduce houses, negotiate the price and finally sell the house by themselves successfully.
Therefore, teamwork seems not one of the necessary work element for real estate industry. Another possible reason is the reward system; the reward system in the real estate industry focus on personal performance bonus. Even team member helps other members to sell the house, only the person who developed new customer or sells the house is able to get the reward. Therefore, the reward system makes employees feel teamwork does not affect their performance and their income. The third possible reason is there were 11 real estate brands participated this research and there were only two brands put more emphasize on teamwork, other brands emphasize more on personal performance. These three possible reasons may be the explanation of why team identification and team cohesion has no moderator effect between PsyCp and OCB either in team level or individual level.
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Even though team identification does not moderate the relationship between PsyCap and OCB, the researcher found that team identification has a direct effect on OCB. In the past research, it had shown that team identification is positively related to employee’s behaviors. Team members share team’s values, attitudes, and goals with other team members. An employee who perceives his/ her team has higher team identification they may have a higher commitment to the organization and some helping behavior such as cheerleading, peacemaking, helping colleagues or preventing work-related problems. (Ashforth & Mael, 1989) Under the context of the real agencies if team members had high team identifications they tend to share information of customers or help colleagues introduce the house or bargain the price when collogues are busy. Another important behavior is an employee who has higher identification they are more loyal to their organization. Therefore, in this recession period the person who perceives his/ or her team has higher team identification they are more willing to make some suggestion and don’t resignation easily.
As the research result, the researcher found that hypothesis 3 Team cohesion does not moderates the relationship between psychological capital and employee citizenship behaviors. The result shown that team cohesion is positively related to organization citizenship behaviors. Tem cohesion makes team member depersonalize their feeling and behavior and feel we-ness to the team. (Lin & Peng, 2010) In the past research some researchers indicate team cohesion is the most important variable to the small group (Carron, 2000). Team cohesion predicts team pride and team commitment, team member who perceives higher team cohesion are more willing to share commitment and important goals to others. In the house agency industry, if the team member with higher team cohesion they are more willing to help and cooperate to each other, for example, share the new client’s information or some useful experiences, in the
short-82
term this kind of sharing behavior it helps other team members to get the good performance. However, In the long-term if all the team members have outstanding performance it also helps organization survive in this difficult period.
Research and Theoretical Contributions
Employee’s personality becomes an important concern when recruiting. Because organization always search an employee who not only fit the job but also fit the organization. The sample the researcher survey was focus on real estate agencies, which is one of the most popular industry in Taiwan in the past 10 years. On the basis of this perspective, the researcher found that PsyCap has a significant relation to organization citizenship behaviors. Another important research contribution is that the researcher used both team level and individual level statistic method to examine the hypothesizes, therefore, in this research the researcher were able to compared the result of team and individual level more comprehensive. According the result, the researcher provided empirical evidence that team identification and team cohesion has no significant moderating effect between PsyCap and organizational citizenship behaviors in both team level and individual level, but team identification and team cohesion has a significant relation to organization citizenship behaviors in real estate agencies.
Practical Implications
Pain and Organ (2000) had suggested that OCB may not be explained and understood the same in the different sample. In this study, the researcher made some specific idea of OCB in real estate agency industry in Taiwan. In 2015, as real estate agency faced many challenges, such as government changed its policy toward real estate agency, estate price was falling and there are not so many people want to invest in the real estate as before, all of these factors create a big harm to real estate agency.
There were a lot of real estate agencies on the street before, but now many real estate
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agencies need to close or need to lay off, in this difficult situation this research tried to find some factors are able to help real estate agencies to get through this crisis.
This study among the background we discussed above, the researcher was shown some factors have an impact on OCB. Psychological Capital has been found to have a direct relationship with OCB in this study, this result also supported the past researchers.
Employees who have positive psychological will have more organizational citizenship behaviors, therefore, employees with PsyCap are able to help their colleagues and compliance to organizations in difficult times. Although OCB is extra behaviors in the organization, it affects organizational performance. In the literature review, it had mentioned that PsyCap is a dynamic resource that can grow and develop over time.
(Luthans et al., 2007a). Therefore, in the real estate agency, training and teach employees with positive thinking in order to increase OCB is relatively important in this period. It does not only help employees feel hopeful and face a challenge with the positive state but also influence employee’s behaviors such as less job withdraw, altruistic and commitment to the organization. (Smith et al., 1983)
While in the research result team identification and team cohesion was not found to have moderate effect between PsyCap and OCB, but had a direct effect on OCB.
This research result showed that how individual perceive the team atmosphere has a direct effect on OCB. The researcher wants to emphasize even though team identification and team cohesion didn’t have moderation between PsyCap and OCB at both team level and individual level. The result does not deny the importance of teamwork, in the previous research shown that team cohesion and team identification is not a trait it can be changed and developed. Therefore, the researcher suggested that for the real estate organizations need to create and develop the stronger team identification and cohesion. Because the higher team identification and cohesion makes
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team stick together and has the strong attachment, in the result it makes team members help each other and have stronger commitment and loyalty to the organization, which is very important in the crisis period.
In this study the researcher showed the importance of PsyCap and teamwork is important variables which can effect on OCB. Therefore, for creating employee’s OCB if the organization could take more care about develop PsyCap and team identification and cohesion, in the short term it helps real estate to overcome the challenges； in the long term strong OCB will benefit the organization in all the way.
Limitations
A limitation of this study is that the purpose of this study is to understand OCB in real estate agency industry in Taiwan. As it was difficult to reach the team-level database, the researcher used convenience sampling by asking the friends or visiting shops to request filling questionnaires. Another limitation is respondents filled out self-reported questionnaires, as the research result social desirability was correlated to OCB, the result shows that respondents may have self-reported bias due to respondents might provide the answer which makes them looks better. (Stahan & Gerbasi, 1972) In this study, the researcher only focused on psychological capital related to OCB, team identification and cohesion as moderators. Some other important variables not mentioned in this research may also influence OCB. Due to the size of the sample surveyed the research result might not represent the whole country or entire industry sectors.
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Suggestions for Future Research
Since this research was exploratory study, there are some suggestions for future research: (1) the researcher are expecting to break new ground by investigating another moderator between PsyCap and Organizational Citizenship behaviors. (i.e., other teamwork dimensions, leadership style, and organizational culture) and for dependent variable (i.e., organizational commitment, employee performance, satisfaction) may be equally important as organization citizenship behaviors, and are worthy of future investigation. (2) This study only focuses on real estate industry in Taiwan, however, real estate has not clear work team task distribution and work team reward system.
Therefore, the researcher suggests that this research could be explored in other industries. For example, collecting the data which has specific team task distribution such as research and design department. (3) Adding stages of team development into team identification and cohesion for examining how the different team stage of a team identification and cohesion moderates the relationship between PsyCap and OCB.
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