"Same same" but different? Exploring the impact of perceived organizational support at the school and teacher levels on teachers' job engagement and organizational citizenship behavior

Chuan-Chung Hsieh; Wei-Cheng Chien; Hung-Chin Yen; Hui-Chieh Li

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1067054

"Same same" but different? Exploring the impact of perceived organizational support at the school and teacher levels on teachers' job engagement and organizational citizenship behavior

Front Psychol. 2022 Dec 29:13:1067054. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1067054. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Chuan-Chung Hsieh¹, Wei-Cheng Chien^{1

2

3

4}, Hung-Chin Yen⁵, Hui-Chieh Li⁶

Affiliations

¹ Department of Education and Learning Technology, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu City, Taiwan.
² Research Center for Educational System and Policy, National Academy for Educational Research, New Taipei City, Taiwan.
³ Department of Graphics Arts and Communtions, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei City, Taiwan.
⁴ Department of Nursing, School of Nursing, National Taipei University of Nursing and Health Sciences, Taipei City, Taiwan.
⁵ Chaoliao Elementary School, Kaohsiung City, Taiwan.
⁶ Center for Teacher Education, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu City, Taiwan.

Abstract

All countries in the world are currently trying to implement educational reform, which increases the additional workload of teachers. It is more important to discuss how to inspire teachers' enthusiasm for educational reform from the perspective of organizational support (OS). Previous research on OS was limited to perceived organizational support (POS), but in recent years group-level OS has been considered the most promising. There is no study comparing POS and group-level OS in education, and therefore this study explored the relationships between OS, job engagement (JE) and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) in an educational context. In particular, OS was examined at the individual-level (POS) and the aggregated group-level (school organizational support, SOS). Analysis was performed using structural equation modeling (SEM) at both single and multiple levels. SEM results showed direct and positive relationships of individual-level POS with both JE and OCB. Moreover, JE is directly and positively related to OCB and plays the partial mediating role of the indirect and positive impact of POS on OCB. Multilevel structural equation modeling (MSEM) analysis revealed direct and positive relationships of SOS with teachers' JE, which was directly and positively related to their OCB. While SOS had no significant positive relationship with OCB, it did have a positive impact on OCB through the mediation of JE. Comparison between SEM and MSEM results revealed the change in effect of OS on OCB from significant to insignificant, thus implying full mediation effect of JE when SOS is considered.

Keywords: job engagement; multilevel structural equation modeling; organizational citizenship behavior; school organizational support; structural equation modeling.