The Effects of Organizational Tightness-Looseness on Social Loafing and Innovation: A Research on Academicians

In today s competitive world, organizations must also closely monitor changes in socio-cultural areas in order to survive and gain competitive advantage. At the same time, organizations should be able to adapt their strategies to changes. The way individuals in different societies, different organizations or even different groups perceive events is also different. One of the cornerstones of this difference is the cultural structure. The perception of firmness-flexibility, which is a cultural dimension discussed in this study, can also affect many behavioral outcomes of employees. Individuals working within the organization may develop a number of attitudes and behaviors as a result of working with others. Social slacking tends to be one of them. If necessary, the perceived cultural structure of the organizations should be established in such a way as to prevent this slacking behavior, to reveal the actual capacity of the individuals and to use it for the benefit of the organization. At the same time, this cultural perception will be able to frame individuals and organizations tendency to act innovatively. Employees will be able to act more innovatively in structures where people can participate in decisions, where creativity is supported and rewarded.Structures that closely follow scientific and technological innovation, take risks, adapt to changing environmental conditions will be more likely to succeed. It is evaluated that the innovations that higher education institutions will make in producing and sharing information and their follow-up will make a positive contribution to the educational process. In this case, in light of the cultural structure of their institutions, it will be important for managers at universities to view innovation and support rates, to take risks, to include everyone in this process, expecting equal dedication and work discipline from everyone. In this study, it was investigated how the perceptions of tight and flexible organizational culture in academicians institutions affect their innovative behavior and possible tendency to slip out of unity. The research was carried out by the analysis of the datas collected via sample method from 236 academicians who work in some universities which are located in Ankara province. A 6-question scale developed by Gelfand et al (2006) and adapted by Özeren (2011) to measure the perception of tightness-flexibility, a scale of 4 questions, adapted from the work of Mulvey and Howard (1998) and George (1992), translated into Turkish by Şeshen and Kahraman (2014), to measure the perception of social slacking, Developed by (Jong, 2007) to measure the trend of innovation, Köksal et al. (2018) used a scale of 10 Questions adapted into Turkish. Questionnaires using the 5-point Likert scale technique, which corresponds to the values of absolutely disagree (1), disagree (2), undecided (3), agree (4) and strongly agree (5) it was prepared. The data collected were subjected to correlation and regression based pathway analyses and the hypotheses were tested. According to the results of the analysis, meaningful and negative relations between organizational tightness-looseness and social loafing and innovation were determined. As the perception of tightness increases in organizations, loafing behavior decreases, while as the perception of looseness increases, innovation behavior increases. These findings were discussed and various suggestions were made to managers and practitioners.