Exploring Relationships among Organizational Culture, Empowerment, and Organizational Citizenship Behavior in the South Korean Professional Sport Industry

Yunduk Jeong,Minhong Kim,James J Zhang,Euisoo Kim

doi:10.3390/su11195412

Yunduk Jeong, Minhong Kim + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/su11195412

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Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the structural relationships among organizational culture, empowerment, and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) of professional sports organizations in South Korea. In particular, this study emphasized the mediating effect of empowerment on the relationship between organizational culture and OCB. Research participants were 606 employees affiliated with 42 professional sports teams. The validity and reliability of the involved measures were examined through conducting confirmatory factor, Cronbach’s alpha, and correlation analyses. A structural equation modeling analysis with maximum likelihood estimation was conducted to test the relationships among the research variables. The findings revealed that all of the sub-factors of organizational culture (i.e., clan culture, adhocracy culture, and market culture), with the exception of hierarchy culture, were positively influential of perceived empowerment, which was in turn positively influential of OCB. The path coefficients were statistically significant. The findings further revealed that perceived empowerment partially or fully mediated relationships between the sub-factors of organizational culture and OCB. Unlike previous studies, our study focused on studying organizational culture at a specific managerial level, an underdeveloped area of research in sport management. In particular, the findings of this study contribute to sport management practices by uncovering the mediating function of empowerment on the relationship between organizational culture and OCB, indicating the importance of empowering employees when managing professional sports organizations.

Highlights

This empirical study proposed and tested an integrated model that showed the significant influence of organizational culture and empowerment on organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), and it showed the mediating effect of empowerment in the Korean professional sports setting
The findings demonstrate the importance and necessity of developing a positive organizational culture and nurturing a strong sense of empowerment in sports organizations to attain optimal organizational citizenship behavior
Where previous scholars address the importance of organizational culture on empowerment and OCB, this study reveals that different types of organizational culture have different impacts on empowerment and OCB

Summary

Introduction

The inception of South Korean professional sports leagues in the early 1980s is uniquely attributable to the government’s desire to divert people’s political attention [2]. Three professional sports leagues were introduced simultaneously between 1982 and 1983 (i.e., professional baseball in 1982, soccer in 1983, and ssireum— traditional Korean wrestling—in 1983), and large corporations such as Samsung and Hyundai were demanded to comply with the government’s request to invest a significant amount of financial resources to create and run these teams [3]. Professional sports teams have been primarily tasked with promoting the corporate image, marketing products, or carrying out corporate social responsibility initiatives instead of generating profits as an independent entity [4]. Some HR staff have been skeptical that the promotions and compensations for front office employees are based on one’s ability; instead, they are often based on cronyism [1]

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