Authors
atefeh heshmatzadeh 1
hamidreza amel Ardestan 2
farshid aslani 3
1 Department of Public Management, Islamic Azad University Khorasgan branch, Isfahan, Iran.
2 Department of Business Management, Payame Noor University,Tehran, Iran.
3 Department of Public Management, Payame Noor University Tehran, Iran
Abstract
Purpose:Health systems are under pressure to improve their performance due to facing issues such as a sharp increase in expenses, safety, quality and justice, as well as the aging of the population, the spread of infectious diseases. Improving the performance of health systems requires that they work systematically Job performance refers to employee behavior that contributes to the organization's effectiveness. They suggest three possible reasons for the possible effect of knowledge hiding on job performance: First, knowledge hiding reduces the availability of knowledge to facilitate better performance. Secondly, employees who hide knowledge tend to have a mindset that they do not trust the support of other colleagues. The predictable result is that performance decreases. Finally, if knowledge collectors know that someone is hiding their knowledge, trust will decrease (Jiao and Cook, 2018). Therefore, hiding knowledge often reduces employee job performance for three reasons: reduced decision making, problem solving, and creativity (Davenport et al., 2016). Organizational pessimism is one of the topics of organizational behavior that has been raised recently, and its existence can have a negative impact on employee performance and organizational productivity, as well as individual health. Pessimism in the organization, before it is a personality trait, is a learned reaction that occurs among employees and is formed and increased in most cases due to a series of negative communications between employees and managers of the organization (Larinkova, 2017). A large number of employees tend to make deliberate efforts to hide tacit knowledge in organizations, which leads to many negative consequences such as repetitive efforts or reduced job performance (Beijer, Pechi, Veldhoven, & Paure, 2021). One of the reasons for hiding knowledge by employees is that they want to get a superior position and have the positive evaluation of others. It is achieved and also because of the fear of hosting "knowledge parasites" who only want to use the benefits of knowledge. Sometimes, hiding knowledge is done with the aim of avoiding its negative aspects, such as disclosing information to competitors. In addition, personality traits and cultural factors may affect knowledge concealment behavior, those who are not talkative are usually introverted in sharing knowledge with colleagues (Arshad and Ismail, 2018). Knowledge sharing has an effect on increasing efficiency, improving quality and increasing the competitive advantages of organizations, and therefore, organization leaders seek to find ways to increase knowledge sharing (Zhou and Jia, 2019). Leadership style is also very effective in the organization, transformational leaders based on interactive methods with their employees can increase the psychological capacity of employees and ultimately reduce negative attitudes such as organizational pessimism. Transformational leadership has a positive effect on knowledge sharing behavior. Leaders who have more relationships with employees can have a great impact on employees' attitudes and behaviors and ultimately on their level of pessimism. Leaders establish interactive relationships with employees by providing benefits and advantages such as fair and just treatment, support or independence of action. Through transformational leadership, employees can be encouraged, inspired and motivated to innovate, make them accept changes, endure more challenges and help in the development of the organization, as well as transformational leadership by establishing a connection between individual interests and Collectively, they make more efforts of employees to achieve the lofty goals of the organization and they are trying to change and transform in line with the goals and programs of the organization and according to the conditions. (Hosseini, Raij, Stiri Sharifi, 2010) Considering the basic role of health deputy in providing primary services and to some extent secondary services in Iran's health system and also considering the important and serious duties of the employees in the field of health deputy in order to maintain and improve the health of the society and since improving the performance of health deputies It can ultimately lead to the improvement of health indicators, so increasing performance and improving performance is more important than other organizations. Achieving goals in the health system depends on the correct and appropriate performance of employees, continuous and dynamic changes in the health needs of people and the expectations of people from the health system, requires the presence of knowledgeable and optimistic employees in the organization.The Deputy of Health plays a fundamental role in providing primary and to some extent secondary healthcare services in the healthcare system of Iran, and employees in the field of Deputy of Health have important and serious duties in maintaining and promoting community health. Since improving the performance of health deputies can ultimately lead to the improvement of health indices.Therefore, it is very important to know the influencing factors on increasing performance in any organization. Since no study has been conducted in this regard in Isfahan province's deputy health department and most of the studied studies have been conducted in areas outside the health department, which are different from this area in terms of the nature of work, so the importance and necessity of implementing The current research is clear and based on this, the main goal of the present research is to explain the role of pessimism in the job performance of employees of Isfahan University of Medical Sciences' Vice-Chancellor of Health with regard to the mediating role of hiding knowledge and moderating transformational leadership.

​ Research Methodology:The current research is a descriptive study, from the point of view of practical purpose and from the point of view of data collection, it is a survey type. The statistical population of the current research was all the employees of the Health Vice-Chancellor of Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, numbering 235 people. According to Morgan's table, the number of samples was 140 people. But to ensure return, 200 people were selected as a sample by simple random method. This research was conducted at the health center headquarters of Isfahan University of Medical Sciences and the data obtained from questionnaires completed in the winter of 2011 were analyzed. The method of data collection was library and field methods. In the field method, to measure research variables, standard cynicism questionnaires with 5 items (Maslash et al., 1996), knowledge concealment questionnaire with 4 items (Peng, 2012), job performance questionnaire with 5 items (Chiang and Hsieh, 2012) ) and transformational leadership questionnaire with 4 items (Dai et al., 2013) were used. The spectrum used in the questionnaire is based on the five-choice Likert spectrum. The face validity of the questionnaire was checked and confirmed by experts. Convergent validity was also checked and confirmed with the average variance extracted. Cronbach's alpha was used to check the reliability of the questionnaire, which was obtained and confirmed for the variables of cynicism (0.838), knowledge concealment (0.833), performance (0.822) and transformational leadership (0.927), respectively. Due to maintaining the confidentiality of personnel information, questionnaires were distributed anonymously among the employees. Descriptive and inferential statistics methods were used to analyze the data. For the descriptive analysis of variables and data, statistics such as mean, standard deviation and kurtosis are used. Data analysis was done by structural equation modeling and SPSS25 and Smart pls3 software.

Findings: The results showed that pessimism has a significant effect on the job performance of health assistant staff of Isfahan University of Medical Sciences. Also, pessimism has a significant effect on the knowledge concealment of health staff of Isfahan University of Medical Sciences. But other relationships were not confirmed.

Conclusion: The most important determining factor in achieving organizational goals is the human resources of that organization. Organizational pessimism is one of the topics of organizational behavior and one of the important and influential factors on the performance of employees of any organization, the existence of which can negatively affect the performance of employees, organizational efficiency, and also individual well-being. The present study investigates the role of pessimism in the job performance of employees of the Deputy of Health of Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, considering the mediating role of knowledge hiding and the moderating role of transformational leadership.

In examining the impact of pessimism on the job performance of employees, considering the coefficient obtained for the intensity of the relationship between pessimism and job performance and examining the level of significance, a weak significant relationship has been found, indicating a weak inverse relationship between pessimism and job performance. Therefore, with an increase in the pessimism of the employees of the health deputy, their job performance decreases.

Furthermore, Soufiani and Safandiaz (2017) concluded in their research that organizational pessimism has a significant negative impact on job performance. By examining the coefficient obtained for the intensity of the relationship between pessimism and knowledge hiding, and also examining the level of significance, we reach a moderate relationship between these two factors, indicating the significant number obtained and the presence of a moderate correlation between pessimism and knowledge hiding. Therefore, it can be concluded that the higher the pessimism among employees, the more likely organizational knowledge hiding behaviors occur. In a study by Babaei Meybodi and Alirezaei (2019), similar results were obtained, showing that rational knowledge hiding has a positive effect on job performance satisfaction as an intermediary role.

Jiang, Wang, and Jiang (2019) also in their research titled "Hiding Knowledge as a Barrier to Flourishing and the Mediating Role of Mental Security and the Moderating Role of Organizational Pessimism" concluded that the negative effect of hiding knowledge on mental security is higher at higher levels of organizational pessimism. The results of the research by Neguineh and Maleki (2022) also showed that pessimism has a positive effect on knowledge hiding behavior, and therefore, reducing pessimism can reduce knowledge hiding behavior and indirectly affect the job performance of employees.

One of the reasons why employees hide their knowledge is pessimism. It seems that there are reasons that strengthen pessimism, leading to a meaningful relationship between pessimism and knowledge hiding. One of these reasons is the belief that "knowledge brings power". Knowledge has been considered in many past studies as a factor of power, survival, and job security in the organization. Many employees still hold such beliefs, which lead to "distrust of the opposite person" and make them first assess the level of trust in the opposite person when requested for knowledge and then react to the request.

The results of hypothesis testing showed that there is a significant negative relationship between pessimism and job performance and also a positive and significant relationship between pessimism and knowledge hiding. No correlation between knowledge hiding and job performance was observed. In this regard, the results of the present study showed that pessimism and negative moods of employees have a negative impact on their performance and provide grounds for knowledge hiding. Since pessimism has many negative consequences for the organization, management should identify the factors affecting organizational pessimism, the precursors of creating negative emotions and moods in employees, and also consider the consequences that pessimism will have for the organization and employees, to control and minimize its negative consequences, by creating opportunities and places for expressing problems, needs, conflicts, and harassment that threaten employees, try to create a trusting atmosphere among employees. This action can help employees re-evaluate their mindset and reduce knowledge hiding behaviors
Keywords
pessimism
job performance
Knowledge Hiding
Transformational leadership
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Human and Information Interaction
Volume 10, Issue 4
Winter 2024
Pages 94-112