International Journal of Economy, Management and Social Sciences, 3(1) January 2014, Pages: 65-70

TI Journals

International Journal of Economy, Management and Social Sciences

ISSN
2306-7276

www.tijournals.com

Factors Affecting the Vitality of Employees in Water and

Wastewater Company of Tehran Province, Iran
Mohammad Ghotbi *
M.S. in Business Management, Department of Management, Islamic Azad University, Naragh Branch, Iran.
AR TIC LE INF O

AB STR AC T

Keywords:

This study attempts to examine factors that affect organizational vitality of the staff in Water and
Wastewater Company of Tehran Province and to develop ways for making them well satisfied
Human resources are regarded as the main factor and driving forces. The human resources, if
managed properly, will meet the organizational challenges. Job satisfaction and organizational
vitality are of variables making impact on improving their performance. The establishment of a
vitalized organization, as one of strategic requirements for long-term successes, is provided
through Job satisfaction and organizational vitality.. In order to accomplish the objectives, a survey
study was conducted on all staff of Company. The studied factors were: self confidence,
commitment, culture, Conviction, and internal and external participation. findings related to
Pearson's Correlation coefficient demonstrated the significant impact of self confidence, the
commitment of the staff and board of directors, Conviction, appropriate culture of organizations
and staff, and internal and external participation; Moreover, The results of the regression analysis
showed that proportion the culture of personnel with the organization's culture and internal and
external participation have a significant impact on the vitality of employees but Self confidence,
commitment of staff and managers, and Conviction, conversely, did not have a strong impact.
Multivariate Linear Regression Analysis also showed that 65.3% of changes in employee vitality
results from the effects of the variables examined in this study.

Staff vitality
self confidence
commitment
organizational culture
Conviction
Internal and external participation

2014 Int. j. econ. manag. soc. sci. All rights reserved for TI Journals.

1.

Introduction

By considering the challenges of today's organizations, the organizational vitality is regarded as one of strategic requirements for long-term
successes [1]. As the employees spend most of their times in organizations, the pleasant working environments, if being developed, offer
them considerable advantages. The significance of creating pleasant working environments has caused all countries to take them into
consideration. The vitality, as pointed out by Compton, is the most considerable cause of mental health. Today's world suffers from anxiety,
most of which is provoked by the work systems. Conflicts in organizations, non-payment of bonus, late arrival at the work, injustice in
workplaces, and pressures being placed by board of directors and chairmen are some factors of arousing anxiety in employees. The findings
of Archil et al revealed that Vitality acts as a shield against stress [7; 17].
The related studies show a positive correlation between the mental health and vitality. As the result, the directors are required to take
measures for promoting mental health in employees. Feeling of happiness and vitality, as indicated by %50 of respondents questioned in
the studies on joy and happiness, is the most considerable matter of life. Since 2000, UN has examined the impact of factors such as
vitality, optimism, pleasure, and satisfaction on determining level of development in countries, as well. In other words, in the case that the
people of a country do not feel satisfaction, pleasure and vitality, it cannot be viewed as developed. Such emphasis indicates the
significance of happiness and vitality. [6]
The vitality and its underlying causes are required to be studied because they offer the societies and their institutions considerable
advantages. The most considerable cause of optimization, as pointed out by experts in management, is the vitalized staff. There is clear
relationship between vitality in working environments and optimization. The vitality, also, brings about increasing the profit rates and
manufacturing capability, making rational decisions, providing customers with great satisfactions, keeping down the level of absenteeism,
performing duties with more immense enthusiasm, improving communications, making the staff fulfill more considerable commitment to
their organizations, encouraging team works, and stimulating creativity and innovation [6]. The vitality inspires the glorious feelings in the
staff, through which their successes are ensured. The persons with good feelings are strongly inclined towards getting into new situations
and are closely involved in their activities. Therefore, they are fit and healthy more than others, live a long life, and take on the faced
challenges. [10; 11]
Since the benefits and significance of good work systems were revealed, all countries have aroused interests in this regard. An increasing
number of articles were published in a decade [5]. The present study, similarly, attempts to examine the factors exerting the most impact on
joy and happiness of the staff in the working environment.

* Corresponding author.
Email address: ghotbi1341@yahoo.com

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Int ernational Journal of Economy, Mana ge ment and Soci al Sci ences , 3(1) January 2014

2.

Previous research

The previous studies were more focused on the negative emotions, such as anxiety and depression, than positive emotions like vitality and
life satisfaction. Within the recent decades, however, many scholars evinced interests in joy, happiness and life satisfaction. From 1960, the
studies on joy and happiness were increased in number and many organizations conducted the related studies. [8]
Rego and Cunha (2007) measured the impact of six variables related to the environment of organizations, vitality, and welfare among the
staff. They attempted to determine how staff's anxiety and vitality affected their performance. Their findings demonstrated that establishing
close relationship between board of directors and the staff, opening up favorable opportunities for personal development, getting
organizational justice, entering into spirit of cooperation and evoking feeling of empathy among employees, keeping balance between
professional life and family life, and building trust between the staff and the chairmen made significant impact on the happiness and
welfare of the staff.
Chiumento (2007) conducted a study on more than one thousand staff of England's government and private companies, each with at least
20 employees. The index of vitality was 6.5 of 10, indicating the relative vitality in staff. One fourth of the respondents, also, had enormous
vitality in their work place and half of them regarded themselves relatively happy, yet one fifth of the employees were concerned with their
work systems. The intimate, interpersonal relationship among colleagues was viewed as the most significant parameter of vitality in the
working environment. In addition, the fair treatment in work place, the trust between the chairmen and themselves, and favorable
opportunities for personal development were regarded respectively, by 97, 92 and 88 percent of the respondents as the most fundamental
causes of their vitality in the work place.
Rego and Cunha (2009) studied the impact of the opportunities for personal development and balance between professional life and family
life on the vitality of 404 employees. Their findings showed the opportunities for personal development made more favorable impact than
the latter on the staff's vitality. Moreover, there was relationship between them. In other words, the opportunities for personal development
created the limited impact on the staff's vitality in the case that they did not keep balance between the professional life and family life.
Wood and Menezes (2011) studied the relationship between high-performance work systems and happiness and well-being of employees.
In this study, four dimensions of job enrichment, employee participation, financial incentives and management high participation intended
for high-performance work systems and their impact on both happiness and well-being of employees were evaluated. It was concluded that
job enrichment affected both factors. But, staff's participation had impact only on their job satisfaction. In other words, there was no
relationship between staff's participation and happiness and well-being of employees. Also, the financial incentives and the studied factors
of happiness and well-being were not interrelated.
Chaiprasit and Santidhirakul (2011) measured the vitality of 300 employees of Thailand's SMEs firms and examined shared organizational
values, interaction, quality of work life and leadership were considered as factors affecting the vitality of employees. Their study showed
that the staff of SMEs enterprises had high vitality. The interaction, quality of work life, and leadership are known as the three factors that
lead to the vitality of employees which explained 0.59 of staff vitality.

3.

Materials and methods

3.1. Research model

The model of the present study is provided in accordance with Pryce- Jones' model, in which five factors are included. In the case that all of
these factors are intervolved with each other, the vitality is created in the work place i.e. feeling of self-actualization and talent
demonstration. These factors are as follows: (1) participation, (2) Conviction, (3) culture, (4) commitment, and (5) self confidence. Their
definitions are given below.

Participation: It consists of the feeling of participation inside and outside of the organization.
Conviction: Pearson makes assumptions about whether they perform their duties competently or not. Even when difficult conditions
prevail, they have the underlying motivation in order to continue their work.
Culture: It focuses on the appropriate culture of the staff and organizations. A continuum can be created from the most static point of
culture (which are created by a larger number of regulations and hierarchies) to the most dynamic point of culture (in which more
enormous powers are granted to the staff and greater flexibility in performing duties is offered to them. The staff of organizations
regards the organizational culture either limited or flexible, depending on their characteristics and the working environment. As the
result, their interest in work is stimulated on the basis of their employment in the appropriate position and compatibility between
organizational culture and their personality.
Commitment: It indicates that to what extent the staff honors commitment on their works. It consists of two indices i.e. glorious
feeling about performing their duties and great feeling about the significance of their performance.
Self confidence: a position of trust in the staff about their own capability and the understanding of the job they do are called self
confidence. It embraces three related factors. The first and the most significant parameter is high productivity. The more the staff has a
good record in performing the duties, the more he acquires self confidence. The second one is staff's trust to their own skills for doing
responsibilities and accomplishing the objectives. And, the third one is a sophisticated understanding of their job, by which they put
forward their views on their job. The great performance, as far as the self confidence is concerned, is delivered with the medium-level
fulfillment of all three factors. In other words, the minimum as well as the maximum level of occurrence of these factors do not
enhance the self confidence. For instance, absolute trust leads to as much damaging consequences as fragile trust. [9]

Different models for measuring vitality indices in the work place are compared and contrasted in order to select the most appropriate
model. The Pryce-Jones model was used in the present study. In Pryce- Jones' view, the vitality in the working environment relies on
participation, Conviction, culture, commitment, and self confidence. The relationship between these factors and vitality in the work place is
illustrated in Figure 1.

Factors Affecting the Vitality of Employees in Water and Wastewater Company of Tehran Province, Iran

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Internat ional Jour nal of Economy, Mana ge ment and Social Sciences , 3(1) January 2014

Figure 1. The conceptual model according to Pryce-Jones

3.2. Hypotheses
H1. Internal and external participation among employees has a significant effect on the vitality of staff.
H2. Conviction among employees has a significant impact on the vitality of staff.
H3. The appropriate culture of the staffs and organizational culture makes significant impact on the vitality of staff.
H4. The commitment between staff and board of directors brings significant effect on staff's vitality.
H5. Self confidences among employees cause significant effect on the vitality of staff.
3.3. Research method
The present study is an applied survey research. The population was all employees of the administrative department of Water and
Wastewater Company in Tehran Province (254 persons). If variables or questions are two-valued or multi-valued with ordinal scale and
population size is limited, the following formula will be used to calculate the sample size:

Where,
N, is population size which here is 254;
P, is the success ratio whose value is estimated on the basis of scholars suggest or Previous researches. If it is not possible to estimate, the
relative success of the 0.5 is considered. In this case, the sample size may be increased to a maximum value.
According to above equation with an accuracy of =0.05 and error level of =0.05, the sample size of 132 was obtained. To compensate
unusable questionnaires, 150 questionnaires were distributed and for selection of sample people, simple random sampling method was
used. The survey questionnaire consisted of 39 5-choice questions to evaluate variables of self confidence, commitment, culture,
Conviction, internal and external participation, and staff happiness. To increase the validity, the opinions of supervisor, experts and
advisors have been applied and Cronbach's alpha was used to determine the reliability of the questionnaire. This coefficient for all the
questions was 0.933 which is greater than 0.7; Then, all questions have acceptable reliability. As seen in Table1, Cronbach's alpha
coefficient for all variables in study has been calculated by SPSS software.

Mohammad Ghotbi

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Int ernational Journal of Economy, Mana ge ment and Soci al Sci ences , 3(1) January 2014

Table 1. Assessment of the reliability of variables

4.

Variable

Cronbach's alpha coefficient

Number of Questions

Self Confidence

0.765

Commitment

0.890

Culture

0.901

Conviction

0.609

Internal and external participation

0.802

Staff Happiness

0.884

12

Total

0.933

39

Results and discussion

4.1. Testing hypotheses

The correlations between the independent variables and the dependent variable (staff happiness) were calculated by the Pearson correlation
coefficient using SPSS software.
Table 2. Pearson's correlation test results of research hypotheses
Dependent
variable

Staff
vitality

Self Confidence

Pearson correlation coefficient

(R)
0.259

0.001

148

Accepted

Commitment

0.273

0.001

148

Accepted

Culture

0.714

0.000

148

Accepted

Conviction

0.397

0.000

148

Accepted

Internal and external participation

0.768

0.000

148

Accepted

Independent variables

P-value

No.

Results

According to table 2, the results of the test between self confidence (independent variable) and employee vitality (dependent variable), with
a confidence level of 0.99 and the significance level lower than of 0.01, show a significant relationship. The Pearson correlation coefficient
is equal to about 0.259 and the significant level is 0.001. Since the correlation coefficient is positive, it can be concluded that there is a
direct relationship between these two variables in Water and Wastewater Company of Tehran. In this regard, this hypothesis, from the
statistical viewpoint, is not rejected. As seen in table 2, the correlation coefficient between variables of commitment and employee vitality
was 0.273; In other words, the impact of commitment between staff and management on employee vitality is 0.273. In this regard, we can
conclude that commitment between employees and management staff in Water and Wastewater Company is correlated with staff happiness,
so this hypothesis is also accepted.
The results of the test between culture and employee vitality (table 2) with a confidence level of 0.99 and the significance level lower than
of 0.01 shows a significant relationship. In this case, The Pearson correlation coefficient is equal to about 0.714 and the significant level is
0.000. Since p-value is less than 0.01 (P0.01), it can be concluded that there is a relationship between culture and employee vitality in
Water and Wastewater Company of Tehran city. The Pearson correlation coefficient between variables of conviction and employee vitality,
according to table 2, is 0.397 which, with a 99% confidence, we can conclude that there is a significant relationship between staff
conviction and happiness. Finally, Pearson correlation coefficient between internal and external participation and vitality of staff is 0.768.
So we can conclude that with a significant level of 1%, there is a significant between internal and external participation and vitality among
employees of Water and Wastewater Company of Tehran.
4.2. Other tests
4.2.1. Durbin - Watson test
Before regression analysis, we need to ensure about accuracy of assumptions which is necessary in the use of regression analysis. One of
the assumptions is considered in the analysis, independence of errors (the difference between the actual values and the values predicted by
the regression equation) of each other. To determine the independence of each error, Durbin - Watson test was used. The value of the test
statistic is in the range of 0 to 4, and if it is in the range between 1.5 or 2.5, The correlation of test errors will be unacceptable; Otherwise,
there is a correlation between errors. The value of this test is 2.015 which is above the range, and therefore, there is no correlation between
errors. Table 3 shows the standard deviation, adjusted coefficient of determination, coefficient of determination, multiple correlation
coefficients. Given adjusted coefficient of determination obtained from test output, 65.3 of the variability is explained by the independent
variables included in the model.

Factors Affecting the Vitality of Employees in Water and Wastewater Company of Tehran Province, Iran

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Internat ional Jour nal of Economy, Mana ge ment and Social Sciences , 3(1) January 2014

Table 3: Multiple correlation coefficient for research variables

Durbin - Watson
test

SD

adjusted coefficient of
determination

coefficient of
determination

multiple correlation
coefficient

2.015

0.38577

0.653

0.665

0.816

4.2.2. Testing Normality of errors

One of the assumptions considered in the regression is that errors should be normally distributed with mean zero. Obviously, if it is not the
default setting, the regression can be used. Figure 1 shows the normality of errors, as one of the assumptions of regression. Under this
assumption, the errors should be normally distributed with mean zero or 0, std.Dev 1.as seen in figure 2, Mean value is 4.6310-15 which close to zero and standard deviation is close to 1 (0.99). According to this graph (fig.1), Assumption of normality of error
for the variable is confirmed.

Figure 2. Histogram graph for normality of errors

4.2.3. Multiple linear regression analysis

To evaluate the effect of variables of confidence, commitment, culture, Conviction, and internal and external participation on the vitality of
employees, multiple linear regression analysis was conducted. The results of these tests are given in the table 4.one of outputs of this
analysis is Analysis of regression variance which is used to assess the linear relationship between variables which is shown in table
4.according to it, F=56.420 and sig=0.000 which is less than 0.05; Then there is a linear relationship between variables and multiple linear
regression model can be used for them.
Table 4. Regression analysis of variables

Model
1

Regression residuals
Total

Sum of
squares
41.980
21.132
63.112

df
5
142
147

Mean
square
8.396
0.149
-

Sig.

56.420

0.000

One of other outputs of multiple linear regression analysis, are standardized and non- standardized coefficients. Regression equation with
non-standardized coefficient is as follows:

y = 0.651 + 0.005x1 0.074x2 + 0.311x3 + 0.050x4 + 0.466x5

Also, Regression equation with standardized coefficient is:

y = 0.005z1 0.084z2 + 0.379z3 + 0.044z4 + 0.521z5

Mohammad Ghotbi

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Int ernational Journal of Economy, Mana ge ment and Soci al Sci ences , 3(1) January 2014

Table 5. Multiple linear regression coefficients

Variables

Non- standardized
coefficients

Standard error

Standardized coefficient

Sig.

Constant value

0.651

0.241

2.705

0.008

Self Confidence

0.005

0.067

0.005

0.081

0.936

Commitment

-0.074

0.056

-0.087

-1.321

0.189

Culture

0.311

0.056

0.379

5.587

0.000

Conviction

0.050

0.077

0.044

0.642

0.522

Internal and external

participation

0.466

0.061

0.521

7.634

0.000

As seen in table 5, the largest beta coefficient is related to Internal and external participation; so this variable has an impact on employee
vitality more than other variables. The Sig. for variables of Self Confidence, Commitment, Conviction, and culture is greater than 0.05;
Then these variables have no significant impact on the vitality of staff. The only variable which affects staff vitality in Water and
Wastewater Company of Tehran is Internal and external participation.

5.

Conclusion

Happy people are more energetic and more motivated, and all of these are necessary for success in business, so we can dare to say that
vitality and happiness is the basis of success. People who live with vitality, increase their concentration power and are generally successful
in Doing works [3]. Evidences indicate that the sense of vitality, produce energy, passion, motion and dynamics and determine physical and
mental health [2]. To enhance the vitality of employees in Water and Wastewater Company of Tehran, we recommend that the social and
cultural programs for the improvement of these traits should occur among employees and staff, with the support of these traits, should
increase the level of happiness in their hearts to achieve peace of mind and satisfaction. According to the results of this paper in which
Internal and external participation is the most significant predictor of vitality compared to other variables of self Confidence, Commitment,
Conviction, and culture, strengthening these components should be considered in the company. Employees and managers across the
organization should participate in the decision making process and collisions and conflicts between managers and employees should be
reduced. Trust is the glue and mortar that binds groups of people together [4]. The more trust in employees, the more happiness is in the
workplace.

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