The Effect of Organizational Cynicism on Task Performance: The Moderating Role of Conscientiousness

Abstract

Purpose – This study examines the moderating effect of employees’ conscientiousness on the relationship between organizational cynicism and their task performance. Design/methodology/approach – Dataset of the research consisted of 224 questionnaires gathered from engineers working in the central organization of the general directorate of a public institution in Turkey. Data entry and analyses of the research were carried out by using SPSS 24 software and ModGraph-I programme. Analyses of exploratory factor, internal consistency, Pearson correlation and moderated regression were employed in this study. Afterwards, the graph of regression curves was plotted via the Excell 2010 version of ModGraph-I. Findings – In terms of participants the results suggest that organizational cynicism has a significant and negative effect on employees’ task performance. However, as employees’ level of conscientiousness increases, the negative effect of organizational cynicism on the level of their task performance decreases. Moreover, when the level of conscientiousness reaches a high level, employees exhibit higher task performance despite organizational cynicism. On the other hand, as it moves from a high level to a low level, the opposite happens, that is, the negative effect increases. Therefore, there is the role of consciousness as a moderator variable in the mechanism established within the framework of the study. Discussion – It is concluded that it is possible both to decrease the damage caused by organizational cynicism to public institutions and to boost the positive influences of employee performance on them and thus to contribute to them thanks to civil servants’ conscientiousness by mitigating the reducing effect of organizational cynicism on the level of their task performance or even improving the performance.