A study to determine the relationship between transformational leadership and organizational citizenship behavior in maritime businesses

Managers have sought the ways to raise the efficiency of their organizations and discovered that this goes through increasing the effectiveness of human factor. Undoubtedly, enabling individuals to exceed their work capacity would have an effect upon the overall performance of the enterprise. During the literature review on various areas, it is claimed that, organizational citizenship behavior of the employees positively affects the organization's performance, transformational leaders have great influence on the employees' organizational citizenship behavior and one way to increase the organizational citizenship behavior of the employees is to demonstrate the transformational abilities by the leaders. The purpose of the study is to identify the relationship between transformational leadership and organizational citizenship behavior and also the differences between the employees' organizational citizenship behavior with different demographic background in the maritime business. The subject was studied in the context of the leadership factor, which is one of the management functions and the relationship between transformational leadership and organizational citizenship behavior. In the study, transformational leadership and organizational citizenship behavior are assessed using the emplyees' perception of these concepts and findings are reached in this sense. Additionally, content analysis was performed on the other studies that aimed to identify the variables in transformational leadership and organizational citizenship behavior concepts. Following the analysis, the questions were developed to be used in the questionnaires during the field study as data collection tool and interviews were conducted with the subject matter experts for supporting the validity of content analysis. After the necessary corrections are made in accordance with the pilot application, the survey was applied to the maritime businesses that forms the sample group of the study. The population of the study comprise of maritime businesses which execute the management function of the ships on shore. In order to reach the aimed results, 146 (white collar) employees, who were selected using convenience sampling method, from 16 ship businesses in İstanbul and İzmir region took part in the field study and comparative analysis has been performed using the results of the survey. As a result of the study, it was found that transformational leadership and organizational citizenship behavior perceptions in maritime businesses do not change according to the demographic properties of the employees. It was also found that the transformational leadership behaviors of the managers have a meaningful effect on the organizational citizenship behaviors of the employees and suggestions related to this phenomenon are made. With this study, having applied the smilar studies conducted in different fields to the maritime businesses and the results of it contributed to the literature and to the science.