Organizational laziness: A scale development study

Behaviors that emerge in organizations are diversifying with changing living conditions. Organizations formed by the coming together of people cannot be considered apart from individual behaviors. In the literature, a concept that fully explains laziness and a measurement development tool that measures laziness have not been found in educational organizations. Educational organizations differ from other organizations in many ways and there is a need for a concept that explains laziness and a measurement tool that measures it. In the scope of the research, The relevant literature was searched and the theories explaining the concept of social loafing, the theories contradicting the concept of social loafing, the individual and group factors that reveal social loafing, the prevention of social loafing, and the social loafing in educational organizations were evaluated. The purpose of this research; to develop organizational laziness scale by drawing the conceptual framework of organizational laziness. In this research, exploratory sequential mixed method, one of the mixed research methods, was used. Due to the exploratory sequential mixed method, the first step of the research is qualitative research. In this research, firstly, phenomenology design, one of the qualitative research designs, was used. At this stage, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 6 instructors determined by the maximum diversity and criterion sampling method. Opinions of 2 field experts were taken while preparing the interview questions. The results obtained from the interview data were analysed with the content analysis method and the literature was scanned together. Based on all the findings, an item pool of 125 items was prepared. Repetitive and non-grammatical items were discarded, and 54 items were obtained. Opinions of 22 experts (assessment and evaluation, field, and grammar) were consulted with the obtained item pool. In line with the feedback, item elimination was made, and a 34-item scale was obtained. The sample of the study consists of 1286 people. For the pilot application, 80 people selected from each group (professor, associate professor, doctor lecturer, lecturer and research assistant) were contacted via e-mail, and a form containing the scale items was sent to them. Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was conducted with the answers from 177 people. Items with a factor load of less than 0.30 were discarded. At the last stage, a 21-item scale was obtained. The reliability coefficient (Cronbach Alpha) was calculated as .91. Based on this, it can be said that the scale has high reliability. For the actual application, the scale form was sent to 886 people via e-mail, and 352 responses were received, and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) was performed. Persons included in the pilot application were not included in the actual implementation. Considering the confirmatory factor analysis fit indices, RMSEA (0.07< 0.08) and SRMR (0.06< 0.08) values show that the model is at an acceptable level. If the 𝑋2 degree of freedom ratio is between 3 and 5, it can be said that the model has an acceptable fit. At the last stage, a scale consisting of 21 items and 1 control item was obtained. It is thought that the Organizational Laziness Scale (OLS), which is a new concept in the literature, will contribute to the literature.