The mediator role of organization cynicism in the effect to organization commitments of the quality of relationship of academicians working in sports science and psychological empowerments of their institutions

The quality of relationship is primarily shaped by external factors and includes interaction and support from the manager. Whereas, psychological empowerment is an individual-level variable, which is mainly dependent on meeting the individual's personal needs and is defined by the intrinsic motivation state. Cynicism, which expresses negative feelings and attitudes, is expressed as contempt for the institution one works for, anger, embarrassment, distress, using negative expressions about others, hard liking, disappointment and frustration. In this context, while it is important to improve the quality of relationships and psychological empowerment in order to increase organizational commitment, it is necessary to reduce cynicism. For this reason, the main purpose of the research is to reveal the relative effect of organizational cynicism, which is a negative emotion and attitude, and empowerment, which is a positive emotion and attitude, on organizational commitment, and the explanatory power of the indirect effect of relationship quality on organizational commitment through these variables. In the study, data were collected and evaluated from a total of 405 academicians, 110 (27.2%) women and 295 (72.8%) men, working in sports sciences faculties in Turkey. LMX 7 Scale, Psychological Empowerment Scale, Organizational Cynicism Scale and Organizational Commitment Scale were used as data collection tools. Confirmatory factor analysis was applied to test the validity of the scale. Bootstrap analysis was used to examine the mediating role of organizational cynicism in the effect of relationship quality and psychological empowerment on organizational commitment. The boot method can effectively reduce the first kind of errors in the use process, especially suitable for the mediation effect test of experimental research with small sample size. Hayes Model 4 and Model 6 were used when testing multiple parallel mediations. Relationships between variables were tested by applying correlation analysis. The significance level was accepted as α = 0.05. As a result, it was observed that there were significant relationships between the independent variable and the dependent variable in the presence of mediators. In the study, based on the relationship quality of the academicians, the leader-member interaction has a direct effect on the commitment of the academicians to the organization they work for; It has been revealed that organizational cynicism, which is an academician's negative emotions and attitudes, and empowerment, which is a positive emotion and attitude, have a relative effect on organizational commitment, and that the quality of the relationship has an indirect effect on organizational commitment through these variables. Therefore, it can be said that LMX will contribute to the LMX-organizational commitment literature as it tests the mediation processes on commitment. In addition, the study showed that the psychological empowerment of academics acts as a moderator and strengthens the relationship between LMX and organizational commitment. Organizational cynicism also mediated the interactive effect of LMX and the psychological empowerment on the outcome variable.