2023.01 66-1 Relationship Between Trait Mindfulness and Organizational-Citizenship Behaviors of Soldiers: Mediating Role of Psychological Capital
Context and Object: Military organizations differ in nature from other organizations. The professionalism of military organization members is demonstrated in the implementation of "ultimate liability," which means to protect national security and make sacrifices for the well-being of the people at any point of time. Assisting soldiers to actively engage in organizational citizenship behaviors and become good organizational citizens is an important method to enhance their professionalism and "ultimate liability." Previous studies have shown that in the workplace, employees with more positive psychological and emotional capital tend to express more organizational citizenship behaviors. However, these results are mainly from studies on corporate employees; it is unknown if this is also true for military personnel. In addition, prior research on organizational citizenship behavior has rarely explored the possible effects of the positive psychological state. To fill these gaps, this study focused on soldiers as research targets and explored the relationship between trait mindfulness, psychological capital, and organizational citizenship behavior. Simultaneously, it verified the mediating effect of psychological capital between trait mindfulness and organizational citizenship behavior. Method: The study used purposive sampling; 407 soldiers from the two army camps in Taiwan were selected and analyzed using the structural equation model. Results: The results showed that: (1) trait mindfulness had no significant association with organizational citizenship behavior (path coefficient value β = 0.00, p > .05); (2) trait mindfulness had a significant positive association with psychological capital (path coefficient value β = 0.40, p < .001); (3) psychological capital had a significant positive relationship with organizational citizenship behavior (path coefficient value β = 0.83, p < .001); (4) psychological capital completely mediated the relationship between trait mindfulness and organizational citizenship behavior (indirect effect value β = 0.33, p < .05, 95% confidence interval did not contain 0).Conclusion and Suggestion: From the results, it can be seen that although the direct relationship between the soldiers’ trait mindfulness and organizational citizenship behavior was not obvious, trait mindfulness can indirectly improve their organizational citizenship behavior performance by enhancing other positive psychological capital. In summary, the contributions of this study are as follows: first, it expanded the application and research scope of mindfulness in the military field. It showed that mindfulness can be used to promote soldiers’ mental health and work performance in high-pressure situations; mindfulness also has indirect benefits in motivating altruistic and helpful organizational citizenship behavior. Second, this study confirmed that the soldiers’ law-abiding and altruistic behavior in the military can be cultivated not only by the current methods of ethical appeals and moral training but can also be achieved by enhancing trait mindfulness and inner psychological capital. Based on the results, the author provides several suggestions for the practice of military counseling; for example, military mental health centers can systematically and continuously conduct related activities, encourage soldiers to practice mindfulness to enhance their self-awareness and insight abilities, cultivate psychological capital, and implement self-management for mental health. Political warfare officers and cadres at the basic level are the first-line counselors for soldiers. They are familiar with the life and training of the army. If they can integrate the skills and concepts of mindfulness-awareness into the military daily life and training, it can help develop the soldiers’ military ethics. Finally, the author also suggests that the army should continue to explore and develop other activities that enhance soldiers’ inner psychological capital, to improve their altruistic behavior and reduce unfavorable behavior in the military organization.
Keywords
Organizational citizenship behaviors, psychological capital, soldiers, trait mindfulness
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