Organizational Climate and Work Addiction in Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences, 2014: a Case Study

INTRODUCTION: The occupational nature of employees in headquarters units of the University requires them to deal with support issues. Thus, there is some pressure on these employees to complete their assignments on time so that employees in the line units can accurately and expeditiously perform their duties. As a result, work addiction behaviors are sometimes observed among the headquarters personnel. Considering the importance of work addiction and recognizing the factors that intensify it, this study investigated the relationship between organizational climate and the work addiction of headquarters personnel at the Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences. METHODS: This descriptive-analytic study was conducted using stratified random sampling of 151 University employees in 2014. The data collection tool was an organizational climate questionnaire, which was supplemented by the Work Addiction Risk Test (WART). The data were analyzed using the Pearson test, Spearman test, independent t-test, Mann-Whitney test, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), and the Kruskal-Wallis test using IBM-SPSS version 20. RESULTS: The findings of this study showed that the organizational climate was at a moderate level, and employees were in the danger level in terms of work addiction. In addition, among the dimensions of organizational climate, the risk dimension had a significant relationship with work addiction (p<0.05), and the dimensions of structure and responsibility were significantly different from occupational group and monthly salary (p<0.05). Single employees showed a significant difference from married employees in the two dimensions of criteria and conflict (p<0.05). CONCLUSION: Since the organizational climate score was low and the work addiction score was at the high-risk level, this issue demands more attention of senior managers and human resource officers of organizations to improve the organizational climate and increase employees’ awareness of work addiction.