Investigating the effect of in-service training on advisors' effectiveness through psychological empowerment

Article history: Received January 2, 2015 Received in revised format 6 February 2015 Accepted 24 February 2015 Available online February 26 2015 Efficiency is one of the fundamental concepts in any organization including ministry of education of Iran. Teachers and counselors are the main assets of this organization and education plays a key role in achieving the organization's goals. In-service training is a technique for improving the quality and effectiveness of the advisors. This paper presents a study on the effect of in-service training on advisors’ effectiveness through psychological empowerment. The study uses a questionnaire developed by Spreitzer (1995) [Spreitzer, G. M. (1995). Psychological empowerment in the workplace: Dimensions, measurement, and validation. Academy of management Journal, 38(5), 1442-1465.] to examine the effects of five variables; namely selfefficacy, self-determination, impact, meaningfulness and trust. Using structural equation modeling, the study has determined that all five psychological empowerment components had positive and meaningful effects on in-service training. In addition, in-service training maintained positive and meaningful impacts on all components on psychological empowerment. Moreover, in-service training positively influenced on psychological empowerment. Growing Science Ltd. All rights reserved. 5 © 201


Introduction
Efficiency is one of the fundamental concepts in any organization including ministry of education.Teachers and counselors are the main assets of this organization and education plays a key role in achieving the organization's goals.In-service training is a technique for improving the quality and effectiveness of the advisors.There are several studies on measuring the effects psychological empowerment on different factors such as organizational commitment.Bani et al. (2014) presented a study on relationship between employees' psychological empowerment and organizational commitment in revenue agency of city of Semnan, Iran.The study applied two questionnaires, one for measuring the effects of psychological empowerment developed by Mishra and Spreitzer (1998) and the other for measuring organizational commitment developed by Meyer and Allen (1991).The results of the study indicated that there had been some positive and meaningful relationships between psychological empowerment and organizational commitment components including Sense of efficacy, meaningful, having a choice and trust.However, the survey did not support any relationship between Competency and organizational commitment.Kheirkhah et al. (2014) determined critical factors affecting on organizational commitment.They chose the most important factors grouped in four categories and using factor analysis reported that Affective commitment, Continuous commitment, Moral commitment and Enduring commitment were the most important factors affecting organizational commitment.Miarkolaei and Miarkolaei (2014) investigated the relationship between employees' job satisfaction and organizational commitment of Red Crescent Society's Textile Industries of Islamic Republic of Iran by using Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (MSQ) and Allen and Meyer's Organizational Commitment Questionnaires for collecting data (Allen & Meyer, 1990).They stated significant relationships between employees' job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and their dimensions.Mirzaiefar (2014) studied Huber model on the effect of psychological empowerment of employees on organizational learning.They reported that psychological empowerment of employees could influence on organizational learning characteristics in organization, significantly.Alikhani et al. (2014) studied the relationship between social capital and organizational commitment by considering the relationship between social capital with three components of organizational commitment; namely, affective commitment, continuous and normative commitment.They stated that there were positive and meaningful relationships between social capital and affective commitment, continuous and normative commitment.

The proposed study
This paper presents a study on the effect of in-service training (IST) on advisors' effectiveness through psychological empowerment.The study uses a questionnaire developed by Spreitzer (1995) to examine the effects of five variables; namely self-efficacy (SEF), self-determination (SDE), impact (IMP), meaningfulness (MEA) and trust (TRU).The proposed study uses a sample of 92 teachers who accepted to participate in this survey.In terms of personal characteristics, 73 of them were female and 19 of them were male.In addition, 72 people hold bachelor degree of sciences and 20 of them hold master's degree.Fig. 1 demonstrates other personal characteristics of the participants.

Age
Job experience Gender

Discussion and conclusion
According to the results of Table 1 and Fig. 2, we can observe that all five psychological empowerment components had positive and meaningful effects on in-service training.In addition, in-service training maintained positive and meaningful impacts on all components on psychological empowerment.Moreover, in-service training positively influence on psychological empowerment.The results of this study are consistent with other studies (Bani et al., 2014;Alikhani et al., 2014).

Fig. 1 .
Fig. 1.Personal characteristics of the participants

Fig. 2 .
Fig. 2. The summary of structural equation modeling

Table 1
The summary of Cross-loadings and loadings components Table1and Fig.2summarize the results of cross-loadings as well as loadings components.