The role of decentralization for balancing employee performance in governmental universities in Jordan

Article history: Received: March 18, 2020 Received in revised format: May 3


Introduction
Through its method of managerial organization at the beginning of its establishment and according to its social, economic and political conditions, the modern organization will resort to managerial centralization, and when its conditions stabilize and its duties increase and the number of its employees increases, which leads to the expansion of its services and this which calls on it to convert to decentralization in order for the senior management to devote its affairs, in addition, to achieve the participatory role of working individuals to manage their departments and to meet the needs of their employees (Cäker & Siverbo, 2014).The issue of centralization of authority in exchange for its decentralization has been the subject of much controversy among experts in administrative sciences, making decisions to managers at lower administrative levels. Each of these two systems has its own advantages and disadvantages. Absolute decentralization is only practical in small companies, while absolute decentralization is not present in working life, yet the type of organizational structure of the institution or company determines the degree of centralization and decentralization in it. As companies begin to grow and expand through mergers and acquisitions, decentralization becomes both necessary and practical. For example, if a carmaker acquires a company to produce refrigerators, a decentralized management system would be the best style for managing the operations of these two sectors, given that the policies and decisions in these two different areas may not be similar. Management experts prefer to work with a system of decentralization in institutions whose work requires a huge logistical activity, and behavioral science experts advocate for decentralization because it is more democratic and therefore it enhances the morale of employees and positively affects productivity at work (Foss et al., 2015).

Problem Statement
According to Chohan (2017), organizations generally have a clear chain of command that moves through its hierarchical levels from top to bottom, and this is normal in the case of normal, recognized organizations. And with the technological, administrative, and environmental development in the business environment, these organizations have evolved and become organizations adopting the concept of decentralization and through which they have a different administrative hierarchy to a certain extent, these organizations authorize working individuals and leaders to make decisions individually and enable them to take Actions on its own. Wynen et al. (2014) indicates that in an organization that adopts decentralization as an administrative method in which decision-making occurs at the lowest possible level of the chain of command. Many researches have gone through the influence of decentralization on organizational excellence and performance, among these researches Pantazoglou et al. (2015) who argued that decentralization has the ability to manage and organize workload within an organization which can give a higher level of performance. Chakraborty and Mukhopadhyay (2014) saw that empowerment is one of the aspects that can be generated by decentralization; it can develop leaders and employees into making better dictions at the moment and avoid the loss of time and efforts waiting for the higher management to do its role. On the other hand, Verbrugge (2015), Wu and Heerink (2016), Farzanegan et al. (2018), Novriansa and Riyanto (2016) and Khatam and Keshavarzian (2016) spoken of decentralization's ability to decrease ambiguity and conflict in roles among individuals, this appeared to be as one of the most prominent results in terms of empowering employees and supporting leadership within an organization. Based on above argument, current study hypothesizes that decentralization has the ability to create a more balanced performance within the organization through influencing aspects of workload, conflicts and ambiguity, leadership and empowering employees to better decision making. Through examining the eligibility of above aim, following model in Fig. 1 (Pantazoglou et al., 2015;Chakraborty & Mukhopadhyay, 2014;Farzanegan et al., 2018) From above model, following hypotheses were reachable:

Main hypothesis:
H: Decentralization guarantees more balanced employee performance Sub-Hypotheses H1: Organize Workload guarantees more balanced employee performance. H2: Decrease Role Conflict guarantees more balanced employee performance. H3: Decrease Role Ambiguity guarantees more balanced employee performance. H4: Support Leadership guarantees more balanced employee performance. H5: Employee Empowerment guarantees more balanced employee performance.

The Concept of Decentralization
Decentralization is considered a managerial organization within the so-called principles of majority rule on which democracy is based, and it is completely contrary to decentralization. The concept of decentralization was defined by Bashir (2015) as the lack of concentration of authority at one managerial level, and its distribution across multiple managerial levels in the institution or state. On the other hand, Tarwneh (2019) saw that the idea of decentralization was defined as the process of transferring all kinds of executive, economic, and legislative authority from a higher managerial level to a lower managerial level. Gessler and Ashmawy (2016) presented a deeper definition for decentralization which indicated that the concept consists of two terms: the first term is the dismantling of power, and it means: the central management delegates authority to a geographically distant management for certain tasks, and the second term relates to authorization, which is: giving the constitutional authority some of its powers to perform certain functions. From an academic perspective, Pantazoglou et al. (2015) defined decentralization as the delegation of central management to local authorities away from the center of decision-making, in what the government proposes as enhancing citizen participation in decision-making at the local level. In a managerial definition of decentralization, Chakraborty and Mukhopadhyay (2014) defined it as the delegation of law by the central management to distant departments represented by an elected group, while Verbrugge (2015) in the field of public management describes it as transferring managerial authority from the higher managerial levels to lower levels. From the foregoing we conclude that decentralization is directly related to decentralization, as it is the process of delegating part of the authority and powers to lower managerial levels in order to activate the role of managerial partnership, contribute to managerial decisionmaking, and facilitate and facilitate managerial work.

Types of Decentralization
The concept of decentralization isn't a strategy to be adopted as is, it is formed of many types and each type should be suitable for certain structure of organization. According to Wu and Heerink (2016) types of decentralization are: It is a distribution of powers between the governorates and regions of the state, which has a legal personality entrusted to a local council elected by society in the region or governorate, and it has powers to make decisions and budget for the projects and public facilities that belong to it, which is what is called Local Management, and some examples include: the mayor, or the governor of the region.

-Occupational decentralization
It is the distribution of authority or authority at the managerial levels within the organization or the company, and this type is when the tasks, powers, and actions of senior management increase to ensure that the work proceeds as quickly and efficiently and effectively as delegating some of the powers of the manager to the head of the department and so on.

-Political decentralization
It is a legal process for the distribution of jobs, whether legislative, executive or judicial, between the government in the state and the authorities affiliated with it, which is what is called a federal union, such as the United States and the United Arab Emirates.

Characteristics of Decentralization
According to Farzanegan et al. (2018), decentralization is characterized by its ability to increase participation in decisionmaking and facilitates and facilitates procedures of workflow. As for Khatam and Keshavarzian (2016), decentralization is known to promote organizational identification as it helps individuals to participate in development projects and reduces the burden on senior management. Novriansa and Riyanto (2016) argued that decentralization can achieve speed in accomplishing work efficiently and effectively and it facilitated coordination between organization's departments through raising the morale of lower departments and increases their expertise. From another perspective, Wynen et al. (2014) argued that decentralization is based on many flaws that may include that it weakens the central authority, while Crook and Manor (2018) saw that decentralization results in weakening the implementation of state policies by overriding the managements of the regions with the plans laid down in the centralization. Mattingly (2016) argued that decentralization need to increase oversight of local managements and it presents the tendency of local managements to be independent and not to return to the central authority. Kinemo et al. (2016) indicates that there is an urgent need for organizations to adapt and change if they want to experience success in the competing market, and therefore one of the methods that have proven successful in adapting and adapting is to adopt decentralization so that the organization will give up control of working individuals so that they can control their fate and fate the organization. Modrak et al. (2014) Emphasizes that, within business organizations, decentralization focuses on the dynamics of learning and depends on the philosophy of management from the base to the top. As for Jentzsch (2016), it was found that participation in decentralization takes place at every level by increasing independence in the lower ranks. This increase in independence leads to an increase in the flow of ideas from the level of working individuals to the level of senior management. The organization adopting the concept of decentralization appears as an entity that empowers employees by giving them autonomy, authority and real responsibility for decision-making. As empowerment through decentralization in the organization makes it easier for individuals to assume more responsibilities and adopt many additional goals and achieve them, Moutinho and Oliveira (2016) also pointed out that the idea of empowerment through decentralization and give more authority to working individuals, including employees and leaders, makes them able to respond in a way Faster for risks, changes and obstacles, which makes the company as a whole more flexible.

Methods
In order to realize aim and hypotheses of study; researcher adopted the quantitative approach depending on a questionnaire. The questionnaire consisted of two main sections; the first took into perspective the demographics of study sample while the other section presented questions related to decentralization and its variables along with its variables (Organize Workload , Decrease Role Conflict ,Decrease Role Ambiguity, Support Leadership and Employee Empowerment) in addition to the variable of balanced performance. The questionnaire was built based on liker 5 scale (1=Strongly Disagree; 2=Disagree; 3=Neutral; 4=Agree; 5=Strongly Agree). Population of study consisted of all managerial staff within governmental universities, a convenient sample of (150) individuals was chosen representing (assistant professor, associate professor and full professor). After application process; researcher was able to retrieve (122) properly filled questionnaires and statistically manageable which makes the response ration (81.3%). Researcher used the Cronbach Alpha in order to verify the study reliability. The alpha value = 0.918, which is an excellent ratio, being higher than the acceptable percentage 0.60.

Results
We first present personal characteristics of the participants who took part in this survey in Fig. 2.

Gender
Academic Qualifications Job experience Age

Fig. 2. Personal characteristics of the participants
As we can observe from Fig. 2, it can be seen that majority of sample who responded to questionnaire reached 68.9% of sample with frequency of 84 individuals, compared to females who formed 31.1% of total sample with frequency of 38 individuals. In addition, sample characteristics according to academic qualification were calculated, it appeared that majority of sample who responded to questionnaire were assistant professors forming 57.4% with frequency of 70 individuals. On the other hand, full professors formed the least of the sample 11.5% with frequency of 14 individuals. Moreover, experience of individuals who responded to questionnaire appeared to be for individuals who had an experience range of 10-14 years forming 34.4% with frequency of 42 individuals. The least experienced individuals appeared to form 11.5% of total sample with frequency of 14 individuals for experience range of more than 20 years. Finally, statistics given in Fig. 2 highlighted that majority of individuals 44.3% were within the age range of 35-39 years compared to least age ranges of more than 45 years forming 12.3%.

Questionnaire Analysis
In Table 1, questionnaire statements were analyzed, and it appeared that respondents had a positive attitude towards statements of study as statements sored higher than mean of scale 3.00 which refer to the results as a good indicator. On the same track, Table 2 shows the results of variable statistics which can be seen that all variables also scored higher than mean of scale 3.00 which also was seen as a good indicator.

The main hypothesis: Decentralization helps balance employee performance
The first hypothesis of the survey examines whether decentralization helps us balance employee performance or not. Table 3 presents the results of regression analysis. According to the results of Table 3, the main hypothesis has been tested using multiple regression and it was indicated that F value =14.299 was statistically significant at the level of 0.05, R value = 0.618 which reflects the strength of the relationship between the independent variables and the dependent variable and these results confirmed that Decentralization guarantees more balanced employee performance.  Table 4 shows the results of the simple regression used to test the first sub-hypothesis, T value =7.175 was statistically significant at level 0.05, R value = 0.548 reflecting the strength of the relationship between the independent variable and the dependent variable, and this confirms that Organize Workload guarantees more balanced employee performance.

The second sub-hypothesis (H2): Decrease Role Conflict guarantees more balanced employee performance
Tables 5 shows that simple regression test was used to test the above hypothesis, T value =3.674 was statistically significant at level 0.05, R value = 0.318 reflecting the strength of the relationship between the independent variable and the dependent variable, and this confirms that Decrease Role Conflict guarantees more balanced employee performance.

The third hypothesis (H3): Decrease Role Ambiguity guarantees more balanced employee performance
Tables 6 shows that simple regression test was used to test the above hypothesis, T value =3.064 was statistically significant at level 0.05, R value = 0.269 reflecting the strength of the relationship between the independent variable and the dependent variable, and this confirms that Decrease Role Ambiguity guarantees more balanced employee performance.  Table 7 shows that simple regression test was used to test the above hypothesis, T value =2.817 was statistically significant at level 0.05, R value = 0.249 reflecting the strength of the relationship between the independent variable and the dependent variable, and this confirms that Support Leadership guarantees more balanced employee performance.   Table 8 shows that simple regression test was used to test the above hypothesis, T value =5.423 was statistically significant at level 0.05, R value = 0.444 reflecting the strength of the relationship between the independent variable and the dependent variable, and this confirms that Employee Empowerment guarantees more balanced employee performance.

Discussion
Current study aimed at examining the role of adopting decentralization to create a more balanced performance among Jordanian governmental university. It was hypothesized that decentralization has the ability to develop organize workload, decrease conflict and ambiguity, support leadership and empower employee, and those aspects will help in creating a balanced performance for employees in specific and the organization in general. Reaching the aim required the adoption of quantitative approach through distributing a questionnaire on (122) assistant professor, associate professor and full professor within governmental universities in Jordan. Study confirmed that decentralization reduces many of the obstacles of the central authority, and gives departments and leaders a broad role in caring for their public affairs, which is a democratic approach that enables working individuals to supervise their business matters, as well as being a catalytic tool for developing performance and an important means for the optimal distribution of roles and tasks. It was reached through study results that decentralization influence all adopted variables (organize workload, decrease conflict, decrease ambiguity, support leadership and empower employees). The most influential aspects that managed to have a mutual influence between decentralization and balanced performance appeared to be organizing workload scoring an R value of (0.548). This means study confirmed that the adoption of decentralization in organizations has an effective role in organizing internal operations in the organization through the possibility that each center has a responsibility to adopt business plans and goals to be achieved and to reach feedback loops and thus increase opportunities to reach the overall strategic goals of the organization. Also, decentralization within the framework of organizing the flow and flow of business would help in gathering information related to the reasons for success and failure in addition to the expected risks and the possibility of dealing with them. This matter coincides with Pantazoglou et al. (2015) when he emphasized that decentralization affects the workflow by organizing the form in which internal work is going, which would give a fair evaluation of systems based on efficiency or output in relation to time and materials, effectiveness, and ability to achieve strategic goals . Decentralization has also contributed to providing information and insights about the extent to which systems operate and how they can be improved. Performance evaluation of business processes in the decentralized system is itself a feedback loop where performance data are used to measure results.
In the 2 nd rank of influence, it appeared that empowerment also has a mutual influence that gather between decentralization and balanced performance, it scored an R value of (0.444) and concluding that decentralization is an important weapon to reduce the inconsistencies and ambiguities of roles within the organization, whereby through decentralization individuals become fully aware of the things they are required to achieve as decentralization helps clarify the concepts of roles required by increasing their participation in the internal development activities in the organization. This enables senior management to achieve its goals more efficiently. Moreover, removing ambiguities and inconsistencies from the organizational roles of individuals contributes to becoming more innovative, more responsible and effective, as individuals' understanding of the nature of the duties required of them contributes to revealing their true potential and the mechanism for their optimal use of the resources available to them and how to use them effectively. And this matter coincided with what was indicated by Bashir (2015) when he emphasized that decentralization is among the organizational policies that would provide the partial independence required for departments so that they have the ability to adopt transparency and clarity in their actions and this is considered among the means capable of removing ambiguity and inconsistency. One of the roles within the organization is to ensure the pursuit of clear and specific goals and objectives, Khatam and Keshavarzian (2016) pointed out that decentralization does not work well with inexperienced people who do not have a clear knowledge of their jobs or organizations that suffer from inconsistencies, conflicts and ambiguities in the roles of their workers, in difficult situations, a clear direction is needed to take brief measures to solve the problems. The study found that it makes sense to have a positive impact of decentralization on the level of empowerment of working individuals, since the organization's enjoyment of a decentralization approach gives working people with employees and able and middle management a good level of empowerment which helps in developing their administrative skills and helping them to organize business plans in addition To shorten the time in making sub-decisions and partial, which can take time by senior management. Hence, individuals enjoying decentralization within the organization will be able to empower them within the tasks entrusted to them. The matter will be to create a quality balanced performance between them, and the matter will be reflected on the rest of the departments. Accordingly, it can be said that decentralization empowers workers and thus increases the balance of their performance; this was pointed by Ahmad and Talib (2015) when he said that employees enjoying power through empowerment gives them a more sense of respect and are often ready and able to work more seriously and take on more tasks. In the 3 rd rank, there appeared that decentralization can decrease role conflict as it sored an R value of (0.318), decentralization in fact can help in managing working plans and duties in clearer approach which individuals he chance to understand more their role and duties and play the game as according to their duties. Also, decreasing role ambiguity appeared in the 4 th rank scoring an R value of (0.269) and agreeing with Verbrugge (2015); Wu and Heerink (2016); Farzanegan et al. (2018) who saw in decentralization as an approach to make all individuals within an organization more adapted to their duties as the have better understanding and less conflicted about them. While leadership appeared to be in the lowest rank of influencing scoring an R value of (0.249), yet the study confirmed that there is a direct impact of adopting decentralization in developing the capabilities and skills of leaders within the organization, since decentralization by its nature enabled leaders to adopt the health bases of leadership in order to ensure the proper functioning of business, and the study found that there is a positive impact of decentralization on leadership by empowering leaders To perform their roles effectively and this includes taking decisions and managing work teams in a way that can achieve the goals. On this regard, Tarwneh (2019); Gessler and Ashmawy (2016) argued that there is harmony between decentralization and leadership through the former positively raising the outputs of the latter and thus reaching a working group capable of accomplishing the required actions and reaching the goals. The impact of decentralization on leadership manifests itself in effective implementation, where a leader who has a high level of decentralization in his organization can organize people quickly and be enthusiastic and interested in reaching desired goals within the highest level of performance and in the least time possible. On the contrary, Amundsen and Martinsen (2014) found that no matter how important and beneficial decentralization is, centralization strategy is often necessary for success in high-risk, fast-paced and time-critical emergencies in environments with a high level of fierce competition.

Conclusion
Decentralization is an essential degree in the ladder of managerial reform and a qualitative transition towards enabling employees and individuals working to plan their careers and sharing management decisions regarding the conduct of matters in the organization. Decentralization is also an important input in applying the values of organizational justice. Given the recent experience of the idea of decentralization, and given that most of the outputs of its application came from different intellectual, political and social spectrums, it is necessary for the experiment to succeed that the duties of decentralized managers and leaders take a new dimension in the tasks and powers, related to seeking the needs of departments and proposing administrative and organizational solutions, which contribute to managing employee rotation rates, employing manpower, and searching for development opportunities among employees. As a conclusion, it can be said that decentralization is at the height of its giving and benefit to the organization in the event that the working individuals, their departments and their leadership are in a full study of the organization's needs of management methods, innovation and possible creative solutions, and therefore they are able to provide a balanced organizational performance in order to cover internal requirements and face competition Foreign in a way that depends on organization and empowerment. Individuals involved in the areas of decentralization within the organization must also be knowledgeable about the environment and know their role within the organization so that a less hierarchical culture permits the free flow of ideas and at the same time it prevents the chaos that could overwhelm the organization as a result of adopting an ill-practiced decentralization. As recommendation, decentralization must be a call for management to conduct a comprehensive performance appraisal, open internal organizational dialogue, to learn about the deficiencies, reinforce powers of leaders, and establish the concept of balanced performance as an exceptional development approach. Risk plans and strategies should be also adopted if the organization is trying to decentralize itself, ad employees must be aware of all their duties and responsibilities so they don't make the wrong decisions.