Organizational identification and students’ achievement: The moderating role of perceived organizational prestige Turkish Title of Article: Örgütsel özdeşleşme ve öğrenci başarısı: Algılanan örgütsel prestijin düzenleyici rolünün incelenmesi Author(s):

Bu calismada ogretmenlerin orgutsel ozdeslesme duzeyleri ile ogrenci basarisi arasindaki iliski ve bu iliski de algilanan orgutsel prestijin duzenleyici rolu incelenmistir. Arastirmanin evrenini Konya ili merkez ilcelerde gorev yapmakta olan 4537 ogretmen olusmaktadir. Orneklem iki asamada belirlenmis, ilk asamada okullarin 2013-2014 TEOG (Temel Egitimden Ortaogretime Gecis) sonuclari ve bulunduklari farkli egitim bolgeleri dikkate alinarak 4 ozel 25 devlet okulu secilmistir. Ikinci asamada, bu okullarda calismakta olan 523 ogretmen rastlantisal olarak secilerek arastirmaya dâhil edilmistir. Arastirmada veri toplama amaciyla, Orgutsel Ozdeslesme Olcegi, Algilanan Orgutsel Prestij Olcegi ve ogrenci basarisini belirlemek uzere okullarin 2013-2014 TEOG basari ortalamalari kullanilmistir. Arastirma sonucunda ogretmenlerin orgutsel ozdeslesme duzeylerinin ve algiladiklari orgutsel prestijin ogrenci basarisinin anlamli bir yordayicisi oldugu gorulmustur. Arastirmada ayrica orgutsel ozdeslesme ve ogrenci basarisi arasindaki iliskide algilanan orgutsel prestijin duzenleyici rolu oldugu, algilanan orgutsel prestij yuksek oldugunda ozdeslesme ve ogrenci basarisi arasindaki iliskinin pozitif yonde anlamli, algilanan orgutsel prestij dusuk oldugunda ise bu iliskinin negatif yonde anlamli oldugu sonucuna ulasilmistir.


Introduction
Organizational Identification Ashforth and Mael (1989) have based organizational identification on the basis of social identity theory in their study.According to the social identity theory, individuals tend to classify themselves and others according to various social categories such as religion, profession, gender, age group.Based on this classification, individuals define themselves and others.A special form of social identification is also an organizational identification.The most commonly used definition of organizational identification has been made by Mael and Ashforth (1992, p.104).According to this definition, organizational identification is "perception of oneness with or belongingness to an organization, where the individual define him or herself in terms of the organizations in which he or she is a member".Ashforth and Mael (1989) have argued that identification is the three main outputs associated with the organization.According to the first of these outputs, individuals show a coherent commitment to the organization with which they identify themselves.The second is related to the group and it is adaptation, cooperation, making sacrifices and positive evaluations of the group.Finally, identification leads the individual to internalize group values and norms, thus demonstrating common attitudes and behaviors within the organization.These outputs have been supported by numerous empirical studies in the past years.For instance, the results of Riketta (2005)'s meta-analysis have been shown that, organizational identification is highly associated with organizational commitment, commitment to work and working group, job satisfaction and job retention, also it is associated with formal role performance and extra role performance, with low and moderate level and negatively associated with the intention to quitting job.
These findings show that it is important for organizations to have employees who identify with their organizations.But of course, not every organization has employees at the same identity level.Ashforth and Mael (1989) have argued that there are two basic antecedents of organizational identification.One of these is the characteristics distinguishing the organization from the others, and the other one is prestige of the organization.The researchers then classified and elaborated the antecedents of organizational identification as individual and organizational antecedents in their subsequent work (Mael & Ashforth, 1992).According to this classification, distinctive features of the organization (such as historical legends, unique programs, socialization practices etc.) constitute the first one of organizational antecedents.
Another antecedent is competition.The researchers handled organizational competition separately as internal and external.According to this, the organization's competition with other organizations underscores the norm and values of the group and positively affects identification by providing clarification of the distinction between us and others.In other respects, competition within the organization will affect organizational identification negatively, as it will reduce inter-member harmony, as opposed to the former.Last antecedent considered is organizational prestige.The relationship between organizational identification and prestige is discussed in more detail below.

Perceived Organizational Prestige
Prestige means the social and economic situation that prevails in relation to an individual or group of individuals or to other individuals or group of individuals (TDK, 2015).Since the concept has been used as "prestige" in the studies conducted in Turkish national literature before, "prestige" expression has been preferred in this study.In sociology and business management fields, numerous studies have been carried out which consider the concept of prestige as an important variable.In these studies, different words have been used to express the concept.Including March and Simon (1975) reputation, Mael and Ashforth (1992) and Tak and Çiftçioğlu (2009) perceived organizational prestige, Carmeli and Freund (2002) perceived exterior prestige, Polat (2009) perceived external prestige, Göktepe (2012) external prestige perception, various researchers have used different words and word groups.In this study, the concept of "perceived organizational prestige" has been preferred to be used.
The perceived organizational prestige is defined by Smidts, Pruyn and van Riel (2001) as an individual's interpretation and evaluation of the organization's prestige based on his/her own knowledge.According to Carmeli and Freund (2002), organizational prestige is the evaluation of the opinions of the outsiders about the organization by the employees of the organization.Dutton, Dukerich and Harquail (1994, p.248) stated that the perceived organizational prestige constitutes a response to the question "What do people in the outside world think about me because of my membership of this organization?"and functions a powerful mirror as it reflects how the organization and its members' behaviors are viewed from the outside.
In the educational sample, there is no research which investigates the relationship between teachers' perceived organizational prestige and student achievement.Demiröz (2014) has found that there is a meaningful relationship between teacher's perception of organizational image and student achievement.Another study that investigated the relationship between perceived organizational image and contextual performance has been carried out by Öcel (2013).As a result of this study carried out with sample of academic staff, it has been observed that organizational image is related to contextual performance and that this relationship has an intermediary role in affctive commitment.
Considering the hypotheses of the theory of perceived organizational prestige and organizational identification and the results of the researchs, teachers' perceived organizational prestige and levels of organizational identification may be related to student achievement.For this purpose, the following hypotheses were tested within the scope of the research.
H1.There is a significant positive correlation between organizational identification and student achievement.
H2.There is a significant positive relationship between perceived organizational prestige and student achievement.
H3.The moderating role of the perceived organizational prestige variable between organizational identification and student achievement is significant.

Method Research Design
In this research, it is aimed to determine the relationship between teachers' organizational identification and student achievement and the moderating role of this perceived organizational prestige in this relationship.The conceptual model of the research is given in Figure 1.

Participants
The sample of the research is composed of 517 state and 28 private secondary school teachers in Konya province center districts (Karatay, Meram and Selçuklu) in 2014-2015 education year.The total number of teachers working in these schools is 4537 (Konya Provincial Directorate of National Education Department of Strategic Planning, 2014).Student success was taken into account in the first phase of the sample selection process.For this purpose, the results of 2013-2014 TEOG (Transition from Basic Education to Secondary Education) exam were requested from Konya Provincial Directorate of National Education.4 private schools and 25 state schools have been identified, considering the different student achievement levels of the schools and the different educational districts in which they are located.In the second phase, the scales have been randomly distributed among 800 teachers.From the 800 scales distributed, 596 of them have been taken back as filled and the return rate is 74.50%.65 of the 596 forms incompletely filled haven't been included in analysis phase.In the analysis phase, 8 outliers have been removed from the analysis.At the last phase, analyses of the research been made with the data obtained from 523 teachers.The distribution of the research sample according to demographic variables is given in Table 1.

Instruments
Two separate scales have been used to determine the level of organizational identification and perceived organizational prestige of the teachers in the research.Detailed information of scales is given below.Besides, to determine the students' success in research, TEOG achievement point means taken from Provincial National Education Directorate have been used.

Organizational Identification Scale:
The Organizational Identification Scale has been developed by Mael and Ashforth (1992) and adapted into Turkish by Tak and Aydemir (2004) and the scale consists of 6 items and one factor.The scale's items have been rated from (1) strongly disagree, to (5) strongly agree.The Cronbach Alpha reliability coefficient of the original scale was calculated as .87 by Mael and Ashforth (1992).Tak and Aydemir (2004) calculated the reliability of the scale to be .88 in the adaptation study they performed.In this study, reliability of the scale was recalculated and found as .75.Tak and Aydemir (2004) conducted an exploratory factor analysis to test construct validity of the Organizational Identification Scale.As a result of the exploratory factor analysis, it has been seen that there is only one sub-factor with more than one eigenvalue and the factor loadings of the items on the scale change between .79 and .87.The total variance explained by the scale is 37.00%.Within the context of this study, Organizational Identification Scale' construct validity has been re-tested with confirmatory factor analysis in the sample consisting of teachers.(Çokluk, Şekercioğlu, & Öztürk, 2010, p. 271).Before the analysis, the values of skewness (-.33) and kurtosis (-.17) have been examined and KMO (.75) and Barlett Test (p=.00) have been calculated to determine the suitability of the data for factor analysis and it has been determined that the values were suitable.Confirmatory factor analysis has been revealed that the item factor loadings varied between .57and .73. and model fit values; x 2 /df= 2.22, GFI= .99,AGFI= .97,CFI= .98,SRMR= .02,RMSEA= .05.When these values are taken into consideration, it can be said that the one factor structure of the scale is in good fit.

Perceived Organizational Prestige Scale:
In this study, Perceived Organizational Prestige Scale which is developed by Mael and Ashforth (1992) has been used.The scale is consisted of eight items and one factor, rated from (1) strongly disagree, to (5) strongly agree.The scale's 4th, 6th, 7th and 8th items contain negative expressions and for this reason, it is necessary to perform reverse coding before taking the scale averages.The Cronbach Alpha Reliability Coefficient of the scale was calculated as .77by Mael and Ashforth (1992).The adaptation of the scale to Turkish was done by Tak and Çiftçioğlu (2009).Tak and Çiftçioğlu (2009) calculated the reliability of this scale as .84.Tak and Çiftçioğlu (2009) tested the construct validity of the scale with exploratory factor analysis, it is seen that the eigenvalue of the scale is larger than 1 and consists of a single sub-factor.The factor loadings of the items in the scale range from .63 to .86.The total variance explained by the scale is 49.00%.Tak and Çiftçioğlu (2009) also conducted confirmatory factor analysis in their study and onefactor structure has been shown to be in good fit (x²/df= 6.70, GFI= .90,AGFI= .82,CFI= .89,RMSR= .09,RMSEA= .14).
In order to implement the Perceived Organizational Prestige Scale, which was not previously applied in educational institutions, it has been necessary to do some regulations about the scale.7th and 8th items of the scale have been found hard to understand, and these items were re-expressed by researchers and analyzed.The following steps have been followed in the process.First, the original article by Mael and Ashforth (1992) has been examined and information about the education system of the school and country where the research was conducted has been collected.The article's title "Alumni and Their Alma Mater" means male college graduates and male colleges or graduates and their schools.This scale has been applied to male college graduates who provide religious education in the United States.With the research it has been examined the effects of individual and organizational antecedents on organizational identification.The hypothesis of "perceived organizational prestige is antecedent of identification" was tested and as a result of the research it has seen a significant positive correlation between these two variables.In this study it has been determined that school graduates who identified themselves with their organizations encouraged others to register the same school.It is important to note that in the country mentioned, which school you graduate from is perhaps as important as the grade average.In other words, graduating from a prestigious school is a differentiating condition.The discrimination of the group which is subjected to the research according to the other groups, the difference compared to the other groups, the prestigious perception and the values of the organizations have been identified as the antecedent of organizational identification.It is also stated that graduates are considered by the school administration as financial supporters of these schools.
After making sufficient research on the subject, the following changes were made to the 7th and 8th items.7th item of the original scale is as follows; "A person seeking to advance his career in (conference academia) should downplay his association with (name of school).".In the US, two students who have same grades from two different schools can present their transcripts to the same school, college.If one of these students graduated from a a well-known high school with academic qualifications and the other one graduated from a common high school, the schools they applied can interpret the grades differently.Thereby it is important that students graduate from which school.This item can be understood as "a person who wants to continue his education can advance without the name of the school he graduated from, his work is more important than the prestige of the school where he graduated".Because this item is directed to the teachers, it has been changed as follows; "When I want to work in another school, it is not a positive reference to tell the others that I have worked in this school.".The 8th item on the original scale is as follows; "When other (conference schools) are recruiting new students, they would not want students from (name of school)".Because this item is directed to the teachers, it has been changed as follows; "Other schools do not choose students from my school." Within the scope of this study, the validity and reliability of the scale have been tested again after these changes on the scale items.The cronbach alpha reliability coefficient of the Perceived Organizational Prestige Scale in this study is .85.In addition, the construct validity of the scale has been tested with confirmatory factor analysis.First, skewness (-.25) and kurtosis (-.36) values have been calculated and KMO (.88) and Barlett (p =.00) test results have been examined to determine the suitability of the data for factor analysis and it has been seen that the data were appropriate for analysis.Then, the one-factor structure of the scale has been tested with confirmatory factor analysis.It has been seen that the factor loadings of the scale changed between .50 and .71.The values of fit indices can be considered as good; x2/df= 3.07, GFI= .98,AGFI= .94,CFI= .98,SRMR= .03,RMSEA= .06 and confirm the one-factor structure of the scale in this study sample.

Procedure
Researchers have visited 29 school involved in the sample, the scale forms have been distributed to teachers working in these schools and these forms have been collected by the researchers.

Data Analysis
Normal distribution assumption has been tested before the data analysis phase.For this purpose, kurtosis and skewness coefficients are investigated.As a result of the analysis, Skewness -.33 and Kurtosis -.17 have been determined for Organizational Identification.Skewness -.25, Kurtosis -.36 for the perceived Organizational Prestige have been determined.These values provide evidence that the data are normally distributed (Büyüköztürk, 2011, p.40).
Confirmatory factor analysis has been conducted with the AMOS 16 program to test the construct validity of the scales in the study.In order to test the relationship between the research variables, correlation and multiple regression analyses have been carried out using SPSS 22 program.

Results
In the study, firstly mean and standard deviation values of the research variables and the correlation between the variables have been calculated and the findings are given in Table 2.When the findings examined, it has been observed that there was a significant positive intermediate correlation between organizational identification and perceived organizational prestige (r = .33)and a significant positive low level correlation between organizational identification and student achievement (r = .21).Similarly, there is a significant positive moderate correlation between perceived organizational prestige and student achievement (r = .54).After a significant correlation has been found between the research variables, hierarchical regression analysis has been conducted to test the research hypotheses in the second phase (See Table 3).Prior to the analysis, the data pattern was tested for multicollinearity.For this purpose, the tolerance value of variance ratios, variance inflation factor (VIF) and confidence interval (CI) have been examined (Tolerance> .20,VIF<10, CI<30) and it has been seen that there were no multicollinearity problem in the data (Büyüköztürk, 2011, p.100).
Before the analysis, the z-values for the independent variables have been calculated and centralised to determine moderating effects, and then included in the analysis.In the first phase of the hierarchical regression analysis, the relationship between organizational identification and student achievement has been tested and it has been seen that there was a significant positive relationship (β = .21).In the second phase, perceived organizational prestige has been included in the analysis and it has been found there was a significant relationship to the student achievement (β = .52).In the last phase, in order to test the moderation impact of perceived organizational prestige between dependent and independent variables, interaction of organizational identification and perceived organizational prestige variables have been included in the analysis and it has been seen that the result was significant (β = .16).This result is evidence of the moderation effect of perceived organizational prestige.In order to conduct a more detailed analysis of moderation role of the perceived organizational prestige between organizational identification and student achievement, simple regression curves of organizational prestige have been drawn for 1 standard deviation above and below of the mean in the direction of Cohen, Cohen, West and Aiken's (2003) implications (Figure 2).As seen in Figure 2, the relationship between organizational identification and student achievement is negatively significant when perceived organizational prestige is low (β= -.30, p=.00) and when the perceived organizational prestige is high, it has a significant positive relationship (β= .22,p=.00).

Discussion, Conclusion & Implementation
In this research, the relationship between perceived organizational prestige, organizational identification and student achievement has been examined in terms of teachers.In the research, firstly the relationship between organizational identification of teachers and student achievement has been examined (H1).As a result of regression analysis, organizational identification has been found to be a significant predictor of student achievement.There is no direct study of the relationship between organizational identification and student achievement.However, the findings of studies showing positive effects of organizational identification on employee attitude, behavior and performance may explain this relationship.
It is known that organizational identification is related to organizational commitment and cohesion (Ashforth & Mael, 1989;Cakinberk et al. 2011;Deconinck, 2011;Riketta, 2005).There are also studies showing that organizational identification is related to both in-role performance (Carmeli et al. 2007;Cicero & Pierro, 2007;He & Brown, 2013;Lee, 1971;Walumbwa, Mayer, Wang, Wang, Workman, & Christensen, 2011) and extra role performance -e.g.organizational citizenship behavior- (Balcı et al. 2012;Dutton et al. 1994;Karabey & İşcan, 2007;Riketta, 2005) of teachers.Employees who identify themselves with their organizations personalize themselves according the organization (Celep, 2014) and therefore for the reason that they see the goals of the school as their own goals they try to achieve these goals (Argon & Ekinci, 2016).In this context, it can be said that the teachers who identify themselves with the organization will have higher efforts to increase student achievement.
Another concept related to organizational identification is the turnover intention.The studies show that individuals identifing themselves with the organization are more willing to stay in the organization (DeConinck, 2011;Riketta, 2005).Rodfeldt, Loeb and Wyckoff (2013) have concluded after their eight years of longitudinal research that turnover is related to student achievement.Considering turnover rate of schools in Turkey with particularly adverse conditions, the importance of identification of teachers with the institution comes to the forefront in terms of student achievement.Another point to consider is the willingness to continue in the profession.Chang (2009), in a study of teachers burnout, has indicated teachers' resign rates in developed countries.According to that research, 25.00% of teachers in America leave their job in the first 3 years and 40.00% in the first 5 years.In Germany, the number of teachers who continue to work until retirement is below 10.00%.Similarly, the number of teachers who left work in the UK is more than the number of those who continue.In these countries, the resign rates may be high because teachers can not make the necessary connections with their institutions or professions.But then in Turkey, the vast majority of individuals who start their profession as teachers retire as teachers.But unfortunately, explaining this situation with the teachers' professional commintment or identification with the school would be an optimistic interpretation.In a study conducted by Eğitim-İş (Education-Business) Union, 61% of the teachers in Turkey stated that they would leave their profession if they found a job where they could earn better (Kolcu, 2015).In this context, it can be said that it is important to develop policies that will enable teachers to identify with their institutions and their professions.
In this research it has been also examined that the relationship between teachers' perceptions of organizational prestige and student achievement (H2) and the moderating role of the perceived organizational prestige between organizational identification and student achievement (H3).As a result of the research, it has been found that organizational prestige perception is related to student achievement and also has a moderation role between organizational identification and student achievement.Like the findings of this study, Demiröz (2014) has concluded that there is a significant relationship between teachers' organizational image perception and student achievement.Although there are few studies in the educational sample, it is possible to come across a number of studies that examine the relationship between prestige, employee performance and organizational performance in the field of business management.As a result of these studies, it has been found that organizational prestige is related to organizational performance (Ali et al. 2015;Saeidi et al. 2015) as well as employee contextual performance and extra role performance (Carmeli, 2005;Carmeli et al. 2007;Gatzert, 2015).One important point to note regarding perceived organizational prestige and performance is that this relationship is reciprocal.The performance that the organization has shown in the past increases organizational prestige and the prestige improves organizational performance (Gatzert, 2015).Within the scope of this study, it has been found that organizational prestige perception has a moderation role between identification and student achievement, when the perceived organizational prestige is high, the relationship between identification and student achievement is significant in the positive direction and when the perceived organizational prestige is low, the relationship between identification with student success is significant in negative direction.It is useful to assess the moderation effect of perceived organizational prestige which has been found in the scope of this study in the context of the reciprocal relationship.It should also be remembered that organizational prestige perception is one of the important antecedents of organizational identification (Ashforth & Mael, 1989, Dutton et al. 1994, Mael & Ashforth, 1992, March & Simon, 1975).It is noteworthy that the relationship between organizational identification and student achievement is positive only in schools where perceived organizational prestige is high.In a qualitative research on organizational culture and student achievement, Negiş-Işık (2010) has stated that the achievement that the school achieved in the previous years motivates both teachers and students and teachers and students who tasted achievement before try to achieve a similar achievement.In the study, it has been also stated that the high prestige perception of the school also attracts successful teachers and students, which also plays a role in increasing the achievement.
Of course, not every school has equal conditions for student achievement, many schools are located in more disadvantaged areas and working with disadvantaged students.Unfortunately, day by day schools are considered only in terms of their potential to ensure students pass the exams, and their successes and failures are evaluated only on the basis of the exam success criteria, and their prestige is perceived in parallel with exam success.However, the researches show that the only source of organizational prestige is not performance (Carmeli, 2005;Carmeli et al. 2007).For instance, Carmeli et al. (2007) has stated that organizational prestige is a multi-dimensional concept and these dimensions are social responsibility, profitability and business relations.In the mentioned study, the relationship between organizational performance and social responsibility and organizational identification, adaptation and employee performance have been examined and it has been concluded that social responsibility perceived by employees is related to identification, but organizational performance is not related.Researchers have pointed out that from the findings of these studies, the employees are more concerned about the social responsibility of the organization, enrichment of the outputs and services they provide than organizational performance (Carmeli, 2005;Carmeli et al. 2007).In the light of this information, in order to ensure the teachers identification with schools, especially those with disadvantaged students, the social responsibility of the school the profession and the values can be foregrounded.Beginning with the preservice teacher training process, it may be advised to conduct activities that will increase the identification of teachers not only with their institutions but also with their professions.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.The conceptual model of the research.

Figure 2 .
Figure 2. Moderating role of perceived organizational prestige in the relationship between student achievement and organizational identification.

Table 1 .
The Distribution of the Research Sample According to Demographic Variables.
To evaluate the fit of the model, x

Table 2 .
Correlation Table of the Relationship between Organizational Identification, Perceived Organizational Prestige and Student Achievement.

Table 3 .
Analysis of Hierarchical Regression Regarding Moderating Role of Perceived Organizational Prestige between Organizational Identification and Student Achievement.