The Impact of Organizational Support on Strategic Vigilance in Ministry of Civil Service in Sultanate Oman

The study aimed to examine the impact of organizational support on strategic vigilance of Ministry of Civil Services in Sultanate Oman. The organizational support consisted of four dimensions: leadership support, organizational justice, decision-making participation and rewards. Meanwhile the strategic vigilance also consisted of four dimensions: technological vigilance, marketing vigilance, competitive vigilance and environmental vigilance. The study was conducted on a sample consisting of (147) managers. The study indicated that there are medium levels of organizational support and strategic vigilance, and that there is a significant impact of organizational support on strategic vigilance, and that there is an impact of organizational support on all types of strategic vigilance.


Introduction
Over the past decades, organizations have been crucially facing numerous changing conditions resulting from challenges of controlling the environmental developments that require organizations to improve its capabilities to keep up with technological, economic and political instabilities in order to protect the organizations' stability and continuity in global competition environment (Boutaleb & Shlikh, 2019). Those changes required the modern administrative scholarship to find suitable foundations for adapting these challenges, thereby to achieve its goals and strategic vision (AlKabi, 2017). The strategic vigilance has been considered as one of the most decisive factors for the organizations' success and survival, that's due to organizations' employees' capabilities who are able to adapt the environmental changes through realizing their economic, political, be achieved without the assistance and support of the Ministry for employees through understanding the nature of their needs, desires, motivations (AlHashimi & Mustafa, 2019). Based on the above, this study focused on answering the following question: What is the impact of organizational support on strategic vigilance of managers in Ministry of Civil Service in Sultanate Oman?

Theoretical Background Organizational Support
Alrashidi (2019) has theorized "organizational support" as a reciprocal and participatory relationship between the organization and the workers, where the beliefs and perceptions of workers interacted and affected by the extent of the organization's appreciation of their contributions to interest in them. Some scholars suggest the theory of social exchange for organizational support, which explains the effort in exchange for support (Boutaleb & Shalikh, 2019). It is also considered as one of the ways in which humanitarian cooperation is created to achieve a common goal (Alzubidi, 2013, 74). The philosophical idea of the organizational support's theory is conceptualized as the organization's loyalty to its employees (Nubiyat and Yousfi, 2016) and thus the feeling and awareness of the employees would contribute to the loyalty of these employees to the organization. In addition, Alrashidi (2019) believes that organizational support is the organization's ability to support workers and creating the appropriate environment for work, which leads to the reflection of this support on the level of their organizational commitment and satisfaction and improving their performance. However Boutaleb and Shalikh (2019) define it as the organization's commitment to supporting its workers in both materiality and morality, that's in order to push them towards achieving the business goals and enhancing their abilities and skills to do business as best as they can, by giving them promotions and getting them involved in the decisions process as well as improve their skills and aptitudes. According to Alkabi (2017), the organizational support is the degree of feeling by the workers toward the organization's interest and through supporting them it will return to the Orgniztioin's outcome, while Abdalrahman (2017) define the organization's interest in the employees by generating a feeling that it is valuable and work to involve them in various areas of work and support them with incentives and rewards to ensure the sustainability of high performance. While AlHashimi and Mustafa (2019) asserted that, the organization's focus and attention to the employees would enhance them do their best to achieve the organization's goals.
Boutaleb & Shlikh (2019) asserted that the importance of organizational support is could be achieved through the following factors: 1) making a double effort to perform the functional tasks and initiate a proposal to overcome the usual tasks by playing an additional role and 2) creating job satisfaction for employees. In addition, Abdalrahman (2017) believed in creating a sense of the importance and position of the employee in the organization, reducing functional turnover and increasing the employee's commitment to the organization's objectives. Moreover, Alhashimi and Mustafa (2019) stated that organizations should contribute to meeting the individual's desires and social and emotional needs that lead directly to confidence-building between the employee and the organization. This is aligned with the importance of the leaders' behaviors with their subordinates through motivating and supporting employees and treating them with impartiality and fairness (Alkabi, 2017).
Until now the organizational support's concept and theory still facing an intellectual gap in determining the dimensions of organizational support and that's filled with multiple points of view in organizational support grounds. For instance, (Alrashidi, 2019) has seen the organizational support includes a policy of retention and appreciation of efforts and career enrichment. Nevertheless, we framed the current research on the dimensions of (AlHashimi & Mustafa, 2019) study which consists of four dimensions (leadership support, organizational justice, participation in decision-making, organizational rewards), which have been articulated by some employees with their sense of organizational support on many factors such as the extent of the organization's willingness to provide assistance, provide the necessary tools, provide training opportunities, continuous encouragement for them and availability of opportunities for them to participate in decisions (Nubiyat & Yousfi, 2016). Organizational support is not limited to the employee's relationship with the organization only, but rather expands to include relationships and social interactions between workers, when the employee receives support, and mitigation of work pressure by his colleagues, thereby that support of colleagues will turn as one of the factors of organizational support. Boutaleb and Shlikh (2019) believe that organizational support ensures that the organization has to deal with the sudden and difficult conditions facing employees, as it facilitates the implementation of job tasks efficiently and effectively.
1. Leadership Support: The leaders 'interest in the organization in helping, supporting, assisting and guiding employees is one of the main pillars in achieving the goals of the organization and developing its performance and enhancing its competitiveness and sustainability, and this reflects on individuals and increases their affiliation, loyalty, and sacrifice (Alhashimi & Mustafa, 2019). Alajmi (2010) highlights the importance of ideal leadership whose managers are keen to give maximum attention to workers, and for leaders in organizations to provide support they must have the ability to understand and respect the emotions of others, which is called emotional intelligence (Najm, 2015, 53), but rather the organization is interested in providing a safe and healthy environment and the effects that workers are exposed to and will be reflected in its work (Barnouti, 2007, 468).
2. Organizational Justice: the organization's ability to set rules and standards and allocate resources and rewards fairly and even in how they interact personally with workers (Alrashidi, 2019). Also, Hamdi (2015) sees the organizational justice as a matter of belief and perception among workers, as they differ from one employee to another and organizations face difficulty in measured, while (Boutaleb & Shalikh, 2019) have seen it in terms of equity theory that expresses a balance between inputs (effort, time and knowledge of employees at work) and outputs (wages and compensation) according to individual employee perceptions. The justice theory emphasizes that it does not focus solely on the amounts of incentives where the director must treat all employees with equality, fairness, impartiality, and favoritism (Amer & Qandil, 2010, 171), where organizational justice contributes to making the organization more able to adapt and respond to environmental factors and changes and improve Its competitiveness (AlHashimi & Mustafa, 2019).

Decision-Making Participation:
Participation is a psychological behavioral process that helps individuals satisfy their needs for self-fulfillment and collective appreciation, as it makes the individual feel its importance and that it has a role that contributes to it in guiding work and decision-making (Amer & Qandil, 2010, 173). In addition, modern administrations tend to rely on participatory theory and the participation of workers in setting the goals of the institution, therefore organizations have become encouraged to participate as teamwork which is more meaningful and valuable than individual work in terms of the ability to understand the subject and determine its dimensions and decide on it (Amer & Qandil, 2010, 171). 4. Rewards: incentives, rewards, and benefits play an important role in directing employee behavior towards accomplishing tasks and doing what is required and exceeding expectations for the planned goals, it is an engine for employee motivation and raises their enthusiasm and desires (Boutaleb & Shlikh, 2019). When the organization provides appropriate work conditions that will contribute directly to encouraging employees in accomplishing their work and achieving the organizations' goals (AlKabi, 2017). Organizations must set compensation systems in an objective way because they significantly affect the productivity of workers and the ability to retain them (Barnouti, 2007, 313). The rewards are one of the key sources of organizational strength that the organization has to control over it, and that depends on the extent of the manager's confidence and credibility to fulfill his promises through keeping the employee to be rewarded (Alsalem, 2009, 69).

Strategic Vigilance
Nowadays organizations realize that they are operating in a complex, uncertain and dynamic business environment as a result of rapid transformations in the global economy and technological revolution, which are increasing day by day in risks and uncertainties with decreasing prophecy (Alisawi et al., 2011, 619). The strategic vigilance is one of the modern methods that organizations should invest on it to face difficulties and challenges, explore unclear signals, and potential changes so that could study and analyzes these signals and translates them into quality information which ultimately gives value to the decision-maker (Dawood & Ibrahim, 2017) and thus gives a competitive advantage to the organization in proactive and competitive environmental events. The concepts of strategic vigilance have been defined form, numerous scholars, e.g. Suliman et al. (2019) defined it as an ongoing activity that the institution pursues and monitors the environment and inform it of what is going on in it with the aim of creating business opportunities and minimizing threats and potential risks. While, Mesbah & Boukhamkham (2019) considered it as strategic process that provides the institution with information that it qualifies it to get better face competition by relying on scientific foundations and standards, as it is the job through which the organization can monitor its markets and competitors (Dawood & Ibrahim, 2017), therefore organizations must give high consideration to strategic vigilance and its development in order to survive and continue in the world workers and adapting to the new variables (Mahmoud, 2017). Numerous scholars have articulated the main valuable strategic vigilance objectives of organizations for instance: Discovering and identifying the best practices that serve the organization and its strategies to ensure superiority over competing organizations in the same sector (Dawood & Ibrahim, 2017). Expecting the competitors 'activities and trying to know their future directions and what might happen in the organization sector (Suliman et al., 2019). Comparing the performance of the organization with its competitors and developing services with a clear view to achieving a sustainable competitive advantage (Mesbah & Boukhamkham, 2019). Increasing organizational profit through ability to create a better marketing process for its products (Qadri, 2019). Strategic vigilance characteristics have been identified and discussed by numerous researchers for instances. Collective cooperation through teams, exchanging and sharing information, as the team possesses various skills (Mahmoud, 2017), having future foresight vision about the activities and actions of current and future competing organizations as well as anticipating their tactics, as well as being creative in understanding interpretations of early signs, warnings and reading events (Obakhti & Nabawiya, 2019). There are several studies have apportioned with the strategic vigilance's dimensions, including those that focused on environmental awareness, environmental assimilation, and adaptive transformation (Suliman et al., 2019). However, the current research is intended to shedding the light on other studies that have focused on environmental vigilance, technological vigilance, technological vigilance, and marketing vigilance (Dawood & Ibrahim, 2017). Then each dimension of strategic vigilance meets the specific purpose of the organization, as it helps decision-makers to analyze environmental developments and trends (Lmros, 2019): 1. Technological Vigilance: It is the organization's ability to monitor events related to technologies, mechanisms, economic and social information in order to analyze that information and utilize it to exploit opportunities and avoid threats which ultimately improves the organizations' sustainable competitiveness (Dawood & Ibrahim, 2017).

Marketing Vigilance:
It is the organization's ability s to monitor and control the uncertainty changes in the market, which are related to consumer behavior and changes as well as desires and unstable purchasing powered by suppliers and distributors (Mesbah & Boukhamkham, 2019).
3. Competitive Vigilance: It refers to an activity that focuses on gathering information related to current and potential competitors and evaluating their strategies, work style, and movements in order to obtain useful information for making a decision to develop services and proactive events in the competitive field (Lmros, 2019).

Environmental Vigilance:
It is the vigilance that represented by monitoring environmental, social, legal, political and economic factors, and being alert to changes, developments and related events that affect the organization (Mahmoud, 2017). Still, analyzing competitors to judge the strength and potential of competitors requires identifying factors of success in the sector through identifying and classifying competing companies, then setting assumptions and scenarios to know the scale of competitive forces, then determining the competitive position (Althaher, 2009, 181).

Relationship Between Organizational Support and Strategic Vigilance
Some scholars argue that there is a logical relationship between organizational support and strategic vigilance. Organizational support is one of the important factors in the effectiveness of strategic vigilance. It could be achieved through the organization's interest in the employees by generating a genuine feeling and engaging them in various areas of work as well as motivating them by incentive and rewards (Abdalrahman, 2017). Thereafter, it contributes to improve the strategic alertness and improve the overall performance of the organization and its competitiveness (Dawood & Ibrahim, 2017). Qadri (2019) asserted that the performance of the organizations at the present time have been able to adjust the strategies and structure in order to face the environmental changes, which almost depends on the organization's ability to provide support and important information related to the current and future work environment. Clearly, that can prove the importance of adopting the system of strategic vigilance in organizations. In this matter, the responsibility of the strategic leader are revolving around supporting and developing the organization's level to confront the changes in the external environment through providing continuous learning for employees and cultural support through shared values which leads to the creation of meaning and commitment as well as productivity in the organization during strategic changes decision-making (Alisawi et al., 2011, 401).

Literature Review
The findings of Salman, Hlehel and Shlaga (2019) indicated that there is a level of interconnection and influence between the strategic vigilance and the vital capabilities of the organizations, which indicates the possibility of adopting the results as one of the administrative approaches to activate the work of organizations in the long term. The results showed that there was a significant effect of environmental perception and assimilation on the vital capabilities of the organizations, while there was no significant effect of the adaptive shift in the vital capabilities of the organizations . As for Daoud and Ibrahim (2017) the results of their study showed that there is a correlation between strategic vigilance and service improvement, and that the change in strategic vigilance helps in more positive changes in service provision, and that technological vigilance has an important role in improving service provision through the use of modern technologies. Competitive vigilance has a great impact on improving the services provided by organizations by monitoring current and new competitors. Mahmoud's study (2017) showed that strategic vigilance helps administrative leaders to understand the technological environment in order to understand the technological, competitive and commercial environment, as well as organizations in, and organizations often focus on technological vigilance, and that there is an effect of strategic vigilance, and that there is an effect of strategic alertness on organizational success on organizational success, and commercial vigilance comes to the fore in terms of impact, followed by competitiveness and then technological vigilance. Issa and Obakhti (2019) concluded that strategic vigilance is a system that allows the organization to search for information about the external environment and what is related to developments in the technological environment, thus making the organization close to its technological environment, which enables it to achieve a competitive advantage. As for Allawi (2016) she says that organizations that want to create a competitive advantage must understand the relationship between them and the environment in which they operate, as they must build an effective strategic vigilance system that allows them to follow the changes in the environment in which competitors work, as this enables them to know the leaders in the market In the field of work of the organization and to identify their strengths, weaknesses and strategies. In a study conducted by Al-Najjar and Al-Shawabkeh (2020), its results confirmed that there is an effect of strategic vigilance on project management in all its fields, and that strategic vigilance has an effect on achieving project management goals. The results of Najm and Khalil (2019) study showed that there is a significant effect for all types of strategic vigilance in continuous improvement, and that the most strategic types of vigilance influencing commercial vigilance, followed by technological, competitive and environmental. As for the results of the study of Hadi and Mazhar (2020), they indicated that there is a close correlation between strategic intelligence and strategic vigilance of managers and the strategic vigilance of the organization and its ability to collect information and signals about the external environment, avoiding risks and threats, which help to achieve its goals.

Hypotheses
According to the theoretical framework of the current study's variables (organizational support and strategic vigilance), an indicating the logical relationship between them, the author proposed the following hypotheses: H1: There is no significant impact of organizational support on strategic vigilance in the Ministry of Civil Service in Sultanate Oman. H2: There is no significant impact of the organizational support on technological vigilance in the Ministry of Civil Service in Sultanate Oman. H3: There is no significant impact of organizational support on marketing vigilance in the Ministry of Civil Service in Sultanate Oman. H4: There is no significant impact of organizational support on competitive vigilance in the Ministry of Civil Service in Sultanate Oman. H5: There is no significant impact of organizational support on environmental vigilance in the Ministry of Civil Service in Sultanate Oman.

Research Methodology
The current research aims to examine and determine the impact of organizational support on strategic vigilance in Ministry of Civil Service in the Sultanate Oman by utilizing sequential procedures in scientific research. Accordingly, the authors have designed a survey form to collect data on the study's variables and describe those variables as well as a designed questionnaire to analyze it quantitatively in order to explore the potential impact. And finally, interpret the results of the analysis by testing the hypotheses to draw conclusions and propose valuable recommendations. Consequently, the author has theorized and conceptualized the current research based on the previous literature, theoretical framework and foundations of organizational support and strategic vigilance.

Sample
The study population was composed of all the managers in the Ministry of Civil Services in the Sultanate of Oman, who numbered (380). A simple random sampling method was used to determine the sample size of (186) managers. The questionnaire that was developed was distributed to managers by direct passage to their offices after obtaining the approval of the responsible department in the ministry. What facilitated the distribution process was the affiliation of one of the researchers to this ministry. After completing the distribution, (147) valid questionnaire was retrieved for analysis, representing (79%) of the sample size, which is an acceptable percentage in human studies.

Measurement
The researchers relied on measures tested and used by previous researchers to measure the study variables. To measure organizational support, the measure consisting of four dimensions (leadership support, organizational justice, participation in decision-making and rewards) was used in Al-Kaabi, 2017; Al-Hashemi & Mustafa, 2019), which consists of (20) items. To measure strategic vigilance, the scale used by many researchers (Dawood & Mahmoud;Alshaer, 2020;Dawood & Ibrahim;Allawi, 2016;Issa & Obakhti, 2019;Hammoudi et al., 2019;Al-Zuhairi, 2018), was used, and it consists of (20) items. To answer the expressions of the two scales, the five-point scale was used, strongly agree (5), and strongly disagreeing (1).

Results
Table (1) refers to the results of testing the reliability of the study instrument measures using Cronbach Alpha Coefficient, as it was found that the reliability of all study measures was high, and it exceeded the specified minimum ratio (0.70), the highest for rewards was (0.924) and the lowest for technological vigilance (0.847). Table (1) displays the results of the descriptive analysis of the dimensions of the study variables using the mean and the standard deviation. The results of the analysis of the organizational support dimensions showed that there are medium levels for the dimensions of this variable, the highest for rewards with a mean (3.079) and a standard deviation (1.067), and the lowest for leadership supporting with a mean (2.501) and a standard deviation (0.822). As for the types of strategic vigilance, the results of the analysis showed that three types of strategic vigilance are: environmental, competitive and technological, with moderate levels (2.490, 2.476, 2.343) respectively. As for the marketing vigilance, it was at a low level with a mean (2.222).   Table (2) refers to the results of testing the effect of organizational support on strategic vigilance using the Stepwise linear regression coefficient. The results indicated that there is a significant impact of organizational support on strategic vigilance. In the first model, it was found that there is a significant impact of organizational justice on strategic vigilance, which explained (37.9%) of the variance in strategic vigilance. In the second model, after adding leadership support to organizational justice, the interpretation percentage increased to (44.1%) of the variance in strategic vigilance. In the third model, after adding rewards for organizational justice and leadership support, the interpretation rate increased to (45.9%) for the variance in strategic vigilance. As for participation in decision-making, it did not have a significant impact on strategic vigilance. Based on this result, the first null hypothesis is rejected and the alternative hypothesis is accepted, which states: There is a significant impact of organizational support on strategic vigilance in the Ministry of Civil Service in the Sultanate of Oman. H2: There is no significant impact of the organizational support on technological vigilance in the Ministry of Civil Service in Sultanate Oman.  Table (3) shows the results of testing the impact of organizational support on technological vigilance by using a simple linear regression coefficient, as it was found that there is a significant impact of organizational support on technological vigilance, as organizational support explained (44.4%) of the variance in technological vigilance. Based on this result, the null hypothesis is rejected and the alternative hypothesis is accepted, which states: There is a significant impact of organizational support on technological vigilance in the Ministry of Civil Service in the Sultanate of Oman. H3: There is no significant impact of organizational support on marketing vigilance in the Ministry of Civil Service in Sultanate Oman.  Table (4) shows the results of testing the impact of organizational support on marketing vigilance by using a simple linear regression coefficient, as it was found that there is a significant impact of organizational support on marketing vigilance, as organizational support explained (26.2%) of the variance in marketing vigilance. Based on this result, the null hypothesis is rejected and the alternative hypothesis is accepted, which states: There is a significant impact of organizational support on marketing vigilance in the Ministry of Civil Service in the Sultanate of Oman. H3: There is no significant impact of organizational support on marketing vigilance in the Ministry of Civil Service in Sultanate Oman. H4: There is no significant impact of organizational support on competitive vigilance in the Ministry of Civil Service in Sultanate Oman.  (5) shows the results of testing the impact of organizational support on competitive vigilance by using a simple linear regression coefficient, as it was found that there is a significant impact of organizational support on competitive vigilance, as organizational support explained (28.7%) of the variance in competitive vigilance. Based on this result, the null hypothesis is rejected and the alternative hypothesis is accepted, which states: There is a significant impact of organizational support on competitive vigilance in the Ministry of Civil Service in the Sultanate of Oman. H5: There is no significant impact of organizational support on environmental vigilance in the Ministry of Civil Service in Sultanate Oman.  (6) shows the results of testing the impact of organizational support on environmental vigilance by using a simple linear regression coefficient, as it was found that there is a significant impact of organizational support on environmental vigilance, as organizational support explained (49.6%) of the variance in environmental vigilance. Based on this result, the null hypothesis is rejected and the alternative hypothesis is accepted, which states: There is a significant impact of organizational support on environmental vigilance in the Ministry of Civil Service in the Sultanate of Oman.

Discussion
The study attempted to investigate the impact of organizational support on strategic vigilance of managers in Ministry of Civil Services in the Sultanate Oman. After researchers analyzed the data collected on a questionnaire that was developed for this purpose. The results indicated that there are moderate levels of interest in organizational support for managers, as they complain of lack of support, which reflects negatively on their loyalty and sacrifice in the completion of their work, in addition to the weak interest of senior management in ministry to involve them in making decisions, which results in their failure to satisfy their needs in appreciation, and self-realization, they do not feel their importance in their organization, that their role is limited in completion of their routine work, as well as their feeling that there are no appropriate levels in management fairness, whether it is in the distribution of tasks, in procedures, or in transactions, what applies to the dimensions of organizational support applies to rewards which managers demand to improve, as there is some default in the provision of benefits and services.
With regard to strategic vigilance, the results indicated a decrease in its levels, especially with regard to marketing vigilance, which concerns the needs of citizen service seekers, as managers are almost not concerned with monitoring the renewed needs and desires of citizens and working to achieve them, since they are there to serve them. The same applies to the attempt of managers to follow the ministry's need for new technology, which enables them to provide the best services, as they are almost not concerned with that, and this applies to strategic vigilance in the competitive and environmental field. The results of the examination of the study hypotheses showed that there is a significant impact of organizational support on strategic vigilance, this means that ministry's appreciation of managers contributions and attention to them, achieving fairness in distributing tasks, implementing procedures and transactions in a fair manner and involving them in decisionmaking, and providing them with appropriate benefits and services is clearly reflected in the interest. These managers in their follow-up, exploration and analysis of the changes taking place in the environment and their translation into information that can give value to the decision maker. Organizational support helps in the collective cooperation of managers, agreeing on a forward-looking vision about the work of the ministry, providing creative ideas to interpret early warning signals, and reading the course of events that occur in the work environment of the ministry.

Recommendations
Based on the results of the study, the researchers suggest the following recommendations to the Ministry: 1. Increasing the interest of the higher management in the ministry to help and support the managers, which will be reflected positively on increasing their loyalty and affiliation. The exemplary leadership is the one that is keen to give maximum attention to employees through sympathy and respect for them, in addition to providing a safe and healthy environment. 2. Establish rules and standards for a fair distribution of tasks, and work to balance the inputs and outputs of employees according to their perceptions and expectations, which makes the ministry more capable of responding to environmental changes. 3. Reviewing the benefits and services systems provided to the Ministry's workers, since these systems are responsible for directing the workers 'behavior towards the tasks they perform, as they are responsible for moving their motivation as well as helping them to accomplish what they are assigned to do. 4. Encouraging the employees to monitor all the new needs and desires of citizens and translate them into methods and procedures in preparation for their satisfaction.