Orgnazational citizenship behavior( carrefour china) - Essay Example

20 March Organizational Citizenship Behavior (Carrefour China) Executive Summary: The Carrefour Group is the Europe’s largest and world’s second largest retailer. It has four basic formats of grocery store namely supermarkets, hypermarkets, convenience stores and hard discount stores. The company supports local suppliers in its markets and aims at providing customers with high quality service along with maximizing the profits. In order to display social responsibility, the company launched the Carrefour International Foundation in 2010.

Although the Carrefour Foundation did succeed in taking humanitarian initiatives, yet it lacked involvement of the company’s own employees in its efforts. Therefore, the Board of Directors took measures to increase employees’ participation. Food program, professional integration and solidarity were the three core areas at which the Carrefour Foundation specifically focused. Carrefour primarily sells food and grocery products. The Carrefour Foundation has developed links between people and farmers for provision of healthy food.

The employees of Carrefour established an organic pepper industry in Shuiruo and Saba and taught the farmers ways to implant certified organic Sichuan peppers. The employees also delivered lectures on personal hygiene to improve health and safety condition in the very villages. In 4 years, Carrefour has contributed up to €90,000 for the program. Fair trade is encouraged by purchasing significant portion of the total crops every year above market value. Carrefour buys the products from farmers and then sells them over in 22 different countries.

The foundation has also opened a school for the community and has improved the infrastructure. The program has helped raise the income of farmers, improved their living conditions in general, and has promoted social solidarity (carrefour.com). In partnership with Lesaffre Group, Carrefour has opened the Shanghai Young Bakers in China which offers professional training to orphans age between 17 and 23. 800 Carrefour employees have offered vocational training to over 1300 people in 2009. Carrefour employees voluntarily helped in the relief of 2010 Qinghai floods.

Employees propose projects with objectives consistent with the three missions of the Carrefour Foundation. Thus, employees have conventionally displayed Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB). Display of OCB requires job satisfaction of the employees. By suggesting constructive projects to the Carrefour Foundation, the employees have displayed civic virtue. Their participation has been functional and meaningful. OCB can be evaluated on the basis of an individual’s personality characteristics, task characteristics and the leadership attitudes.

Through research, OCB has been shown to be positively related with the satisfaction of employees and the aspects of path goal leaderships whereas task routinization is inversely related to OCB. OCB improves the operational efficiency of an organization. Altruism develops team work. Thus, complex tasks are easily accomplished. Civic virtue like suggestions from employees to reduce cost of operations boosts efficiency. Thus, OCB is very beneficial for attainment of organizational goals. Chinese is a collectivist culture, and group work is encouraged and implemented everywhere.

OCB dimensions are shared by the different groups. Five dimensions that Chinese and Western context have in common are taking initiative, group activity participation, helping coworkers, promoting company image, and establishing voice. The study discovered five extended OCB dimensions in the Chinese context. The Carrefour Foundation has noticeably increased OCB in Carrefour China. Works Cited: “The Carrefour International Foundation.” n.d. Web. 20 Mar. 2011. .