Antecedents of Organizational Citizenship Behaviors - Literature review Example

Antecedents of Organizational Citizenship Behaviors Introduction Organizational results are not purely incumbent on the task productivity off individual employees; but also on the manner in which these employees view these tasks and identify with the organizational goals. Organ (1988, 1997) conducted seminal work in an area that was daubed as ‘Organizational Citizenship Behavior’ in order to explain the manner in which individual employees aided and encouraged organizational goals. The initial definition provided by Organ (1988) describes Organizational Citizenship Behaviors or OCB’s are being discretionary behaviors that an employee may choose to exhibit which are not an enforceable part of the job description but are followed by the employees to aid the overall organizational effectiveness. This description received criticism since it made OCB’s difficult to identify and measure. This was particularly so with jobs that did not have clearly defined tasks which made it difficult to identify behaviors that are associated with the job description and those that went beyond it. Thus, the definition was modified to describe OCB as behavior that “supports the social and psychological environment in which task performance takes place” (Organ, 1997, p. 95). OCB’s have been found to be associated with valuable consequences like increases in productivity, customer satisfaction, unit – level success and overall organization level success. As a result of this, the antecedents of OCB’s have been discussed in literature in detail in order to recommend ways in which individual employees may be encouraged to exhibit OCB’s. This paper shall discuss some of these factors in order to understand the mechanism by which they affect organizational success. Organizational Citizenship Behaviors The concept of organizational citizenship behaviors or OCB’s describes behaviors that may not be required on employees, but are exhibited by these employees in order to aid the overall success of the organization. While it was always conceptualized as a multidimensional construct, research indicates that there may be many types of OCB that are exhibited by employees, and that the kind of work, the conditions of the work and other such factors may moderate which OCB’s are effective in enhancing organizational success (Podsakoff, Mackenzie, Paine & Bachrach, 2000). Initially, Organ and others postulated two dimensions – altruism and general compliance (Smith, Organ & Near, 1983) while later research showed evidence for a number of other dimensions like Helping Behavior, Sportsmanship, Organizational Loyalty, Organizational Compliance, Individual Initiative, Civic Virtue and Self Development (Podsakoff et al., 2000). Helping behavior, which includes the initially postulated dimension of altruism among others, is described as representing behaviors that involve helping other employees, preventing problems and extending courtesy(Podsakoff et al., 2000). This dimension has been found to be important by almost all research and is possible the most easily understood of all. The second dimension of sportsmanship is the ability of an employee to tolerate inconveniences for the larger good, and has been found to be distinct from other dimensions (MacKenzie, Podsakoff, & Rich, 1999). The third dimension of organizational loyalty involves defending the organization, promoting it and remaining committed to it even in adverse conditions (Podsakoff et al., 2000). The dimension of organizational compliance has also been researched in great detail, and shares similarities with the concept of generalized compliance. It involves the internalization and acceptance rules, regulations and procedures, as well as a self regulated and scrupulous adherence to the same (Podsakoff et al., 2000). The dimension of individual initiative includes voluntary involvement in task related behaviors including creative and innovative actions that are designed to help enhance the productivity and success of the organization (Podsakoff et al., 2000). Individual initiative also involves encouraging others to be productive and involved. Civic virtue represents the motivation of an employee to look out for the overall benefit of the organization through involvement in governance issues and monitoring and assessment of threats to a part or whole of the organization (Podsakoff et al., 2000). Often, persons exhibiting civic virtue may show involvement that comes at a personal cost. The final dimension that has been seen across a number of research papers is self development, which includes taking initiative to develop one’s work – related skills, attitudes, knowledge and abilities. These and other similar dimensions have been discussed in detail by Podsakoff et al., (2000). Antecedents of OCB’s Given the value that OCB’s bring to the organization, a number of researchers have tried to understand what factors influence the likelihood that an employee will exhibit OCB’s. Meta-analysis of the research conducted has underlined the importance of a number of factors like individual characteristics of employees, task characteristics, organizational characteristics and finally, leadership behaviors (Podsakoff et al., 2000). Each of these categories has a number of factors within it that can enhance or inhibit the presence of OCB’s, and it has been of great interest to employers as well as researchers to understand how these factors mediate OCB’s. Individual Characteristics Early research in individual or employee characteristic was focused on employee morale and disposition as antecedents to OCB’s. An important factor associated with morale is job satisfaction which has been found to mediate OCB’s in many conditions (Organ & Ryan, 1995; Todd & Kent, 2006). Job satisfaction has also been implicated as a mediator in the effects that other antecedents of OCB’s have, such as task characteristics (Todd & Kent, 2006) and emotional responses of employees (Spector & Fox, 2002). It also mediates the effects of other factors associated with morale likely role perception and role ambiguity both of which are negatively associated with OCB’s. Spector and Fox (2002) found that employees who experienced negative emotional responses to work conditions were more likely to indulge in counterproductive behaviors, while those who experienced positive emotional responses were more likely to engage in OCB’s. They have proposed that increasing the frequency and strength of positive experiences will encourage employees to engage in behaviors that are beneficial to the organization. Other factors that are associated with morale are organizational commitment and perceptions or fairness and support. The other set of individual characteristics that have been heavily researched are associated with personality and associated characteristics. While some hypotheses about the influence of personality on OCB have been verified by the data, many others have not held up. The personality traits of Conscientiousness and Agreeableness have been found to be consistently associated positively with OCB (Podsakoff et al., 2000). Positive affectivity is also positively associated with altruism and OCB, while negative affectivity is consistently associated in the negative direction. Gore, Kiefner and Combs (2012) have found that the personality characteristics of Contentiousness, Agreeableness and Neuroticism can help predict OCB’s in student populations as well. These findings may be understood in the light that certain personality characteristics predispose the individual to exhibit behaviors that may be viewed as OCB’s. Their data also demonstrated that attitudes towards citizenship behaviors were able to mediate the relationship between the personality trait of Contentiousness and actual behavior. The main concern with studies discussing the effects of personality on OCB’s is that a number of other factors can mediate these relationships, as seen in the study be Gore, Kiefner and Combs (2012). This concern has been raised by many other researchers as well. For example, Organ and Ryan (1995) found that a number of factors could explain the relationship between personality / disposition and OCB. Research into employee characteristics has yielded inconsistent results for factors like tenure, gender and age, while the results do not support a strong relationship for factors like experience, training, knowledge, independence or ability (Podsakoff et al., 2000). The fact that studies have been yielding inconsistent results may emphasis the fact that these issues need to be understood in detail, as it is likely that different factors may mediate these relationships in different settings. Task Characteristics The research on task characteristics has been lesser, but has yielded more consistent findings, and certain factors have been found to be affected with OCB across situations. Factors like task feedback and tasks that were judged as being intrinsically satisfying have been found to be consistently associated positively with OCB’s, while aspects of tasks like routinization have been found to share a negative relationship with OCB’s(Podsakoff et al., 2000). Appelbaum, Iaconi and Matousek (2007) have examined the literature and found that encouraging employees to become involved in tasks that give them pleasure and make them feel responsible not only increase OCB’s but also reduce counterproductive and negative behavior. Todd and Kent (2006) believe that the relationship between task characteristics and OCB’s has not been adequately examined, and that other factors like job satisfaction can mediate these relationships. While the exact mechanism by which these factors affect behavior of employees is not clear, it is evident that they do affect the way employees function in the workplace. There is not enough evidence for the path of these effects take, and it is not enough to simply know that these variables are related. In order to put this information to use in improving the likelihood of OCB’s it is necessary to understand the mechanism by which task related factors affect OCB. Thus it is necessary to conduct investigations that can help in understanding these relationships more clearly. Organizational Characteristics The trends seen in the relationships between organizational characteristics and OCB’s are not as consistent as the ones seen for task variables. Conflicting evidence has been found for the relationships shared by the OCB’s with organizational formalization, organizational inflexibility, advisory or staff support, or spatial distance (Podsakoff et al., 2000). The reasons for this could be that different employees experience different needs with respect to what the organization should deliver to them. It could also be that employees in different positions and with different types of tasks require different kinds of involvement from the organization, leading to differences in how this involvement motivates them to exhibit helpful behaviors. On the other hand, research shows that factors like group cohesiveness and rewards seem to be positively associated with OCB’s (Podsakoff et al., 2000). it may be reasoned that these factors create a positive emotional state, which then encourages the employee to exhibit more OCB’s and less counterproductive behaviors(Spector & Fox, 2002). While rewards motivate employees to work better; those rewards that are not controlled by the leader seem to have the opposite effect, possibly since the employees see them as applicable only to task-related behaviors. Appelbaum, Iaconi and Matousek (2007) have found that organizational variable mediate the relationship seen between personal variables like age, gender, tenure and other demographic variables and OCB’s. They find that organizational structure, organizational justice and examples set by higher management serve to affect the way employees behave. Organizations that encourage healthy self appraisal and provide an open and honest communication between management and employees as well as organizations where justice and initiative are encouraged through structure as well as through example are more likely to see positive deviance like OCB’s. On the other hand, while those that do not do so are more likely to experience negative deviations in employee behavior (Appelbaum, Iaconi & Matousek, 2007). As discussed by Appelbaum, Iaconi and Matousek (2007), organizational and workplace factors seem to interact with individual characteristics of employees to produce positive and negative voluntary behaviors. As yet, it is unclear how these two categories of variable interact; and it is necessary to study these interactions further in order to understand them better. Leadership Characteristics Leadership has been discussed a lot with respect to how it influences OCB’s, since it may be assumed that providing the appropriate kind of leadership model would encourage OCB’s that would help the organization as a whole. The leadership styles that have been found to share a consistent and significant relationship with OCB’s are Transformational leadership and Transactional leadership (MacKenzie et al., 1999). Transformational behaviors that are typically associated with OCB’s in literature include articulating a vision of the organization, providing an appropriate model for employees to follow, fostering the acceptance of group goals and high expectations from employees that can enhance the working of the organization and encouraging intellectual stimulation (Podsakoff et al., 2000). These behaviors are motivational and encourage the employee to experience positive affect and feel involved in the organization; thus leading to better and more useful behavior including OCB’s. Transformational leadership has been found to influence different dimensions of OCB’s. Transactional leadership, on the other hand, has received less consistent support. Research shows that only two forms have consistent influence on OCB’s – the contingent reward behaviors and the non contingent punishment behaviors (Podsakoff et al., 2000). While the first set of behaviors have been found to influence OCB’s positively on a regular basis; the second group has been found to share a negative relationship with different dimensions of OCB’s. The conflicting evidence found for the other conditions needs to be understood in context of other variables and the interactions between conditions. Podsakoff et al. (2000) also found that while most behaviors associated with the Leader – Member Exchange theory were found to share a positive relationship with OCB’s, some of the Path – Goal theory was also implicated in the way it affected employee functioning. Supportive role behaviors and leader role clarification behaviors that are both associated with providing the employee with more information and encouraging an environment in which employees feel comfortable were positively associated with the prevalence of different OCB’s (Podsakoff et al., 2000). Conclusion A vast amount of research has been conducted in the field of Organizational Citizenship Behaviors over the last three decades. While some trends have been apparent from the beginning, some others have not been as easily explainable. Most research into factors that affect the prevalence of OCB’s has focused on a single dimension at one time (Podsakoff et al., 2000). Although such research is essential to identify factors of interest; it is necessary to examine the interaction between different types of antecedents in order to understand the mechanism by which they influence employee behaviors. It is also important to understand the nature of the dimensions of OCB and the interactions that these dimensions share. Such knowledge will help organizations in providing the appropriate conditions to encourage and nurture proactive behaviors like OCB’s as well as improved task performance in employees. References Appelbaum, S.H., Iaconi, G.D. & Matousek, A. (2007). Positive and negative deviant workplace behaviors: Causes, impacts, and solutions. Corporate governance, 7(5), 586-598. Gore, J.S., Kiefner, A.E. & Combs, K.M. (2012). Personality traits that predict academic citizenship behavior. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, Online Publication. DOI: 10.1111/j.1559-1816.2012.00948.x MacKenzie, S.B., Podsakoff, P.M. & Rich, G.A. (1999). Transformational and transactional leadership and salesperson performance. Journal of the academy of marketing science, 29(2), 115-134. Organ, D.W. (1988). Organizational citizenship behavior: The good soldier syndrome. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books. Organ, D.W. (1997). Organizational citizenship behavior: It’s construct cleanup time. Human performance, 10(2), 85-97. Organ, D.W., Podsakoff, P.M. & MacKenzie S.P. (2006). Organizational citizenship behavior: Its nature, antecedents, and consequences. London: Sage Publications. Organ, D.W. & Ryan, K. (1995). A meta-analytic review of attitudinal and dispositional predictors of organizational citizenship behavior. Personnel Psychology, 48(4), 775-802. Podsakoff, P.M., MacKenzie, S.B., Paine, J.B. & Bachrach, D.G. (2000). Organizational citizenship behaviors: A critical review of the theoretical and empirical literature and suggestions for future research. Journal of Management, 26(3), 513-563. Smith, A., Organ, D.W. & Near, J. (1983). Organizational citizenship behavior: Its nature and antecedents. Journal of Applied Psychology, 68(4), 653-663. Spector, P.E. & Fox, S. (2002). An emotion-centered model of voluntary work behavior: Some parallels between counterproductive work behavior and organizational citizenship behavior. Human Resource Management Review, 12, 269–292. Todd, S.Y. & Kent, A. (2006). Direct and indirect effects of task characteristics on organizational citizenship behavior. North American Journal of Psychology, 8(2), 253-268. Read More