Citizenship Behavior Essay

CHAPTER 2: REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

2.1: Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB)

Organizational citizenship behavior is a term that encompasses anything positive and constructive the employees do, of their own volition, which supports their co-workers as well as the organization. Employees who are engaged in OCB may not always be the top performers, but they are the ones who are known to ‘go the extra mile’ or ‘go above and beyond’ the minimum efforts required to do a merely satisfactory job. Organizations will benefit from encouraging employees into OCB because it is linked to many advantages such as, increased productivity, higher customer satisfaction and much more.

2.1.1 – Definitions of Organizational Citizenship Behavior

Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) has undergone many complex definitional revisions, since the term was coined in the late 1980s, but the construct remains the same at its core.

Social science since long observed certain altruistic behaviors that seem to integrate human values with service to be endowed. Schwartz (1977) argued that altruistic behaviors occur when individuals hold personnel norms with regard to specific behavior. These norms are moderated by the awareness of the result of engaging or not engaging with specific behavior. Karp (1996) adds that individual values can influence behavior when moderated by situational concern. Professor Dennis Organ and his colleagues also made a similar observation that behavior is influenced by values and moderated by situational concerns in an organizational setting. Organ called it Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) and defined it as, “individual behavior that is discretionary, not directly or explicitly recognized by the formal reward syste...

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...e future, for the service rendered, even though there is no formal mechanism to do so.

Employment relationships may have economic and social exchange. When it is an economic exchange, employees receive only contractual inducements and they are likely to confine their contributions to those prescribed by the contract. When the employment relationship is a social exchange, employees receive positive, beneficial treatments from the organization. This in turn creates obligations on the part of employees to reciprocate in positive beneficial ways (Settoon et al., 1996). Since OCB is generally discretionary, it is a social resource that can be exchanged by individuals, who have been the recipients of social rewards (Foa & Foa, 1980; Moorman, 1991). Therefore when the employment relationship is a social exchange, employees are more likely to engage in OCB (Organ, 1988).