Organisational Citizenship Behaviour (OCB) and its Dimensions

Describe about the Organisational Citizenship Behaviour Within Learning Environments?

Organizational Citizenship behavior is one of the most studied topics in the research field of Organizational Behaviour. OCB’s concept was first coined in 1980s by Organ and Bateman and then from there onwards a number of researchers and scholars strengthened and refined the concept with the changing times and the changing needs of organisations. Organization Citizenship behavior basically defines individual’s behavior which are beneficial for the organization (S.Suresh and P. Venkatammal, 2010). And omission of OCB cannot be treated with punishment since it is a personal choice. Earlier Organ, the researcher who coined the term Organisational Citizenship Behaviour had coined 2 attributes of OCB but later on in 1998 he went on to add 3 more attributes to make it a total of five attributes. The attributes as defined by Organ in 1998 are: courtesy, altruism, sportsmanship, conscientiousness and civic virtue.

As mentioned earlier that OCB is a personnel choice and omission of OCB cannot lead to punishment but as Organ says that the implementation of OCB will not only increase the efficiency of the employees but will also boost the organization. Organisational Citizenship if implemented in an organization increases its effectiveness and gives the organization a lead from other organisations and helps the organization to reach its business goals.

As Organ says that OCB accounts for work-related behaviors, which help the organization, and in its effective functioning. OCB also helps the employees to move above their minimum role and perform to their best that is again beneficial for the organization (Khaola, 2008). During the early days of research into OCB there were mainly two dimensions as defined by Organ which are as follows:

General Compliance: An employee doing its job perfectly and doing what he/she should be supposed to do.

Altruism: this means helping others to achieve their goals.

These two dimensions were proposed by Batemand and Organ in 1983.
Later on as the researches went on Organ himself identified five dimensions to Organisational Citizenship Behaviour. These are as follows:

Altruism: helping others to achieve their goals.

Civic Virtue: This means that the information of the organization should remain inside the organization and should not move out of the organization.

Conscientiousness: This means to comply with the organization’s norms and regulations.

Courtesy: This means that one should consult with others in the organization before taking important steps and decisions (LePine, Erez and Johnson, 2002).

Sportsmanship: This means not to create rivalry within the organization and support other employees without complaining about the trivial matters.

Later on Organ, himself divided the dimensions into 3 parts, namely: helping, courtesy and Conscientiousness.

After Organ, it was Williams and Anderson who in 1991 divided OCB into two main types:

Organisational Citizenship behavior directed towards an individuals which will help the organization grow and
Organisational Citizenship behavior directed towards the organization, which will benefit the organization.

OCBI means the organizational citizenship behavior which directly benefits the particular individual increasing his / her efficiency but then ultimately benefitting the organization on the whole. Podsakoff in the year 2000 labeled OCBI as meaning to voluntarily helping other individuals and other employees with their problems (Podsakoff, Ahearne and MacKenzie, 1997). There have many studies which try to define OCBI but almost all of them relate to the ones proposed by Williams and Anderson.

Organisational Citizenship behavior directed towards individuals

The second dimension according to Williams and Anderson is the Organisational behavior directed towards the organization. In OCBO the organizational citizenship behavior is directed towards the while organisation rather than specific members or employees of the organisation. Podsakoff called OCB as Organisation compliance as it is done by internalizing the organisations norms and rules and policies. While Williams and Anderson defined OCBO shortly as behavior which benefits the organisation directly (Podsakoff, Ahearne and MacKenzie, 1997).

OCB mainly includes notice prior to absence of work and adhering to the rules and regulations of the organisation informally (Rasheed, Jehanzeb and Rasheed, 2013). The research in OCB has increased rapidly and dramatically in the past decade there is a bit of consensus among the researchers about the internal factors of Organisational citizenship behaviour.

In 1995 Ryan and Organ did a meta-analysis of OCB and found out that there were several dispositional and attitudinal predictors such as organizational commitment, job satisfaction etc., while studies done by others pointed out to many other factors and predictors such as personality and personal variables, leadership, social exchange theory etc.  According to all the researches and studies Organisational citizenship behaviour is a personality trait, a response to the motivation-based environment of the workplace and a response to the fellow employees and the seniors in the organization (ORGAN and RYAN, 1995). Thus OCB has been identified by various researchers as an indicator which indicates the performance of the employees’ which goes beyond the formal duties to include effectiveness, service quality etc.

During the early day researches the antecedents of OCB were focused on dispositions, leaders’ supportiveness and the attitude of the employees (Lambert, Hogan and Griffin, 2007). And during the past decade many distinct variables have been researched upon to find out more antecedents of Organisational citizenship Behavior. Some most common OCB’s antecedents are as follows:

Perceptions of justice in the organization
Job satisfaction of employee
Task characteristics
Personality characteristics
Leadership behavior i.e. the behavior of the leaders towards the organisation and the employee.

Job satisfaction is considered the most important of the antecedents by most of the researchers. As mentioned earlier about the meta-analysis done by Ryan and Organ, they did a meta-analysis of 28 researches and studies and they concluded that job satisfaction is one of the most important antecedent of OCB since job satisfaction is the thing which will keep the employee working with its efficiency and giving its best to the organisation which will help the organisation grow as a whole (ORGAN and RYAN, 1995).

Even they concluded the relation (job satisfaction – OCB > the relation job-satisfaction and in-role performance. They suggested that there were some other antecedents which were as comparable as job satisfaction such as organisation commitment, fairness in the organisation and support from the leadership and the seniors in the organisation.

When talking about the personal antecedents, Podsakoff along with Paine, MacKenzie and Bachrach in 2000, identified agreeableness, conscientiousness and positive and negative affectivity were also important antecedents for OCB (LePine, Erez and Johnson, 2002). Conscientiousness has been identified as the most important antecedent that is the most strongly linked to the compliance dimension of Organization citizenship behaviour. While there are also arguments that the personality traits are weaker representation as compared to attitudinal predictors.

Organisational Citizenship Behaviour directed towards Organisation (OCBO)

Certain task characteristics were found to have a relation with several dimensions such as the task characteristics such as routinisation, feedback and intrinsic satisfaction are deeply related to the dimensions of altruism, conscientiousness, civic virtue, sportsmanship and courtesy.

Intrinsic satisfaction and task feedback have been found to have positive relation with the OCB while task routinisation has a negative relationship with OCB.

Talking about Leadership behaviors, several studies have suggested that leadership behaviors are also important predictors for OCB and leadership behaviors are of mainly four categories:

1. Transactional leadership behaviour
2. Transformational leadership behavior
3. Behaviour involving leader-member exchange theory
4. Behaviour involving path-goal theory.

Transformational leadership behaviors include high performance expectations, high goal expectations, intellectual stimulation, articulating a vision etc. that have a positive relationship with the Organs OCB containing five dimensions (Khaola, 2008).

Transactional leadership behaviour includes non-contingent punishment behaviour and contingent reward behavior, which again have deep relation with Organ’s OCB dimensions.

While the path-goal theory of leadership behaviour includes leader role clarification and supportive leadership role which are positively linked or related to Organ’s OCB dimensions.

Talking about the last leadership behaviour antecedent, which is the leader-exchange theory, Podsakoff found out that this has a positive relation with the altruism dimension of Organ’s Organisation citizenship behavior (Podsakoff, Ahearne and MacKenzie, 1997).

Conclusion:

Organizational behaviour has ben of utmost importance for all the organisation since it defines how well an organisation will perform. The organisation performance and overall growth depend on the organizational behavior (S.Suresh and P. Venkatammal, 2010). And Organisation Citizenship behaviour is an important aspect of Organisational behaviour and researches and studies on OCB have been increasing rapidly since more and more organisations are getting to understand the importance of OCB for their employee as well as their organisation.

The definition of OCB as given by Organ goes like this: “OCB is not based on formal reward system, it is rather a personal choice, a choice on the individual, behaviour which promotes and ensures the effective working of the organisation, it cannot be forced upon an employee, but OCB is desirable among the employees of and organisation.

Many studies have taken place in the United States on Organisational citizenship behavior on the lines of Organ’s work but when talking about the global perspective, a very little has been done throughout the world.

Organizational behaviour is discretionary and is not part of the formal requirements for an employee but it is desired since it not only improves the individual’s efficiency but on the whole also benefits the organization (Podsakoff, Ahearne and MacKenzie, 1997). Successful organisations want employees who can do more than their normal job duties and this is where OCB comes into place.

References

Bukhari, Z., 2009. Key Antecedents of Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) in the Banking Sector of Pakistan. IJBM, 3(12).

Khaola, P., 2008. Organisational citizenship behaviour within learning environments. The International Journal of Management Education, 7(1), pp.73-80.

Lambert, E., Hogan, N. and Griffin, M., 2007. Being the Good Soldier: Organizational Citizenship Behavior and Commitment Among Correctional Staff. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 35(1), pp.56-68.

LePine, J., Erez, A. and Johnson, D., 2002. The nature and dimensionality of organizational citizenship behavior: A critical review and meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87(1), pp.52-65.

ORGAN, D. and RYAN, K., 1995. A META-ANALYTIC REVIEW OF ATTITUDINAL AND DISPOSITIONAL PREDICTORS OF ORGANIZATIONAL CITIZENSHIP BEHAVIOR.Personnel Psychology, 48(4), pp.775-802.

Podsakoff, P., Ahearne, M. and MacKenzie, S., 1997. Organizational citizenship behavior and the quantity and quality of work group performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 82(2), pp.262-270.

Rasheed, A., Jehanzeb, K. and Rasheed, M., 2013. An Investigation of the Antecedents of Organizational Citizenship Behaviour: Case of Saudi Arabia. IJPS, 5(1).

S.Suresh, and P. Venkatammal, 2010. Antecedents of Organizational Citizenship Behaviour. Journal of the Indian Academy of Applied Psychology, 36(2), pp.276-286.

Snape, E. and Redman, T., 2010. HRM Practices, Organizational Citizenship Behaviour, and Performance: A Multi-Level Analysis. Journal of Management Studies.

Somech, A. and Drach-Zahavy, A., 2004. Exploring organizational citizenship behaviour from an organizational perspective: The relationship between organizational learning and organizational citizenship behaviour. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 77(3), pp.281-298.