Encouraging Organizational Citizenship: The Effects of Job Satisfaction, Perceived Equity and Leadership

Abstract

Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) is defined as discretionary behaviors which benefit the organization (Organ, 1988a). Organ (1988a) has suggested that OCB is composed of five dimensions: Altruism, Conscientiousness, Sportsmanship, Courtesy, and Civic Virtue. Altruism consists of discretionary behaviors which are aimed at helping specific persons with an organizationally relevant task or problem. Conscientiousness, which was originally called Generalized Compliance, refers to employees going beyond minimal requirements in carrying out their assigned tasks. Sportsmanship refers to activities that employees refrain from doing, such as complaining and filing petty grievances. Courtesy includes such actions as giving others advance notice, issuing reminders to others, checking with others before taking action, and passing along information. Civic Virtue is defined as responsible participation in the political life of the organization (Graham, 1986.) Employees engaging in this type of OCB keep themselves informed of matters affecting the organization, attend meetings, contribute to discussions, and generally get involved in organizational activities in order to assist and improve the organization. Empirical support for a five-factor structure of OCB has been provided in two studies employing confirmatory factor analysis (Moorman et al., 1991; Podsakoff et al., 1990; Williams et al., 1986). The purpose of this research is to more fully examine the relationships between job satisfaction, leadership behaviors, perceived equity and organizational citizenship by including a measure of all five dimensions of OCB; two dimensions of leadership, consideration and initiating structure; two dimensions of job satisfaction, intrinsic satisfaction and extrinsic satisfaction; and two dimensions of perceived equity, equity and job equity. Much OCB research to date has treated job satisfaction, leadership, and perceived equity as unidimensional variables. For example, OCB research has examined only leader supportiveness, which is similar to consideration, but not the second major dimension of leadership, initiating structure. Leader supportiveness has been hypothesized to be related to OCB in that engaging in OCB is one way for employees to pay back their leader for this supportiveness. However, initiating structure behaviors, such as assigning tasks, setting goals, and telling employees exactly what to do, may be viewed by employees as helping behaviors in some situations. Thus, employees may reciprocate with OCB after their leader engages in initiating structure behaviors when they are necessary. Relationships between dimensions of these variables and dimensions of OCB have not yet been examined simultaneously. OCB and Job Satisfaction Early research focused on relationships between job satisfaction or affect and OCB. Job satisfaction was expected to be correlated to OCB for two primary reasons. First, due to the norm of reciprocity, people tend to want to reciprocate others who help or benefit them. Organizations or managers who create conditions where employees experience job satisfaction may cause these employees to want to reciprocate the favor. Since, in many cases, in-role job performance may be constrained, employees may use extra-role behaviors such as OCB to pay back their manager or organization (Organ, 1977, 1990). Second, there is ample evidence in the psychological literature that persons who experience a positive affect state tend to engage in prosocial behaviors (Clark and Isen, 1982). In the organizational literature several studies produced results which suggest a significant, positive relationship between job satisfaction and OCB (Bateman and Organ, 1983; Puffer, 1987). Examining the Altruism and Generalized Compliance (Conscientiousness) dimensions of OCB, Smith et al. (1983) found significant direct effects of job satisfaction on Altruism, but not on Generalized Compliance, suggesting that job satisfaction produces helping behaviors directed at specific persons, but not at the overall organization. …

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