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nt. J. Work Organisation and Emotion, Vol. 11, No. 2, 2020 89
Copyright © 2020 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.
Organisational citizenship behaviour: a review
Kristi Ndoja and Shamira Malekar*
Borough of Manhattan Community College,
199 Chambers St, New York, NY 10007, USA
Email: kristi.ndoja@stu.bmcc.cuny.edu
Email: smalekar@bmcc.cuny.edu
*Corresponding author
Abstract: Organisational effectiveness is fundamental for sustainability and
profitability. Effectiveness is measured observing the degree of profit, the
reduction of the costs, the production quantity, efficiency and organisational
citizenship behaviour (OCB). OCB is the willingness of an employee to
perform tasks which are not officially and directly required by the employer,
thus do not have any official and direct recompense from the contractual
relations. This discretionary behaviour is always related to an enhancement
perceived by the organisation. The review covers the last three decades of
research and development in the organisational citizenship behaviour literature
and has a special focus on literature from 2010 to 2019. Research led to
consider these main outcomes of OCB namely compliance, altruism,
organisational justice related to a fair environment workplace, perceived
organisational support (POS) related and enhanced by a higher level of
collectivism, power distance and uncertainty avoidance; procedural justice (PJ);
transformational leadership (TSL) and the psychological contract (PC). This
research would assist academicians, corporates and the general public
understands the concept by the critical analysis conducted.
Keywords: organisational citizenship behaviour; OCB; communication;
learning; human resource management; procedural justice; transformational
leadership; psychological contract.
Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Ndoja, K. and Malekar, S.
(2020) ‘Organisational citizenship behaviour: a review’, Int. J. Work
Organisation and Emotion, Vol. 11, No. 2, pp.89–104.
Biographical notes: Kristi Ndoja is pursuing Business Administration at the
City University of New York – Borough of Manhattan Community College.
Shamira Malekar is an Assistant Professor at the City University of New York
– Borough of Manhattan Community College. She is one of the founding
members for the Forum of Emotional Intelligence learning (FEIL) and invited
member to the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in
Organizations. She has several papers to her credit published in journals of
repute.
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1 Introduction
Organ (1988) defined organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) as an individual
behaviour that is discretionary, not directly or explicitly recognised by formal reward
system. However, the originator of the concept was Barnard (1938), with his concept of
willingness to cooperate. Another research provided a distinction between dependable
role performance and innovative and spontaneous behaviours (Katz, 1964; Katz and
Kahn, 1978). Organ (1988) defined OCB as an individual behaviour that is discretionary,
not directly or explicitly recognised by the formal reward system.
After Bateman and Organ (1983) conceptualised OCB in different ways, Smith et al.
(1983) stated that OCB consisted of mainly two dimensions:
1 altruism or helping a specific person
2 generalised compliance.
Nonetheless, they followed an overall common path of the discretionarily quality, which
is the constant trait of OCB.
Williams and Anderson (1991) identified two broad dimensions of OCB as:
1 OCBO or general compliance behaviours, directed toward the organisation benefit in
general;
2 OCBI or altruistic behaviours, immediately benefited specific individuals within the
organisation and indirectly contributed to the organisation effectiveness. OCB was
measured on the following dimensions:
a altruism
b courtesy
c conscientiousness
d civic virtue
d sportsmanship (Organ, 1988; Williams and Anderson, 1991).
Walz and Niehoff (1996) considered OCB as the practical opportune organisational
behaviours related with positive organisational consequences. Lovell (1999) defined
OCB as a behaviour that extended beyond an organisation’s requirement in a formal job
description. It referred to actions performed by the employee, who surpassed the
minimum role requirement expected by the organisation and promoted the welfare of
co-workers and work groups. Begum (2005) stated that OCB was referred to a set of
discretionary behaviours that exceeded one’s basic job requirement. Bogler and Somech
(2005) defined OCB with three main features:
1 behaviour must be voluntary
2 behaviour produce benefits from the organisational perspective
3 OCB have a multidimensional nature.
Krishnan and Arora (2008) defined OCB as a discretionary behaviour that increased
organisational effectiveness by helping co-workers, supervisor, and the organisation.
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Podsakoff et al. (2000), clarified the differences and described the constructs
overlapped in the literature and listed seven distinctive type of OCB which are listed
below:
1 Helping behaviour include voluntary willing of helping others and preventing the
occurrence of work-related problems.
2 Sportsmanship include acceptance of unverifiable incidences and concept of
sacrificing self-interest for the greater group or organisation.
3 Organisational loyalty involves promoting the organisation to outsiders, protecting
and defending it against external threats, and remaining committed even under
adverse conditions.
4 Organisational compliance which involve total embracement of organisation’s rules,
regulations, and procedures. The scrupulously observation to them even when the
employee is not monitored.
5 Individual initiative includes engaging in task-related activities with extra
enthusiasm and the great willingness to achieve tasks over any professional
obligation.
6 Civic virtue includes an inclination to participate actively in the organisational
governance.
7 Self-development include seeking improvement on one’s knowledge, skills and
abilities in order to enhance one’s contribution to the organisation.
Chahar (2019) defined OCB as a position an employee has towards organisation while
extending his behaviour beyond the normal duties of tasks at hand. Koon and Chong
(2018) suggested flexible work place design, telecommuting, job sharing, flexible
schedules, vacation time and facilities.
All the above research concludes that OCB follows a common path of traits. OCB is
an employee’s discretional behaviour which implies that this is not a behaviour which
can be enforced as a requirement of the job and the initiative starts from the employee.
OCB surpasses the minimum role requirement expected by the organisation, promoting
the welfare of co-workers, work groups, or the organisation. Therefore, OCB is a general
compliance behaviour directed toward the organisational benefit and individual benefit
belonging to the organisation. One of the objective of the paper is to understand the
concept of OCB. The second objective of this research is to understand the determinants
of OCB from literature and implications in select countries. OCB applications in the
workplace include organisational initiatives like management leadership development,
team building, succession planning, and performance management. OCB is a core
competency of many corporations. This paper highlights OCB’s linkage with sustainable
competitive advantage facilitating innovations in the work place and also helps in
enhancing employee creativity, engagement and job satisfaction. The next section
describes the contributions of OCB.
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2 Contributions and results
Throughout these three decades researchers have played a great role enhancing the clarity
of the concept along with the empirical implications of OCB. Organ (1994) recognised
that Vroom (1964) did not notice a relevant relationship between job attitudes and
performance. Guion and Gottier (1965) did not see adequate and sufficient evidence of
validity in personality measures for predicting job performance. However, Organ stated
that if OCB offered a criterion for detecting the effects of job satisfaction, this could
establish personality as an independent variable for the employee contributions to
organisational effectiveness. The purpose of his study is to see if it was possible to
consider personality measures as a predictor for OCB. The results showed that
personality was not a strong indicator of OCB. Associations between the results and the
methods adopted could reveal the reason of these results. Moreover, personality in the
workplace is not able to predict an employee’s behaviour, because this kind of
environment is not exempted by influencer factors, which do not let personality express
freely.
Organ and Konovsky (1989) used measures intended to index negative and affective
states. The correlation found in their study yields to a value of –0.04 between negative
affectivity and altruism, –0.11 between negative affectivity and compliance, 0.13
between positive affectivity and altruism, and 0.17 between positive affectivity and
compliance. With this being said, a fair treatment inside the organisation lead to a more
involved social exchange relation among employees, interacting through various
favourable behaviours.
George’s (1990) study yields a value of –0.18, considering the correlation between
negative affectivity and altruism and –0.14 between positive affectivity and altruism. In
light of these studies, as well as the studies of George (1991) and Smith et al. (1983),
none have yielded correlations greater in absolute value than 0.20. Studies in which OCB
was self-rated were excluded, because any correlations with similar self-rated studies
would be suspected on grounds of common method variance.
Podsakoff et al. (2000) recognised that although the great growth in theory and
research made in organisational citizenship behaviour, some unfortunate consequences
has been produced. The first of them was the lack of recognition of some of the
similarities and differences in some of the constructs of OCB. Results affirm that the
differences of those constructs are confused or totally ignored. The other problem
identified as the opposite of the above, was the conceptual overlapping, wherein different
lexical attributions foster similar concepts.
This led to 30 potentially different forms of OCB being considered and finally seven
types were identified by Podsakoff et al. (2000), which included:
1 Helping behaviour, referring to peacemaking, cheerleading, courtesy dimensions
(Organ, 1988); interpersonal helping (Graham, 1989); OCB-I (Williams and
Anderson, 1991); interpersonal facilitation (Van Scotter and Motowidlo, 1996) and
helping others (George and Brief, 1992).
2 Sportsmanship, which had received much less attention in literature.
3 Organisational loyalty, which implied promoting the organisation to outsiders,
defending it against external threats, and remaining committed to it even under
unfavourable conditions.
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4 Organisational compliance, which included generalised compliance (Smith et al.,
1983), organisational obedience (Graham, 1991), OCB-O (Williams and Anderson,
1991), following organisational rules and procedures (Borman and Motowidlo,
1997).
5 Individual initiative, which had similarities with conscientiousness construct (Organ,
1988); it included personal industry and individual initiative (Graham, 1989;
Moorman and Blakely, 1995); identifies constructive suggestions (Borman and
Motowidlo, 1997) and took charge at work (Morrison and Phelps, 1999).
6 Civic virtue, referred as a civic virtue (Organ, 1988); organisational participation
(Graham, 1989); and protecting the organisation (George and Brief, 1992).
7 Self-development, which included the voluntary behaviour employees engage to
improve their knowledge, skills, and abilities. The objective was in order to expand
the range of their contributions to the organisation.
In addition, Podsakoff et al. (2000) reported a meta-analytic relationship between OCB
and their antecedents. Empirical research focused on four major categories of
antecedents:
1 individual (employee) characteristics
2 task characteristics
3 organisational characteristic
4 leadership behaviour.
Another finding is that OCB influenced managerial evaluation of performance and
related managerial decisions on employees.
Mohammad et al. (2010) examined the effect of three types of organisational justice,
namely:
Distributive, which accrues when people believe they have received reasonable
measure of value.
Procedural, which is related with the process the organisation foster to attain a
resolution.
Interactional, which describes the grade of fairness of the interactions between the
individuals and the organisation.
On two dimensions of organisational citizenship behaviours:
1 General compliance behaviour directed towards the organisation or organisation
directed (OCBO).
2 Altruistic behaviour that benefit specific individuals in the organisation and
indirectly contribute towards its effectiveness or individual directed (OCBI).
The study examined was supported by two theories:
1 The equity theory (Adam, 1965) which objective is how individuals consider their
relationships with others, that is by estimating the ratio of their outcomes from and
inputs to the relationship against the outcome/input ratio of a comparison other.
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When the inequality perceived is greater, consequently greater are the discomfort
and the sorrow the individual feels. Related to this theory a suggestion of Organ
(1988) that a lower level of OCB could be a response for inequality.
2 The second theory discussed is the social exchange theory.
The fact of receiving, yields to reciprocate with some voluntary service, which leads to
the conclusion that a pattern of reciprocity in the workplace is based to mutual
exchanges. Mohammad et al. (2010) noted the significant positive correlation between
organisational justice and OCB. Indeed, a fair environment workplace, which is
expressed with “fair distribution for the outcomes in term of pay, promotion, and
incentives” will enhance the motivation in term of OCB contributions.
The above study leads to Rahman et al. (2013) analysing the construct validity of
OCB scale using confirmatory factors and determined its reliability. The study showed
that the revised model indicated a better fit with three dimensions of organisational
citizenship behaviour. Thus, OCB was measured using these three dimensions, namely:
helping behaviour, civic virtue and sportsmanship. Results indicated that OCB scale was
a better fit by including a covariance between error measurements among items in
helping behaviour and sportsmanship based on the modifications indicators. The finding
shows the importance of developing organisational citizenship behaviour at the
workplace. Indeed, in this way employees are willing to perform extra role behaviour,
reducing the need for rare specialised resources. Another aspect that deserves to be
highlight is that the scale fostered is suitable to be used in the local context, as it was
across Indonesian culture.
Chiaburu et al. (2015) examined perceived organisational support (POS) of the
employees, related with their OCB. POS is an employee’s perception of being
appreciated and esteemed by the organisation (Eisenberg et al., 1990). Chiaburu
hypothesised and confirmed the potential relationship on national culture of POS and
OCB. Higher level of:
Collectivism, defined by individuals with a high degree of responsibility toward the
interests of the co-workers and the organisation, along with a tendency to sacrifice
for the common good and sustain harmonious relationships (Thomas et al., 2003).
Power distance, which belongs to cultures that shows respect for hierarchical
difference on power, status, and authority.
Uncertainty avoidance, in this kind of culture a high priority is given to acts that
reduce uncertainty.
Femininity, in this kind of culture is expected a cooperative style in solving conflict,
belief in group decision and where security is perceived to be important.
Are able to strength the POS-OCB relationship.
This study enabled acceptance of the concept that self-interest play a role in social
exchange between the organisation and its employees. Conclusions included that
employees were likely to act as good citizens in reciprocity to POS provided, for their
individual interests. Chiaburu et al. (2015) enlisted the effective sizes for the POS-OCB
relationship. Cumulative evidence was consistent with the positive correlation between
organisation support and citizenship with mean corrected correlation rc = 0.275
Organizational citizenship behaviou
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(N = 21,838 and k = 79), and both 95% confidence and 80% credibility intervals exclude
zero. Thus, the correlation was statistically meaningful.
Furthermore, the correspondence between support and OCB toward organisation
(OCBO) was slightly higher than OCB toward individuals OCBI. The estimate
correlations were rc = 0.264 for OCBI and rc = 0.288 for OCBO, with 95% confidence
intervals and 80% credibility intervals excluded zero. Moreover, POS was more strongly
correlated with self-reported citizenship (rc = 0.355) than citizenship rated by others
(rc = 0.221). There was 95% confidence intervals and 80% credibility intervals excluding
zero. Results were convincing and coherent with the hypotheses, which declared that
national culture was relevant and was able to alter the potency and vigour of social
exchanges.
The work of Kumar et al. (2016) tested the relationship between dimensions of OCB
and measures of employee’s well-being. The three well-being factors considered in the
study were:
1 Relatedness need satisfaction, in a positive relationship to OCBIs.
2a Burnout, in a negative relationship to OCBI.
2b Burnout, in a negative relationship to OCBO.
3a Psychological health, in a positive relationship to OCBI.
3b Psychological health, in a positive relationship to OCBO.
The findings confirm the hypothesis and lead to further research.
Darmanto and Yuliari (2018) conducted a study which aimed to examine the effect of
transformational leadership (TSL), behaviour and organisational learning (OL) on
organisational commitment (OC). The effect of transformational leadership (TSL)
behaviour and OL on OCB was studied. Data was analysed with partial least square
structural equation model (PLS-SEM). All the coefficients of the results are positive
(0.212 <
< 0.445); the T statistic of the three variables (transformational leadership –
TL, organisational learning – OL, organisational commitment – OC) were more than
1.96. The p value of three variables was less than 0.05. These findings indicate that the
OCB of women business associations could be potentially improved by:
1 the transformational leadership
2 organisational learning.
Chahar (2019) studied the interrelation through cross validation of psychological contract
(PC) and OCB. Results statistically confirmed that different components of PC have
impact on OCB. PC demonstrated the existence of the understanding, belief and
commitment of employees with the employer in a mutual reciprocal relationship,
(Rousseau and Parks, 1992). Chahar (2019) tested the relationship of two elements of PC:
1 relational contract
2 transactional contract with five components of OCB:
altruism
compliance
sportsmanship
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courtesy
civic virtue.
Findings show significant relatedness between OCB and PC. The strong positive
relationship between PC and OCB suggests that a good guidance is advised in order to
ensure the implementation of PC, gaining in this fashion competitiveness.
Table 1 OCB literature
Researchers – contributions
Author Major studies Results
Organ and Lingl
(1992)
Personality and OCB Personality is not a good indicator of
OCB
Podsakoff et al.
(2000)
Critical review of the theoretical
and empirical literature on OCB
and suggestions for future
research
Conceptual confusion about the nature
of OCB and overlapped similarities.
Mohammad
et al. (2010)
Organisational justice and OCB
in higher education institution
Significant relationship found between
procedural justice and OCB, and
interactional justice and OCB
No significant relationship found
between distributive justice and OCB
Rahman et al.
(2013)
Analysed the construct validity
of OCB scale with confirmatory
factors analysis with Indonesian
samples
Hypothesis of model of confirmatory
factor analysis (CFA) does not have a
good fit to the data with chi square, CFI.
GFI, TLI, RMSEA
Chiaburu et al.
(2015)
Organisational support and
OCB: cross-cultural
meta-analysis
The relationship between POS and OCB
can vary across cultures
Kumar et al.
(2016)
OCB and employee well-being The finding confirmed the relations
proceeded in the expected directions
Darmanto and
Yuliari (2018)
Developing organisational
citizenship behaviour in women
entrepreneurs business
community
The results showed that
transformational leadership (TL) and
organisational learning had positive
effect on organisational commitment
and OCB
Chahar (2019) Psychological contract and OCB Psychological contract was related to
OCB of the employee
3 Comparative findings and implications in select countries
This section describes the comparative research findings in select countries.
3.1 Malaysia
One of the objectives of this country is to become the regional pivot for educational
excellence (Meh and Nasurdin, 2009). Therefore, a lot has been invested in research in
this field. The study considered here is placed among this context. Research has shown
that procedural justice (PJ) influences positively OCB (Farh et al., 1990).
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3.2 Indonesia
Rahman et al. (2013) showed that teachers can work with each other in a voluntary
behaviour outside their formal responsibility in the school. Being the samples based on
11 religious’ schools. This outcome can be attributed to the fact that teachers in religious
schools perform their duties based on their religious beliefs. The value they commonly
share was having the belief that the work must start with good intention. Thus, teachers
performed their job based on the desire to reach success together. Another outcome of
OCB is sportsmanship, which demonstrated the attitude of employees to be tolerant with
co-workers in performing the job. Some examples of this behaviour included not
reporting unimportant problems and not finding fault with co-workers. Respondents
showed civic virtue, by constructive action and attitude in performing the tasks in the
organisation. Some examples included attending meetings voluntary, giving response to
organisational matters that needed prompt solving.
3.3 South Korea
Lee et al. (2013) study focused in an inquiry of the effects of PJ, transformational
leadership (TSL) and complexity, on OCB. The model used in the study was structural
equation. The sample included 1,100 employees from 30 organisations in Korea National
Industrial Complex. Results indicated PJ having a significant relationship with OCB
(γ13 = –0.17, t = –2.43). It can be concluded that complexity would have a negative effect
on employee’s behaviour. Results showed that OCB has a positive impact on job
satisfaction (
21 = 0.73, t = 13.92). To conclude, the findings suggested that employees
engaged in OCB in three circumstances namely:
a When they perceived fairness in the decision-making progress (procedural
justice – PJ).
b When they receive leaders’ support and care (transformation leadership – TSL).
c When they recognise less complexity of the organisational process.
This leads to the effect that OCB could enhance the job satisfaction of the employees.
There was a cross-cultural meta-analysis conducted by Chiaburu et al. (2015). They
discussed the social exchanges between the organisation and its employees. Employees
were likely to act as good citizens in mutuality to the support received from their
organisation. These findings showed the impact of national culture modifying the
strength of these exchanges. The research was based on the country-level cultural
dimensions in 12 countries. The influence between POS and OCB is stronger in
a higher level of collectivism
b power distance
c uncertainty avoidance
d femininity.
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3.4 USA
In US results showed its emergence as a prototypical illustration of a cultural setting
displaying an attenuated POS and OCB relationship. Comparing US and China, Farh
et al. (1997) found that OCB shared universal meanings of civic virtue, altruism and
conscientiousness across USA and Chinese contexts. While two dimensions, namely
1 interpersonal harmony
2 protecting company resources, were unique in Chinese context.
Altruism in China was found to be similar to western altruism at a definition level;
however non-work-related helping observed as altruism in China, was not typically
viewed in USA work ambience.
3.5 Ghana
Dartey-Baah et al. (2019) examined the effect of leadership behaviour on organisational
behaviour, while assessing the mediating role of job involvement. The field chosen for
this study is the Ghanaian hospitality industry. Transformational leadership (TFL)
behaviour significantly increases OCB among workers in the hospitality industry, thus
TFL behaviour (
= 0.27, p < 0.001) has significant positive effect on OCB. On the other
hand, the hypothesis which claims that employee job involvement mediates the
relationship between TFL behaviour and OCB was not supported since TFL did not
significantly predict job involvement (
= 0.004, p > 0.05). The relationship between
transactional leadership (TSL) behaviour, OCB and job involvement is shown to be
empirically supported by the results (
= 0.21, p < 0.01): transactional leadership (TSL)
behaviour has significant positive effect on OCB. The empirical results revealed that both
leadership behaviour TFL and TSL have significant positive effects on OCB. Table 2
describes the comparative findings with critical findings and Table 3 describes the study,
methods and diagnostic tools.
Table 2 Comparative findings
Country – study OCB outcomes Peculiar texture of
social samples Critical findings
Malaysia
(Mohammad
et al., 2010)
Procedural justice 120 non-academic staffs
from the National
University of Malaysia
Procedural justice
influences positively
OCB
Interactional justice
Indonesia
(Rahman et al.,
2013)
Sportsmanship 11 religious’ school The values
commonly shared
among the
employees have the
power to bond the
cooperation
achieving the same
mission (in this
peculiar case:
religious value)
Helping behaviour
Civic virtue
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Table 2 Comparative findings (continued)
Country – study OCB outcomes Peculiar texture of
social samples Critical findings
South Korea (Lee
et al., 2013)
Procedural justice 1,100 employees from
30 companies in the
Korea National
Industrial Complex
Employees engaged
in OCB when they
perceive fairness in
the decision-making
progress (procedural
justice – PJ); when
they receive leaders’
support and care
(transformation
leadership – TSL),
and when they
recognise less
complexity of the
organisational
process
Transformational
leadership
Complexity
Cross-cultural
meta-analysis
(Chiaburu et al.,
2015)
Collectivism is
stronger (high to low
value) in South Korea,
Thailand, Nigeria,
China, Malaysia and
India
Study based on: USA,
Malaysia, Nigeria,
Canada, UK, Thailand,
South Korea, India,
Belgium, China,
Australia
Higher level of
collectivism, power
distance, uncertainty
avoidance, and
femininity
strengthened the
perceived
organisational
support (POS)
related with
organisational
citizenship behaviour
(OCB)
Power distance is
stronger in Malaysia,
China, India, Nigeria,
Belgium and Thailand
Uncertainty avoidance
is stronger in
Belgium, South
Korea, Thailand,
Nigeria, Australia and
Canada
Femininity is stronger
in Thailand, South
Korea, Nigeria,
Malaysia, Canada and
Belgium
Ghana
(Darthey-Baah
et al., 2019)
Leadership behaviour
(TFL and TSL)
Employees operating in
Ghanaian hospitality
industry were used a
convenience sample.
Including 20 hotels, 10
guesthouses and 15
restaurants in Accra
Transformational
leadership (TFL)
behaviour
significantly
increases OCB
among workers
Job involvement
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Table 3 Study – methods and diagnostic tools
Or
g
an
(
1994
)
Big five (conscientiousness,
agreeableness, extraversion,
neuroticism and openness to
experience).
The most disappointing findings come from studies that
take their personality measures unaltered from the big five
or other factorial – derived frameworks. One of the main
conclusions were about psychological phenomena usually
being complex rather than thematically unified.
Self-ratings in these studies limited
the findings.
An alternative for self-ratings was the supervisor
personality ratings of the subject, which is a better
predictor.
Podsakoff et al. (2000)
The common method variance turns
out to have a contamination effect
on results.
Adding a first-order method construct to the hypothesised
latent variable structural equation model and designing the
study so that the measures of the predictor and criterion
variables were obtained from different sources.
Cross-sectional in nature cannot
detect completely in a certain way
whether OCB is the cause or the
effect in the observed relationships.
The solution was to establish more clearly the causal
direction is by:
1 the use of experimental manipulation in laboratory
settings
2 longitudinal designs.
Overlapping conceptual definitions. Future research should test rigorously for the discriminant
validity of the constructs and their measures, through:
1 confirmatory factor analysis
2 the test of discriminant validity description.
Mohammad et al. (2010)
This research employed the
convenience sampling.
Random sampling is recommended to be used to increase
the generalisability of the findings.
The sample were not academic
staffs of UKM and all of them are
Muslim-Malay.
In order to have enough generalised results, it was
recommended to use sample from different sectors, races
and religions.
Cross sectional data were not able
to give a deeper insight regarding
the subject focus of the study.
It is recommended the employing of longitudinal study.
The overall organisational justice
was able to explain 14.2% of the
variance in OCB.
It is suggested that other variables need to be included in
the model like job commitment, job involvement, task
characteristics, in order to improve the model validity and
increase its ability to explain the variance in OCB.
Chiaburu et al. (2015)
This study was focused on cultural
dimensions.
It should consider other meaningful moderators.
The simultaneous influence of
cultural dimensions needed to be
assessed.
In the future, a higher-order interaction terms through
meta-analysis should be created and tested.
Recognising that conceptualisation
and measurement of cultural
dimensions was not without critics,
these concerns were mitigated by
including post hoc analyses using
GLOBE dimensions.
Nevertheless, the results from GLOBE dimensions should
be interpreted with caution.
Organizational citizenship behaviou
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4 Benefits of OCB and contributions of the paper
Manzoor (2015) identified three main benefits of OCB related specifically with
employees’ point of view:
1 Employees, who engage in OCB tend to receive better performance ratings by their
managers.
2 From the preview benefit derives the second one that is a gain of rewards, such as
pay increments and promotions; due to the better performance rating.
3 These employees will have a lower chance of being dismissed, when the company is
downsizing.
From an organisational point of view, as Podsakoff et al. (2000) remark, Manzoor lists of
the percentage variance due to OCB in enhancing organisational effectiveness:
1 performance quality: 19%
2 financial efficiency indicators: 25%
3 costumer service indicators: 38%.
Specifically regarding to organisational – level outcomes, OCB is linked to:
1 lower rates of employee turnover
2 lower absenteeism
3 increased productivity
4 increased efficiency
5 increased costumer’s satisfaction.
This research is an effort to synthesise and integrate some of the major findings of some
studies on OCB, as they relate to the goals of organisations and human development. The
main goal of these studies is to provide a coherent and practical approach to human
emotional behaviour that employees can apply to stay healthy mentally and physically.
5 Learning and further studies
Besides some exceptions, the most relevant gap which appears from the studies
conducted within the last three decades is the overall similar demographic profiles of the
samples employed in the researches. In order to produce a relevant generality, the
homogeneity of results should be overcome including a major diversity among the
profiles considered.
The second issue related with the samples is the willingness of the subjects to
cooperate with the research conducted on them and the capability to complete a valid
essay, useful for the research. The involvement of the sample groups of the considered
sample could satisfy most of the time for the participation of the individuals, the aspect
that needs to be implemented is the number of people considered, which rarely reach 500.
In the study conducted by Dartey-Baah et al. (2019), among 258 questionnaires, 209 were
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. Ndoja and S. Maleka
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valid, with a rate of responses of 81.01%; in the study conducted by Rahman et al.
(2013), among 339 surveys distributed, 208 were valid, with a rate of 61%; in the study
conducted by Chahar (2019), among 250 surveys distributed, 221 were valid, with a rate
of 88.4%; in the study conducted by Darmanto and Yuliari (2018), among 100 surveys
distributed, 60 were valid; in the study conducted by Mohammad et al. (2010), among
120, 63 were successfully completed, with a rate of responses of 52.5%; in the study
conducted by Lee et al. (2013), during the first survey among 400, 337 copies were valid,
with a rate of 84.25%. In the next primary survey among 1,100, 773 copies were valid,
with a rate of 70.27%.
In order to strength the validity of the survey it is advised to build collaboration with
who the participants consider an authority or a leader in their organisational context and
push the participation in synergy with these entities, focusing on shared values and
encouragement to cooperate. Then, it is advised to base the researches on wider sample of
people, in order to have more relevant results.
Self-ratings in the studies have often produced poor results; hence it could be a great
improvement for the reliability of the findings to foster supervisor personality ratings of
the subject. Future studies should examine the real nature of this peculiar discretion
related with the inner meaning of OCB. A good path to follow could be focusing on
cultural and gender perspectives and attached PCs.
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