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Jus et civitas
Vol. VIII(LXII)
No. 1/2021
43 - 50
A Journal of Social and Legal
Studies
INDIVIDUAL, EMPLOYERS AND ORGANIZATIONAL
CITIZENSHIP BEHAVIOUR
Dana Volosevici, Dragoș Grigorescu
Petroleum - Gas University of Ploiesti, Bd. Bucharest, no. 39, Ploiesti, Romania
e-mail: dgrigorescu@upg-ploiesti.ro
DOI:10.51865/JETC.1.06
Abstract
The paper aims to analyze the idea of social solidarity from the perspective of legal constraints that
characterize the labor relations between employees and employers and the growing need for community
involvement of organizations. Therefore, the concept of citizenship-oriented behavior of organizations
(OBSs) and the legal concept of subordinating employees to organizations will be at the center of attention.
The first part of the article will be about defining the human being through the occupation or profession he
chooses to practice (homo faber), we are what we work, and advance to the social dimension of any
economic activity, and the second part will analyze these ideals such as altruism, solidarity or prosocial
behavior, from the perspective of legal regulations in the labor code that emphasize the subordination of
employees to employers who at least at first discourage the assumption of a civic dimension aimed at
citizenship of employees. suggested possible solutions to improve these legal relations so that values such
as solidarity are more present in the contractual relations between employees and employers in various
social or economic contexts.
Keywords: citizenship; organizational citizenship behaviour; solidarity; employment
Homo faber
The past of human individuality has long been defined by the activities that the prehistoric
human being was able to undertake, for example if he managed to control fire or process
various materials such as stone or metals. And today many people answer the classic
question in psychology who you are without hesitation that they are their profession.
Simply put, we are what we do, we define ourselves by our occupation or the roles we
assume, for example we say I am a mother, I am a lawyer.
Undoubtedly, these answers, even if they are not satisfactory for psychologists, offer
important elements of the personality of the human being. It is a strongly felt need even
today to indicate the defining elements through symbols of the profession, or of the social
roles we play. What's the point of a business card that only our name would be written on
without any other information?
44 Dana Volosevici, Dragoș Grigorescu
In the absence of precise historical data, historians often reconstruct past, medieval, for
example, life forms by grouping people into professional associations. When J. Le Goff
(2006), for example, tries to restore the life of the medievalists as faithfully as possible,
he uses professional indicators for the entire historical landscape. Thus, he presents the
world in an occupational way: the merchant, the intellectual, the monk, the artist, etc. If
we leave the occupational circle and try to relate to other members of the community,
what we get is the idea of citizenship and citizenship. This is another distinctive note of
the identity of each of us and refers to our relationships with others in a broad sense.
Professional identity occupies a large part of everyone's personal identity, but without
being exhausted, the latter also includes the social roles assumed by each of us beyond
the occupation itself. The question that needs to be asked is how we define today the
relationships between these hypostases of the personality: employee, citizen, or, in other
words, member of a professional organization in relation to a member of the community.
Both groups have a dynamic character with many areas of interference. This article
focuses on the Community capacities of employees in relation to the capacities of
organizations and economic agents to generate social cohesion. We will see that in order
to achieve this goal, this balance of capacities and authority between individuals and
organizations, a legal reorganization of the employee-employer relationship is needed.
Voluntary subordination of the employee to the employer
According to the legal definition, the individual employment contract is the contract under
which a natural person, called an employee, undertakes to perform work for and under
the authority of an employer, natural or legal person, in exchange for a salary called
salary.
It is the essence of the employment contract that the employee is "under the authority" of
the employer. The relationship of legal subordination is born by signing the individual
employment contract and is kept, regardless of the circumstances, the function of the
employee or his qualities, until the termination of the employment contract.
The legal relationship of subordinating the employee to the employer is materialized in a
series of prerogatives of the latter, in particular regarding the organization of work, the
right to issue binding provisions and disciplinary action. Moreover, through the internal
regulations, the employer establishes unilaterally, but within the limits of the law, both
his rights and obligations, as well as those of the employees.
In the direct relationship with the employee, the employer establishes the attributions
corresponding to each employee, the individual performance objectives, as well as the
criteria for evaluating their achievement. The High Court of Cassation and Justice
validated the allegations of the doctrine and established that the rights and obligations
specific to labor relations are the obligation to perform sports (work) by the employee
and the obligation to pay the employer (HCCJ, Civil Section I, decision No. 8661 of
December 8, 2011).
Individual, Employers and Organizational Citizenship Behaviour 45
Voluntary subordination, an essential feature of the employment relationship, is
established not only at national but also European level. The Court of Justice of the
European Union has ruled that „the essential characteristic of the employment
relationship is that for a certain period of time a person performs services for and under
the direction of another person in return for which he receives remuneration” (ECJ- July
3rd, 1986, C-66/85).
Even in the context of the emergence of new forms of contractual relationship, and we
refer here mainly to the relationship between the individual service provider and the
service platform, the Uber type relationship, the European Court remains faithful to the
idea of voluntary subordination of the employee to the employer. element of identification
of the employment relationship.
„The Court has held that the classification of an ‘independent contractor’ under national
law does not prevent that person being classified as an employee, within the meaning of
EU law, if his independence is merely notional, thereby disguising an employment
relationship.
That is the case of a person who, although hired as an independent service provider under
national law, for tax, administrative or organisational reasons, acts under the direction
of his employer as regards, in particular, his freedom to choose the time, place and
content of his work, does not share in the employer’s commercial risks and, for the
duration of that relationship, forms an integral part of that employer’s undertaking, so
forming an economic unit with that undertaking.”(ECJ, 22 April 2020, C-692/19).
The position of the European Court and the national courts, moreover, is relevant in that
it denotes the importance which the courts attach to the preservation of the concept of
hierarchy in the contractual employment relationship, despite the factual evolution of that
relationship. Therefore, regardless of the role that the parties, employee and employer,
want to establish for the employee and regardless of the employee's actual contribution
to the company's activity, his mission, he is imprisoned in the status of subordinate.
Legal regulation lags behind both the technological evolution transposed in the
relationship between the parties (as is the case with service platforms) and the concept of
talent management, which recognizes that not all employees contribute equally to the
success of the organization. The law, so careful to eliminate inequalities of treatment and
discrimination, remains faithful, in terms of characterizing the employment relationship,
the idea of hierarchical relationship, in which inequality, not equality is the legal criterion
(Supiot, 2007).
Hence the question: are labor relations a way to "discipline" the citizen? According to the
data provided by the Labor Inspectorate, as of May 31, 2021, the number of active
employees was 5,625,089, in a population of 22,142,000. If we add the number of
unemployed (267,456 people) and the number of pensioners (5,099,000 people), the
proportion of employees (current or former) among citizens is obvious. Therefore, from
a quantitative point of view, the analysis of the employee's status is relevant to determine
his influence on the status of the citizen.
Bringing employees into the position of accepting legal status as a lifelong subordinate
and fighting for only small financial privileges, instead of demanding autonomy and
decision-making power, is a policy undertaken by the state to avoid "rebellions." ”Of a
46 Dana Volosevici, Dragoș Grigorescu
civic nature? Or is it just a simple legacy from the beginnings of industrialization, when
employees were economically dependent on the employer, and working conditions so
precarious that the main struggle was for survival rather than autonomy?
However, there are industries today in which the skills of employees and their degree of
intellectual autonomy are not at all in line with working under the authority of an
employer. However, at both European and national level, labor law reforms aim to make
labor relations more flexible, to grant small freedoms within the status of subordinate, but
not to reconsider the status of subordination. That is why it is important for lawyers to
look for solutions beyond the sources of law.
Organizational Citizenship Behaviour
OCB is one of the areas that can best mediate between the hypostases of the individual
and social and economic organizations. Without this mediation, the balance between the
employee-citizen and the employer-organization can be easily endangered, the most
common case being the one in which the employee's subordinate relationship to the
employer prevails. Many of the legal systems of labor law still retain this status of
subordinate for the employee, in a narrow transactional model: as long as the employee
is in a contractual relationship with the employer, he cedes professional autonomy. In
other words, the employee belongs more to the employer than to himself, during working
hours and in accordance with the contractual provisions.
The result of this unbalanced relationship of autonomy and authority between employees
and employers is a decrease in the exercise of citizenship as individuals. Given that
employees mentally accept the feeling of belonging to the employer companies, they will
be less willing to assume social and civic roles. Simply put, the stronger the relationship
of occupational subordination in a community, the more individualized, disparate, and
weaker social cohesion we will have. Obviously, this scenario can be improved, and this
is exactly what OCB aims to do.
The OCB can be understood as a meeting place for both actions initiated by companies /
employers in support of the community in general or even employees, in particular,
outside strictly contractual obligations or vice versa, as deliberate actions of employees
in support of companies, also beyond strictly contractual obligations. The concept of OCB
is initially defined rather in the latter sense.
The most influential definition of OCB belongs to Organ (1988), resumed, among others,
by Halbesleben and Bellairs, T. (2016): OCB is discretionary behavior that is not formally
required, does not have embedded rewards (or punishments for not engaging in it), and
that is assumed to promote organizational effectiveness and performance. The list of
fundamental characteristics of a prosocial or community-oriented behavior that OCB
includes concepts that begin with the politeness and kindness of employees, go through
altruism promoted as organizational policy and end with civic virtues, team spirit, but
especially solidarity social. Crisis situations such as the recent pandemic show a stronger
need for solidarity between citizens in relation to their professional skills. It is no
coincidence that in these moments the provisions of the employment contracts were
rethought in the sense of their relaxation in order to open the organizations to the
community.
Individual, Employers and Organizational Citizenship Behaviour 47
Without affecting the fundamental reasons of the organization, such as the profit or
productivity of employees, nowadays we have seen the civic and prosocial behavior of
companies that have joined the classic economic values, human values united by the term
solidarity. Education was one of the most affected areas of the coronavirus pandemic, but
we could see in attitudes of solidarity such as opening databases or libraries that
previously operated with limited or paid access, publishers that offered free access to
many titles ebook, many of them being open and now, many educational software have
switched to open mode. This is a lesson learned in civic behavior and corporate social
responsibility (CSR).
Theoretical models of OCBs
The theoretical maturation of the concept of OBSs has led to the formulation of several
models of concrete functioning of such a behavior of solidarity in the employee-employer
relationship. A good example of this is Rioux & Penner's (2001) three-value model: OBSs
involve prosocial motives of the organization, organizational care of employees, and
opinion management. In other words, OBS can work if an organization overcomes
indifference to the community and promotes an interaction based on the desire to actively
help citizens.
Employees, in turn, are not strictly limited to professional obligations and show visible
concern for the overall success of the company. Opinion management refers to trying to
influence how an employee is perceived by others within teams or work units in order to
increase self-confidence and employees' own abilities.
It can be easily seen that this model of OCBs, like any other, involves the involvement of
both the individuality of the human being and the human resources policies promoted by
companies. When analyzing such a model we may be tempted to look unilaterally, for
example to reduce OCBs to human resource programs to increase the efficiency of work
teams, if the focus is on the organization.
Analogously, we can conversely favor the individual and then OBSs becomes a kind of
personal development program. In both cases we miss the whole OBS spirit that proposes
a rethinking of the social relations between employees and employers, in other words a
synthesis between the sociology of groups and the psychology of development under the
conditioning of economic and legal realities.
The cardinal value of OBSs is solidarity between individuals with their own interests and
unique ways of obtaining life satisfaction, therefore the challenge is addressed to those
who are interested in increasing solidarity and social cohesion, ie educators or legal
advisers. Their mission is to formulate coherent legal frameworks to regulate the relations
between employees and organizations in such a way that the well-being is obtained in a
balanced way between those involved.
48 Dana Volosevici, Dragoș Grigorescu
Soft law - possible mediator between law and Organizational Citizenship
If the legal regulation remains inflexible in terms of subordinating the employee to the
employer, regardless of the intention of the parties, the improvement of the employee's
status can be achieved through soft law provisions. The legal basis for this approach can
be the European Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, which enshrines,
under the title of "solidarity", a new type of fundamental rights, namely the right of
workers to information and consultation within the company, the right to bargain and of
collective action or the right to balance between private and professional life.
As Supiot (2005) sees, the notion of solidarity no longer has the role of only protecting
employees against the risks that endanger their existence, but a role of establishing
concrete means of exercising certain freedoms. The organization can thus substantiate a
democratic approach to employee relations.
First of all, through collective bargaining, those principles and values that characterize
the "citizenship" of that organization can be transposed at a contractual level. In this way,
simple human resources practices become mandatory, the provisions of the collective
labor agreement being imperative both for the parties, who are required to comply with
them, and for third parties, who will analyze the existing legal relations within the
organization through legal provisions. , as well as the contractual ones.
In addition, the law on social dialogue itself recognizes the employment contract as
having a broader role than simply transposing the law: social peace ”. Collective
bargaining at the unit level is mandatory in all organizations with more than 20
employees, so it covers a significant number of companies and employees.
It is true that the provisions of collective labor agreements can establish rights and
obligations only within the limits and under the conditions provided by law, so it is not
possible to reach an annihilation of the relationship of subordination between the
employee and his employer. However, as at the conclusion of collective labor agreements,
the legal provisions regarding the rights of employees are minimal, the parties are free to
establish a framework in which the legal status of the employee is close to that of a citizen
of that organization.
From the level of the organization, the values can be translated at the level of the activity
sector, through collective agreements concluded at this level. Much less numerous, but in
continuous development, transnational company agreements, concluded by one or more
representatives of a company or a group of companies on the one hand, and one or more
workers' organizations on the other cover working and employment conditions and/or
relations between employers and workers or their representatives.
Second, the law recognizes the employer's right to unilaterally establish the framework
of values and rules that govern the organization. The internal regulations are expressly
mentioned in the Labor Code, but it is supplemented by a series of other mandatory acts,
such as codes of conduct, codes of ethics or policies.
All these latter documents are generally drafted at the level of the parent organization or
a group of organizations and then transposed into all the component undertakings. This
leads to the creation of a status that exceeds the limits of a single employer, contributing
significantly to redefining the employer-employee relationship.
Individual, Employers and Organizational Citizenship Behaviour 49
Discussion
No one is above the law, the principle regulated by Article 16 (2) of the Romanian
Constitution can not be interpreted in the sense of "blocking" employees in the status of
legal subordinates established through the Labor Code. Above the provisions of Article
10 of the Labor Code are the aspirations of human beings who, although voluntarily
accepting the hierarchical relationship required by law, aspire to deeper integration into
the organization, going beyond the mere exercise of duties and claiming remuneration.
The organizational reality demonstrates that, in fact, the employees' contribution acquires
value when the strictly administrative aspects, such as the setting of professional
objectives and their evaluation criteria, are complemented by the establishment of
relationships that exceed the contractual limits.
Studies in human resources management and organizational psychology can be legally
transposed through soft law, thus creating a legal framework for the implementation of
new relationships established at the organizational level. Future research will focus on
the analysis of such soft law tools and how they have generated change at the
organizational level, in terms of the working community and performance.
Bibliography
1. Le Goff, J. (ed.), (2006) L'uomo medievale, Laterza.
2. Halbesleben, J., & Bellairs, T. (2016). What Are the Motives for Employees to Exhibit
Citizenship Behavior?: A Review of Prosocial and Instrumental Predictors of
Organizational Citizenship Behavior. Oxford Handbooks Online.
doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190219000.013.16.
3. Organ, D. (1988). Organizational Citizenship Behavior: The Good Soldier Syndrome.
Lexington: Lexington Bookslear.
4. Rioux, S. M., & Penner, L. A. (2001). The causes of organizational citizenship
behavior: A motivational analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86(6), 1306–1314.
5. Supiot, A. (2005). Homo juridicus. Essai sur la fonction anthropologique du Droit.
Editions du Seuil.
6. Supiot, A. (2007). Critique du droit du travail. Quadrige. PUF.
50 Dana Volosevici, Dragoș Grigorescu
Indivizi, salariați și comportament pentru cetățenie
al organzației
Rezumat
Lucrarea își propune să analizeze idea solidarității sociale din perspectiva constrângerilor juridice care
caracterizează raporturile de muncă dintre salariați și angajatori și nevoia tot mai acută de implicare în
comunitate a organizațiilor. Prin urmare în centrul atenției se vor situa conceptul de comportament al
organizațiilor orientat către cetățenie (OBSs) și conceptul juridic de subordonare al salariaților față de
organizații. În prima parte a articolului va fi vorba despre definirea ființei umane prin ocupația sau
profesia pe care alege să o practice (homo faber), suntem ceea ce lucrăm, și avansează către dimensiunea
socială a oricărei activități economice, iar în a doua parte se vor analiza aceste idealuri precum altruismul,
solidaritatea sau comportamentul prosocial, din perspectiva reglementărilor juridice prezente în codul
muncii care pun accentul pe subordonarea salariaților față de angajatori care la prima vedere cel puțin
descurajează asumarea unei dimensiuni civice orientate către cetățenie a salariaților În cele din urmă vor
fi sugerate posibile soluții de ameliorare a acestor raporturi juridice în așa fel încât valori precum
solidaritatea să fie mai prezente în relațiile contractuale dintre salariați și angajatori în diverse context
sociale sau economice.
