Tag Archives: citizenship behavior

When Helping Hurts: The Dark Side of Organizational Citizenship Behaviors

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Topic: Citizenship Behavior, Work-Life Balance
Publication: Journal of Organizational Behavior (AUG 2010)
Article: Citizenship under pressure: What’s a good soldier to do?
Author: M. C. Bolino, W. H. Turnley, J. B. Gilstrap, & M. M. Sauzo
Reviewed by: Sarah Teague

Organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) are defined as voluntary behaviors that facilitate organizational functioning but are not formally rewarded by the organization. The presence of these behaviors has consistently been shown to benefit both individual and organizational outcomes. In recent years, however, the accuracy of this definition has come into question as the degree to which employees engage in OCBs (or don’t) may actually be impacting the way they are evaluated by the organization. In the midst of the field’s infatuation with the impact of good deeds, the potentially dark side of OCBs has been largely neglected – a state of affairs that Bolino and colleagues intended to correct.

The authors of the current study suggest that increased expectations for employee involvement with the organization outside of work, along with the impact it may have on performance evaluations, has led to what they call citizenship pressure.  Citizenship pressure refers to “a specific job demand in which an employee feels pressured to perform OCBs, and it is conceptualized as distinct from related topics such as role overload and OCB norms. The authors suggested that citizenship pressure would be positively related to OCBs but also to work-family conflict (i.e. work demands interfering with family), work-leisure conflict (i.e. work demands interfering with general personal time away from work), job stress, and intentions to quit.

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Thank you! Why do these two words mean so much?

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Topic:  Citizenship Behavior, Work Environment
Publication: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Article: A little thanks  goes a long way: Explaining why gratitude expressions motivate prosocial behavior (JUN 2010)
Authors: A. M. Grant, and F. Gino
Reviewed by: Sarah Teague

 

In recent years, employees’ jobs and job tasks have become increasingly interconnected, necessitating an increase in teams and groups in the workplace. This integration means that employees must interact with many different people at work on a regular basis and places a high value on interpersonal skills, even for non-service jobs.  Modern organizations need employees who can function well in teams and work together to help achieve a common goal. As such, it is important for these organizations to understand how to promote prosocial (helping) amongst their employees.

One simple way to increase prosocial behavior is to express gratitude. That is, a simple “thank you” often does the trick … but WHY does this work? Grant and Gino (2010) proposed two competing explanations based on the dimensions of agency and communion. The agency perspective suggests that expressions of gratitude can enhance an individual’s feeling of competence (e.g.,), while communion predicts that gratitude increases feelings of social worth

The current article sought to determine whether expressions of gratitude make the helper feel more confident about his/her helping abilities or make him/her feel more valued.

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Leading Employees by Involving Them Leads to Results

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Topic: Leadership, Job Performance, Citizenship Behavior
Publication: Journal of Organizational Behavior (JAN 2010)
Article: Does participative leadership enhance work performance by inducing empowerment or trust? The differential effects on managerial and non-managerial subordinates
Authors: X. Huang, J. Iun, A. Liu, and Y. Gong
Reviewed By: Benjamin Granger

Isn’t it nice when our supervisors invite our ideas/opinions and include us in decision making?  Of course it is!  These kinds of supervisory behaviors are known as participative leadership behaviors and, not surprisingly, they tend to positively impact employee job performance.  Although this effect is expected for all employees, a recent study by Huang and colleagues (2010) suggests that the reasons why participative leadership behaviors lead to improved performance depends on a subordinate’s hierarchical level in the organization.

In their study, Huang et al. collected a sample of 527 employees from a Fortune 500 telecommunications company in China. As expected, they found that participative leadership behaviors of supervisors leads to improved task performance and organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) of their subordinates.  But, as mentioned above, there appear to be slightly different reasons why these effects occur depending on the hierarchical level of the subordinate (i.e., managerial vs. non-managerial).

Specifically, the effect of participative leadership behaviors on performance for managers appears to be due to psychological empowerment (i.e., feelings of competence and meaningfulness) whereas these effects are due to the trust placed in leaders for non-managerial employees.

According to Huang and colleagues, these findings suggest that managerial and non-managerial employees interpret the participative leadership behaviors of their supervisors differently. While non-managerial employees seem to focus on trust in their supervisor, managerial employees seem to focus on the increased autonomy and empowerment resulting from participative leadership behaviors.

Despite the differences identified, Huang et al.’s results suggest that participative leadership behaviors have a positive impact on employee psychological empowerment, trust in the leaders, and ultimately job performance (task performance and OCBs).

Huang, X., Iun, J., Liu, A., & Gong, Y. (2010). Does participative leadership enhance
 work performance by inducing empowerment or trust? The differential effects on
managerial and non-managerial subordinates. Journal of Organizational Behavior,
31(1), 122-143.

Is it Fair to Include “Citizenship” in Performance Appraisals?

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Topic: Citizenship Behavior, Performance Appraisal
Publication: Journal of Business and Psychology (DEC 2009)
Article: Organizational citizenship behavior in performance evaluations: Distributive justice or injustice
Authors: S.K., Johnson, C.L. Holladay, & M.A. Quinones
Reviewed By: Benjamin Granger

Organizational Citizenship Behaviors (OCBs) are volitional work behaviors that go above and beyond the call of duty and are intended to benefit the organization and/or its members.  Though OCBs are not  formally required of employees (e.g., don’t show up in the job description), they are highly valued by organizations. Thus, supervisors (and peers) often consider employees’ OCBs in formal performance appraisals.  But, how do employees feel about this?  In other words, since OCBs are not absolutely required of employees, do employees find this practice fair?

Johnson, Holladay, and Quinones (2009) investigated the extent to which employees consider including OCBs in formal performance appraisals fair. The authors conducted two separate experiments, one employing a sample of 78 employees from diverse organizations and industries and the other employing a large sample of undergraduate students.  In general, the findings of both studies were similar.

Overall, employees reported that it is fairer to include OCBs in performance appraisals than to not include them. Importantly, employees felt that it is most fair to include OCBs in performance appraisals when they constitute about 30 – 50% of the total performance rating (While the remaining represents Core Task Behaviors).

Johnson et al. also found that while females generally preferred higher weightings of OCBs (between 25 and 50%) men found a 20 – 30% weighting of OCBs to be most fair. Johnson et al. speculated that the findings for gender represent differences in the typical gender roles of males and females. For example, they suggested that in general, females are expected to engage in more helping behaviors (i.e., OCBs) than men at work and they want their performance ratings to account for this. 

Whether this is true or not (and we welcome your personal insight on this matter!), it is clear that employees  consider OCBs to be an important and rate-able portion of their job performance. Ultimately, employees do find it fair to include OCBs in performance appraisals, but the extent to which OCBs makeup the total performance appraisal depends largely on gender.

Johnson, S.K., Holladay, C.L., & Quinones, M.A. (2009). Organizational citizenship behavior in performance evaluations: Distributive justice or injustice. Journal of Business and Psychology, 24, 409-418.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Stress at Work

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Topic: Citizenship Behavior, Counterproductive Work Behaviors
Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology (NOV 2009)
Article: Can “good” stressors spark “bad” behaviors? The mediating role of emotions in links of challenge and hindrance stressors with citizenship and counter productive behaviors
Authors: J.B. Rodell, T.A. Judge
Reviewed By: Katie Bachman

Research suggests that stress can come from good or bad sources (Cavanaugh, Boswell, Roehling, & Boudreau, 2000).

Challenge Stressors can serve as opportunities for growth, for example:  you can be stressed because of job complexity (“now, WHAT am I supposed to do?”), workload (“I’ve got too much to do!”), and deadlines (Yikes!  It’s due tomorrow!”).

Hindrance Stressors, on the other hand, can be caused by stress because of bureaucracy (“Just let me do my job”), role ambiguity (“Whose job is this, anyway”), and hassles (“Like I said, just let me do my job!).

While both can lead to negative outcomes like emotional exhaustion, challenge stressors have been linked to positive outcomes such as job satisfaction. Hindrance stressors, on the other hand, are pretty much all bad, being linked to withdrawal behaviors and turnover.

Knowing that stress exists in these different forms is well and good, but what’s more interesting is looking at how those stressors affect voluntary behavior on the job. While we can assume that good stressors (challenge) lead to good behaviors (i.e. citizenship behaviors) and bad stressors (hindrance) lead to bad behaviors (i.e. counterproductive behaviors), it appears that good stressors can also lead to bad behaviors. How, you ask? It seems that emotions come into play and mediate the relationship between stress and behavior.

In this study, challenge stressors were linked to two emotions: attentiveness and anxiety. Both were linked to citizenship behaviors; however, anxiety was also linked to counterproductive behaviors. Yikes! Here we’re seeing a good stressor with a bad outcome. Hindrance stressors were also linked to emotions, anger and anxiety, but in that case the outcome was only counterproductive behavior. So, although bad begets bad, good can beget good or bad. For organizations, this can have some important consequences. Although you want your workers to feel challenged in their work, you don’t want them to be so challenged that their resulting anxiety leads to behaviors that undermine the organization. And the more clearly you can remove those hindrances, the better off everyone – and the organization – will be.

Rodell, J. B., & Judge, T. A. (2009). Can “good” stressors spark “bad” behaviors?
The mediating role of emotions in links of challenge and hindrance stressors with citizenship and  counterproductive behaviors. Journal of Applied Psychology, 94,1438-1451.