Organisational citizenship behaviour (Organ, 1988) is defined as ‘discretionary, voluntary behaviours that are not part of an employee’s specific role requirements nor formally rewarded by the organisation’ (Lavelle, Rupp & Brockner, 2007:848). This definition indicates why OCB is called discretionary behaviour (Meyer & Herscovitch, 2001) or extra-role behaviour (Katz, 1964; Williams & Anderson, 1991).
86
Studies to date (Cooper-Hakim & Viswesvaran, 2005; Johnson, Groff & Taing, 2009; Mathieu & Zajac, 1990; Meyer et al., 2002) indicate that organisational citizenship behaviour is strongly associated with organisational commitment. Organ and Ryan’s (1995) meta-analytic review of 55 studies looked at how OCBI (presented as altruism in their study) and OCBO (presented as generalized compliance in their study) were related to organisational commitment, – specifically to overall organisational commitment, affective commitment and continuance commitment. Their results suggested that both OCBI and OCBO had significant relationships with organisational commitment, especially affective commitment, but not with continuance commitment. This result is not surprising given that continuance commitment is linked to financial cost and sacrifice, whereas affective commitment is connected to psychological attachment, identification and congruence.
More specifically, from the social exchange point of view, Lavelle et al. (2007) point out that there are intended beneficiaries of citizenship, and suggest that the associations between commitment and OCB derive from the quality of social exchange relationships. They suggest that employees’ attitudes influence their behaviour according to their target focus and the level of their effect on the quality of their exchange relationships. For instance, if employees set their target towards the organisation, then organisational justice, organisational trust, perceived organisational support, organisational commitment/identification and citizenship in the context of the organisation may produce a combination that has more influence than other foci such as supervisory justice or perceived supervisor support.
There are semantic connections between OCB and commitment. Podsakoff, Mackenzie, Paine and Bachrach’s (2000) review of OCB research reveals the shared common
87
concepts among them. From their extensive review, Podsakoff et al. (2000) identified 30 conceptual definitions of OCB and classified them into seven categories: 1) helping behaviour, 2) sportsmanship, 3) organisational loyalty, 4) organisational compliance, 5) individual initiative, 6) civic virtue and 7) self-development. These categories of OCB are explained further below:
1) Helping behaviour: Podsakoff et al. (2000) identify two concepts of helping behaviour that had previously been empirically considered as a single factor (Podsakoff, Ahearne & MacKenzie, 1997; Podsakoff & MacKenzie, 1994). One is a behaviour that voluntarily helps others, variously defined as altruism, peace- making, or cheerleading (Organ 1988, 1990); interpersonal helping (Moorman & Blakely, 1995); OCBI (William & Anderson, 1991); interpersonal facilitation (Van Scotter & Motowidlo, 1996); and helping others (George & Jones, 1997). The other is a behaviour that prevents the occurrence of work-related problems, and is noted as courtesy (Organ 1988, 1990).
2) Sportsmanship: Sportsmanship is defined as ‘a willingness to tolerate the inevitable inconveniences and impositions of work without complaining’ (Organ, 1990: 96). However, Podsakoff et al. (2000) claim that this definition should be broader, because the idea of a good sport also implies sacrifice, conformity of ideas, and a positive attitude.
3) Organisational loyalty: Organisational loyalty encompasses spreading goodwill, protecting the organisation, and supporting organisational objectives (George & Jones, 1997). However, the measurement of this concept needs further examination
88
to establish its validity. Organisational loyalty differs from the loyalty of commitment in that OCB loyalty is about employee behaviour, whilst commitment is about employee attitudes. Allen and Meyer’s (1990) normative commitment scale contains items measuring loyalty as a social and personal obligation toward the organisation; whereas Cook and Wall’s (1980) BOCS measures loyalty as a sense of belonging to an organisation.
4) Organisational compliance: This is a longstanding area of citizenship behaviour. Smith, Organ and Near (1983) describe it as a more impersonal form of conscientiousness, for instance, being punctual and not wasting time. It is called generalized compliance (Smith et al. 1983), organisational obedience (Graham, 1991), OCBO (William & Anderson, 1991), or organisational rules and procedures (Borman & Motowidlo, 1993). Podsakoff et al. (2000) see this concept as employees’ internalization of, and adherence to, the organisation’s rules, regulations and procedures.
5) Individual initiative: Among the seven types of OCB, this is the only task-related behaviour. It includes voluntary acts of creativity and innovation to improve performance, and has been defined as conscientiousness (Organ, 1988), enthusiasm and volunteering (Borman & Motowidlo, 1993), dedication to job (Van Scotter & Motowidlo, 1996), and personal industry/individual initiative (Moorman & Blakely, 1995). This is the most difficult form of OCB to distinguish from in-role behaviour or task performance (Organ, 1988, Van Scotter & Motowidlo, 1996).
6) Civic virtue: Podsakoff et al. (2000: 525) describe this as a “macro-level” commitment to the organisation as a whole, and a willingness to participate actively
89
in governance and monitor the environment for threats and opportunities. It is referred to as civic virtue (Organ, 1988, 1990) and as organisational participation (Graham, 1991). Further, Podsakoff et al. suggest that this behaviour derives from employees’ recognition of their role as a part of the organisation.
7) Self-development: Although self-development has not yet been empirically validated, it is regarded as a discretionary form of citizenship behaviour. It includes voluntary engagement in improving knowledge, skills and abilities (George & Jones, 1997).
From the above OCB definitions and classifications, we can see that there are common words to describe both this construct and the construct of commitment: for example loyalty, identification, engagement, internalization and even macro-level commitment. The relationship between commitment and OCB has also been considered using a multi- foci approach by Lavelle et al. (2007). Supporting William and Anderson’s (1991) three classifications of workplace behaviours, OCB to organisation (OCBO), OCB to individuals (OCBI) and in-role behaviour (task performance), Lavelle et al. (2007) put forward the idea that citizenship behaviours have different foci: for example, OCBI targets co-workers, team members and supervisors, while OCBO targets the organisation. Similarly, commitment has multiple foci, such as co-workers, teams, supervisors, unions, top management and the organisation itself. They propose a target- specific relationship model based on the target similarity framework supported by Lavelle, Konovsky and Brockner’s (2005: this conference paper was later published as Lavelle et al., 2009) finding from their work with layoff survivors (N = 106), using
90
Becker’s (1992) commitment scales. This suggests that organisational commitment is a better predictor of OCBO (specifically, compliance, in their study) than is group commitment; whereas group commitment is a better predictor of OCBI (specifically, helping behaviour, in their study). They set two affective commitments (organisation and workgroup) as mediators between organisational procedural fairness and OCBO, suggesting that organisational commitment fully mediates the relationship between fairness and OCBO, whereas workgroup commitment does not even partially mediate this relationship. From the findings of their second study, working with university students’ project teams (N = 635) and using Allen and Meyer’s (1990) affective commitment scale, they suggest that workgroup commitment fully mediates the relationship between workgroup fairness and OCBI.
Similarly to Lavelle et al. in their (2007) study, from the perspective of behaviour targets, Ilies, Fulmer, Spitzmuller and Johnson (2009) suggest a target-focused two- factor framework (e.g. OCBI and OCBO), using the OCB definitions by Podsakoff et al. (2000). Although the two foci of OCB had been categorized under helping behaviour and organisational compliance, as Podsakoff et al. (2000) suggested, Ilies et al. (2009) re-categorized OCB according to the behaviour targets. They suggest that measures of conscientiousness (as citizenship behaviour is not a trait), sportsmanship, compliance, job dedication, loyalty, creativity/innovation and civic virtue should be categorized as OCB to organisation (OCBO); while measures of altruism, such as helping, cooperative behaviour, personal support, pro-social behaviour, interpersonal facilitation and courtesy should be categorized as OCB to individuals (OCBI). After re-categorization, they verified their classification, with 94.4% agreement.
91
However, the OCB measure most frequently used in the research is a variation of Smith et al.’s (1983) five-item scale (Organ & Ryan, 1995), the items being altruism, compliance, courtesy, sportsmanship and civic virtue.