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Weekly UpdatesThe motive to perform extra-role behaviors such as organizational citizenship remains a compelling and unresolved issue. Researchers are beginning to explore alternative causes for organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) that go beyond the early conceptualizations of OCB as altruistic (Organ, 1988). Among the alter native causes suggested by researchers, individual motive has become a recurring theme (Bolino, 1999; Rioux and Penner, 2001; Bolino et al., 2006). Bolino (1999) suggested that many behaviors characterized as OCB might not be citizenship at all, but well disguised self-promotion driven by impression management motives. These alternative motives have only recently begun to receive attention empirically through Rioux and Penner's (2001) development of the Citizenship Motive Scale. This study furthers the examination of OCB antecedents by examining the conditions in which various motives operate and cause employees to perform citizenship behaviors.
Recent research in the area of organizational citizenship behavior has begun to focus on ICB (Settoon and Mossholder, 2002), a facet of OCB (Anderson and Williams, 1996; Rioux and Penner, 2001; Settoon and Mossholder, 2002; Bowler and Brass, 2006). Interpersonal citizenship behavior is defined as helping behaviors directed at other employees that are beyond the scope of one's job description. Meta-analytic research has confirmed that interpersonally focused OCB is a separate construct from organizationally focused OCB as well as in-role performance (Hoffman et al., 2007). Because of the relational component involved in helping others and the inherent social value of helping others, researchers have focused on two forms of antecedents to ICB. One of those antecedents is the relational or network characteristic between the ICB performer and the ICB recipient (Sparrowe et al., 2001; Settoon and Mossholder, 2002; Jones and Schaubroeck, 2004; Organ et al., 2005; Allen, 2006; Bowler and Brass, 2006). The second focus is the study of prosocial motives, organizational concern motives and impression management motives of ICB performers (Rioux and Penner, 2001). The current study merges these two areas by examining the interactive effects of relationship characteristic and individual motive on ICB performance. Specifically, we argue that the influence of some motives, such as pro-social motives and concern for one's organization, remain consistent regardless of characteristics of an individual's network while impression management motives are more likely to influence ICB in particular social network configurations.
Citizenship Motives
Based on a functional approach to human behavior, Rioux and Penner (2001) developed the Citizenship Motive Scale (CMS) that assesses individual motive to perform specific types of OCB, including ICB. Their approach suggests that one must consider the motive, or purpose served, for engaging in OCB. They developed the scale to reflect three motives for OCB: pro-social, organizational concern and impression management. The pro-social motive is defined as showing a general concern for others and a need to build positive relationships. The organizational concern motive is associated with individuals who generally show pride in their organization and desire for the company to do well. Finally, the impression management motive concerns a desire to attain rewards at work and to avoid looking bad to others in the organization.
In their study, Rioux and Penner (2001) related these motives to ICB performance and the expected positive relationships were found between pro-social and organizational concern motives and ICB performance. (1) However, no direct relationship was found between impression management motives and ICB performance. This lack of relationship between impression management motives and ICB is surprising given the strong theoretical rationale for such a relationship, which suggests that helping within organizations is not exclusively driven by selfless motives, but is often driven by impression management motives (e.g., Bolino, 1999). Rioux and Penner concede to being perplexed by this finding and concluded "it is clear that additional research is needed to further explore what role, if any, impression management motives ... have in OCB" (2001: 1313).
Centrality
Network centrality refers to an individual's degree of access to others within the organization. Individuals with more access have more centrality. Previous studies have posited that network centrality should be related to ICB performance for a variety of reasons (i.e., Settoon and Mossholder, 2002). First, central individuals are linked to more co-workers and thus will have more opportunity to help. Second, central individuals have greater control over information, making others dependent on them (Brass and Burkhardt, 1993). Studies have shown the dependent individuals will ask for information from those upon which they are dependent (Burke et al., 1976). Thus, this access to resources and requests from those dependent on them will increase a central individual's ICB performance. Finally, centrality may be related to ICB performance in that central individuals may define their jobs more broadly. Brass (1984) found the more status an individual has, the more broadly they define their job. Furthermore, research has suggested that individuals that define their job broadly engage in helping behavior presumably because they perceive it to be part of their job (Morrison, 1994).
Two prior studies have empirically supported these theories (Sparrowe et al., 2001; Settoon and Mossholder, 2002) in that a direct positive relationship between centrality and ICB performance was found. However, neither study investigated the relational component involved in the individuals' networks. The study by Settoon and Mossholder (2002) included some relational context and quality variables that could be related to motives such as empathic concern, trust, and perspective-taking; however, they did not examine the interactive effects of motives and centrality, the premise of the current study.
Citizenship Motives, Network Centrality and ICB
Investigating citizenship motives from a social network perspective makes it possible to show that specific motives to perform ICB may be interrelated with the performer's position within organizational networks. We posit that an impression management motive interacts with one's position within organizational social networks while the organizational concern motive and the pro-social motive do not.
According to the literature on motives, pro-social and organizational concern motives are value-expressive, that is they are motivated by individual values. These are likely persistent and enduring, regardless of situation (Clary et al., 1998). Therefore, an individual driven by a motive of concern for the organization would likely retain that motive regardless of his/ her position in the social network of the organization. Similarly, we expect that an individual with a pro-social motive that causes the individual to like doing things for others would likely be unaffected by network position. The initial findings of Rioux and Penner (2001) support the stability of pro-social motives over one's life. Similarly, their results support the idea that in relation to one organization, organizational concern motives are relatively stable. Individuals concerned about the organization or those who are driven to do things for other people would be likely to perform ICB for reasons other than acquiring power. Instead, they are likely more concerned about engaging in ICB in order to better the organization or the quality of their relationships with others. As such, we would not expect the relationship between pro-social values or organizational concern motives and ICB to change based on centrality.
On the other hand, as mentioned above, central individuals have an increased number of ties in the social network, define their job more broadly and have more ICB-related requests made of them as compared to less central individuals. Thus, central individuals have more opportunities to perform ICB and have been shown to engage in more ICB performance (Sparrowe et al., 2001; Settoon and Mossholder, 2002). However, we posit that the more motivated central individuals are by the impression management motive, the lower their ICB performance. This is due to conflict in perceptions, evaluations and desires in the various individuals in their larger social network. Individuals driven by impression management motives are concerned with how they are perceived and evaluated by others. These people experience conflict when these perceptions and evaluation differ amongst individuals in their social network (Leone and Corte, 1994). We posit that this situation results in reduced ICB performance because assisting one individual in one's network may be in conflict with assisting others in that network. Individuals who are not motivated by the impression management motive are not concerned with this conflict and assist people more often.
In contrast with central individuals, peripheral individuals have fewer opportunities to perform ICB since they have fewer social ties. These individuals are more likely to experience a need to manage impressions to develop relationships. Social capital theory (Siebert et al., 2001) suggests that structural characteristics of relationships, such as network centrality, may provide their members with positive outcomes. Siebert and colleagues (2001) supported a model with three levels of benefits resulting from network ties: (1) social resources of contacts in other functions and contacts at higher levels, (2) network benefits of access to information and resources and career sponsorship, and (3) career success including salary level, promotions, and career satisfaction. Similarly, other researchers have found centrality allows individuals to acquire the benefits described above (Burt, 1992; also see Mehra et al., 2001). Indeed, research has shown that those with large numbers of non-redundant ties (Burt, 1992) and those with high levels of centrality (Brass, 1984) are promoted earlier than those lacking the proper ties. Thus, despite fewer opportunities to perform ICB, individuals with low centrality will be more motivated to do so when they also experience impression management motives.
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