Antecedents of Organizational Citizenship Behavior: A Study of Public Personnel in Kuwait.

In this study I examine the effects of procedural and distributive justice, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment upon Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) with samples drawn from six government organizations in Kuwait. Hierarchical regression analysis reveals that only procedural and distributive justice account for unique variances in Kuwaiti workers' OCB. Hence, previous assumptions regarding the influences upon OCB may be incorrect. The implications of these results upon organization behavior and actual management practices are also discussed.

Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB), or "extra-role behavior," has received a great deal of attention from organizational behavior researchers in the last two decades. It was in the early 1980s that several empirical studies first addressed the notion of OCB.[1,2]

Whereas Organ defines OCB as "individual behavior that is discretionary, not directly or explicitly recognized by the formal reward system, and in the aggregate promotes the efficient and effective functioning of the organization"[3] Schnake defines it as "functional, extra-role, pro-social behavior, directed at individuals, groups, and/or an organization."[4] OCB thus includes discretionary "pro-social" ethical behavior, such as helping newcomers to the organization, assisting co-workers on the job, not taking unnecessary breaks, and volunteering to do things not "required" by a job description.

Katz observes that an organization in which members confine themselves to formal, in-role behavior will simply break down[5], while Smith et al. assert the importance of OCB in "lubricating" the social machinery of an organization.[6] Organ has also pointed out the significance of OCB for organizational efficiency, effectiveness, innovation, and adaptability within diverse organizations.[7]

Unfortunately, because investigations into this topic are still at an early stage, relatively little is yet known about the antecedents of, or key influences on, OCB. Job satisfaction and affective commitment have sometimes been considered antecedents to pro-social, extra-role behavior in organizations, but this is not always the case.[8] Organ & Rayan found, in their meta-analytic review of 55 studies, that satisfaction, fairness and organizational commitment were the only correlates of OCB in a considerable number of cases.[9]

The relationship between satisfaction, commitment, and OCB at the individual level, however, may create underlying positive attitudes about the job and the organization that encourage people to pursue or manifest extra-role behavior.[10 ]Although it has been found in several studies that job satisfaction and organizational commitment are related to OCB,[11,12,13,14] job satisfaction and organizational commitment have been found to be strongly related in other studies, and some scholars indicate that they should be examined together to discover their influence on OCB.[15, 16] Moreover, empirical research also supports the relationship between perceptions of fairness and OCB.[17,18,19]

Some researchers have argued that it would be beneficial to include "perceptions of fairness" when studying the impact of job satisfaction on OCB in order to describe the connection between these variables (fairness perceptions, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment).[20,21,22] As previous researchers have tied these variables together, I have chosen to term them "antecedent variables" for the purpose of this study in which I intend to examine the relative contributions of perceptions of fairness, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment in predicting OCB.

Determinants of OCB

Job Satisfaction

The relationship between job satisfaction and OCB can be depicted in several ways. Organ & Konovsky suggest that job satisfaction is the strongest measure that correlates to OCB.[23] It has been found in 15 independent studies that a significant relationship exists between job satisfaction and OCB.[24] In their study of a sample of university employees, Bateman & Organ also detected a substantive relationship between job satisfaction and OCB 25 Smith et al. found that job satisfaction is correlated 0.31 with altruism, but not directly correlated to generalized compliance in either large or small organizations.[26] Schnake, Cochran, & Dumler conducted a study of a small manufacturing firm, which found that job satisfaction explained the variance in only two of the five OCB dimensions.[27] On the other hand, Hodson argues that pride in task completion is more related to OCB than job satisfaction.[28] In addition, job involvement, followed by affective commitment, organizational trust, and perceived needs were more correlated with OCB than job satisfaction.[29]

In contrast to previous studies, Schappe argues that job satisfaction is not related to OCB;[30] and Farh et al. maintain that their findings do not show that satisfaction accounts for unique variance either in altruism or the compliance dimensions of OCB.[31] Even so, some researchers are skeptical of the relationship between these two variables and consider such a relationship spurious. Instead, they believe that any divergences may be due to the nature of job satisfaction measures, which include perceptions of fairness. Thus, Organ claims that when job satisfaction and perceptions of fairness are measured together, the latter explains an increase in variance in OCB.[32] Scholl, Cooper, & McKenna found that pay equity correlated 0.41 with OCB, while the correlation of pay satisfaction was 0.19.[33] Research therefore suggests that fairness is a predictor of OCB, while job satisfaction is not.[34]

Moorman found that job satisfaction is not related to OCB, while procedural justice measures relate to four out of five OCB dimensions.[35] In a further study, Moorman also found that when the relationship between justice and OCB is controlled, job satisfaction no longer relates to OCB.[36] Furthermore, when perceptions of overall fairness are controlled, job satisfaction relates to only two out of five OCB dimensions.[37]

In their meta-analysis study, Organ & Rayan, contrary to previous studies, did not find that fairness was a better "predictor" of altruism than job satisfaction.[38] Moreover, in a sample of 145 government employees in the Southeastern United States, both organizational commitment and job satisfaction were significantly correlated with OCB, while the fairness of supervisors was not.[39]

Thus, we can conclude that the relationship between job satisfaction and OCB depends on the nature of the job satisfaction measure. The literature in this area suggests that cognitive or affective satisfaction measures differ in their relative effect on OCB. Williams & Anderson argue that the cognitive satisfaction measure was related to two types of OCB, while the affective satisfaction measure was not related to OCB.[40] Moorman goes even further and claims that cognitive satisfaction explains more variance in four of five dimensions than affective satisfaction in organizational settings.[41] Organ & Konovsky also found that cognitive satisfaction predicts two forms of OCBs, while affective satisfaction is not significant.[42] Others are not so quick to dismiss the influence of affective measures upon behavior, however, claiming that cognitive measures of job satisfaction explain more variance in OCB than affective measures of job satisfaction without dismissing the latter completely.[43]

Perceptions of Fairness

Organ & Konovsky claim that when subordinates are treated fairly throughout an organization, they are more likely to feel the need for a reciprocal social exchange relationship with the organization, provided they are confident that such "fair treatment" will continue. Most are unconcerned about the lack of reward for extra-role behavior. Yet, if subordinates are treated unfairly, their perception of their relationship with the company is more likely to be one of economic exchange, in which case they will simply execute actions that guarantee compensation for themselves. Feelings of fair treatment will increase the chances that OCB will occur.[44]

Empirical research supports the relationship between overall fairness and OCB.[45,46,47,48] On the other hand, Tansky postulates that overall fairness is only related to altruism.[49]

This study focuses on two forms of perception of fairness. First, procedural justice is defined as the fairness of the procedures themselves. Distributive justice is defined as the fairness of the outcomes received from organizational procedures.[50] Both procedural and distributive justice affect citizenship behavior within organizations. For example, distributive justice based on an "equity norm" reinforces a person's "belief that he or she is being treated fairly."[51] Procedural justice promotes a subordinate's faith in his or her supervisor and organization, and drives him or her to exhibit citizenship behavior that is often outstanding.[52]

Empirical research supports the profound relationship between procedural justice and OCB.[53,54,55,56] In contrast to prior studies, Schappe believes that procedural justice is not a predictor of OCB.[57] Farh et al.,[58] George,[59] Konovsky & Pugh,[60] Moorman, and Niehoff & Moorman[61] found that distributive justice shows a stronger relationship to OCB than procedural justice, whereas other researchers found no relationship between distributive justice and OCB.[63, 64,65,66]

Organizational Commitment