Individual commitment to a group effort - that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work. - Vince Lombardi

1. Organizational
Citizenship
Behavior (OCB)
www.humanikaconsulting.com

2. Menu
• Introduction
• What is OCB?
• The Benefits of OCB
• Antecedents of OCB
• OCB in Practice: Encouraging
OCB in the workplace
• Conceptualizing
• OCB: Potential Pitfalls
• OCB: A Worthy Investment

3. Introduction
• What constitutes a good employee in
the modern workplace? Are ‘good
employee’ traits always quantifiable in
performance appraisals, or is there
something more to consider?
• Successful organizations have
employees who go beyond their formal
job responsibilities and freely give of
their time and energy to succeed at the
assigned job. Such altruism is neither
prescribed nor required; yet it
contributes to the smooth functioning
of the organization.
• Organizations could not survive or
prosper without their members
behaving as good citizens by engaging
in all sorts of positive behaviors.

4. Introduction
• Organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) is a
term that encompasses anything positive and
constructive that employees do, of their own
volition, which supports co-workers and benefits
the company. Typically, employees who
frequently engage in OCB may not always be the
top performers (though they could be, as task
performance is related to OCB), but they are the
ones who are known to ‘go the extra mile’ or ‘go
above and beyond’ the minimum efforts
required to do a merely satisfactory job.
• Your organisation will benefit from encouraging
employees to engage in OCB, because it has
been shown to increase productivity, efficiency
and customer satisfaction, and reduce costs and
rates of turnover and absenteeism (Podsakoff,
Whiting, Podsakoff & Blume, 2009).

5. What is OCB?
• Organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB)
has undergone subtle definitional revisions
since the term was coined in the late 1980s,
but the construct remains the same at its
core.
• Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) is
referred as set of discretionary workplace
behaviors that exceed one’s basic job
requirements.
• They are often described as behaviors that
go beyond the call of duty. Research of OCB
has been extensive since its introduction
nearly twenty years back (Bateman & Organ,
1983).
• The vast majority of OCB research has
focused on the effects of OCB on individual
and organizational performance.

6. The Benefits of OCB
• OCB has been shown to have a positive impact
on employee performance and wellbeing, and
this in turn has noticeable flow-on effects on
the organization.
• The correlations between OCB and job
satisfaction is approximately 0.4 (Organ, 1988).
There is empirical evidence for the widely-held
belief that satisfied workers perform better, but
this is correlational, not causal. However,
certain types of performance – primarily those
related to citizenship behavior – will be affected
by job satisfaction. Think of workers who are
cooperative with their superiors and colleagues,
willing to make compromises and sacrifices and
are ‘easier to work with’, workers who ‘help out
with the extra little things’ without complaining
(or even offering to do so without being asked)
– these behaviors are all encompassed within
OCB.

7. Percentage of the variance which
OCB accounts for in enhancing
organizational effectiveness
(Podsakoff et al., 2000):
• Performance Quality: 18%
• Performance Quantity: 19%
• Financial efficiency indicators: 25%
• Customer service indicators: 38%
The Benefits of OCB

8. Why does OCB seem to have such compelling effects on the
individual and the success of an organization? Organ et al. (2006)
has offered the following suggestions. OCB can:
• enhance productivity (helping new co-workers; helping
colleagues meet deadlines) free up resources (autonomous,
cooperative employees give managers more time to clear
their work; helpful behavior facilitates cohesiveness (as part
of group maintenance behavior).)
• attract and retain good employees (through creating and
maintaining a friendly, supportive working environment and
a sense of belonging)
• create social capital (better communication and stronger
networks facilitate accurate)
• enhance productivity (helping new co-workers; helping
colleagues meet deadlines) free up resources (autonomous,
cooperative employees give managers more time to clear
their work; helpful behavior facilitates cohesiveness (as part
of group maintenance behavior).)
• attract and retain good employees (through creating and
maintaining a friendly, supportive working environment and
a sense of belonging)
• create social capital (better communication and stronger
networks facilitate accurate
The Benefits of OCB

9. Antecedents of OCB
• Since OCB is beneficial in every
organization, it is important to consider
the factors which affect engagement in
OCB in the workplace.
• The antecedents of OCB have been
broadly categorized into three areas:
personality/trait, attitudinal, and
leadership/group factors.
• The influence of personality on tendency
to exhibit OCB is minimal;
• however it does mean that some staff
will be more naturally inclined towards
engaging in OCB than others.
• The other two categories are more
promising, in that attitudes can be
cultivated and leadership and group
characteristics can be altered to facilitate
staff engagement in OCB.

10. These are the job-related constructs which will
affect OCB (Chahal and Mehta , 2010):
• individual disposition
(i.e. personality)
• fairness perception (i.e.
procedural and
distributive justice)
• motivational factors
• role perception (i.e. is
one’s job clearly
defined or ambiguous?
Does it overlap with
another co-worker’s?)

12. Job satisfaction
• Job satisfaction has been found to have a
positive relationship with job
performance and OCB.
• Which in turn has a significant influence
on employees’ absenteeism, turnover,
and psychological distress (Davis, 1992).
• Workers with high levels of job
satisfaction are more likely to be engage
in OCB (Brown, 1993).
• Furthermore, individuals with higher
levels of job satisfaction demonstrate
deceased propensity to search for
another job (Sager, 1994), and a
decreasing propensity to leave.

13. Organizational Commitment
• Along with job satisfaction, affective
organizational commitment is
frequently cited antecedent of OCB.
• Affective commitment is
conceptualized as a strong belief in,
and acceptance of, an organization’s
goals and a strong desire to maintain
membership in the organization (Van
Dyne et al., 1995).
• Because affective commitment
maintains behavioral direction when
there is little expectation of formal
rewards (Allen & Meyer, 1996)[54], it
would seem logical that affective
commitment drives those behaviors
(i.e. discretionary behaviors) that do
not depend primarily on reinforcement
or formal rewards.

15. Role Perceptions
• Role perceptions include perceptions such as role
conflict and role ambiguity, both of which have been
found to be significantly negatively related to OCB.
• On the other hand, role clarity and role facilitation are
positively related (Podsakoff et. al., 2000).
• However, since both role ambiguity and role conflict
are known to affect employee satisfaction, and
satisfaction is related to OCB, it is likely that at least a
portion of the relationship between ambiguity, conflict
and OCB is mediated by satisfaction.

17. Fairness
Perceptions
• Fairness or justice
perceptions refer to whether
or not employees feel
organizational decisions are
made equitably and with the
necessary employee input
(usually called procedural
justice) and whether or not
employees perceive that
they are fairly rewarded
given their level of training,
tenure, responsibility or
workload (called distributive
justice).
• Perceptions of fairness are
positively related to OCB
(Moorman, 1991).

18. Employee age
• The proposition that younger and older
worker may view work and self in
fundamentally different ways is not new.
• Wagner and Rush (2000) pointed out that
early years (20-34) are the years of
establishment and settling down; later
years (35- 55) are strong sense of self and
location vis-a-vis life and work.
• The authors argued that younger
employees coordinate their needs with
organizational needs more flexibly; by
contrast, older employees tend to be more
rigid in adjusting their needs with the
organization.
• Therefore, younger and older workers may
differ in their orientations toward self,
others, and work.
• These differences may lead to different
salient motives for OCB among younger
and older employees.

19. What Identifies Each Generation ?

20. Personality
• Four of the ‘big five’ personality
traits – conscientiousness,
agreeableness, neuroticism and
extraversion – are correlated
with OCB. However, the
correlations are weak, shown
to be between 0.15 and 0.22 in
one study (Organ & Ryan,
1995).
• A different study yielded a 0.24
correlation for
conscientiousness (Borman,
Penner, Allen & Motowidlo,
2001)
• The correlations between OCB
and work-related attitudes,
listed below, are much higher
and will serve as better
indicators of OCB.

22. Attitudes
• The traditional measures used as valid
predictors of OCB include; job
satisfaction, employee engagement,
organizational commitment,
motivation and the level of trust
between an employee and his/her co-
workers and supervisors.
• An umbrella term ‘morale’ has been
coined to cover job satisfaction,
perceived fairness, affective
commitment and leader consideration
(Organ et al., 2006), and morale
correlates with OCB at 0.69. Job
satisfaction has been shown to have
the strongest correlation at 0.9 (the
other three factors range between
0.72 and 0.76).

23. Leadership Characteristics
• The following leadership styles can encourage OCB in various ways if
deployed effectively (Organ et al., 2006), though the quality of leader-
member exchange (LMX) is also important.
Instrumental
Leadership
• Facilitates role
clarity -
supervisor
should inform
subordinates
clearly what is
expected of
them.
Supportive
Leadership
• Concern for
employee
wellbeing
more likely to
be
reciprocated
with altruistic
behaviours.
Transformational
Leadership
• Facilitates
motivation –
inspire and
support
employees,
high (but not
unreasonable)
performance
expectations.
• Good quality LMX (which is simply the exchange relationship and manner
of interaction between a superior and subordinate) is characterised by
mutual trust and liking, and both parties feel inclined to reciprocate
courteous and altruistic acts, which facilitates OCB.

25. Group Characteristics
• Four factors have been identified in this
area (Organ et al., 2006) – group
cohesiveness (facilitates trust and
satisfaction; desire to remain in group),
team-member exchange (TMX) (influences
motivation and group cohesiveness),
group potency (generates synergy and
enables cooperation) and perceived team
support (concern for each other’s
wellbeing).
• Improvements in any of these four areas
will lead to an increase in (co-worker
directed) OCB, especially if the
organisation is group- and teamwork-
oriented

27. Motivational theories
• Recent research using motivation to measure an
individual's disposition has renewed interest in
examining Organ's (1990) model proposing that an
individual's motives may relate to his or her
organizational citizenship behaviors (Kemery, et al.,
1996; Tang & Ibrahim, 1998). Penner, et al. (1997)
explored the impact of personality and motivation on
OCB.
• Since no previous research had used motivation to
predict OCB, they developed their propositions from
the volunteerism research.
• Recently a new typology of motivation sources was
proposed by Leonard, Beauvais, and Scholl (1999).
• The researchers proposed five sources of motivation
measured include intrinsic process, instrumental, self-
concept-external, self-concept-internal, and goal
internalization.
• Barbuto et al. (2001)[2] argued that though the
motivational theories work as antecedents for OCB,
but the researchers cautioned that an individual’s
sources of motivation could have an impact on his or
her level of OCB. As individual progress upward in an
organization, motivational theories tend to be less
applicable as antecedent.

29. OCB in Practice: Encouraging OCB in
the workplace
• OCB was the proposed construct coined by Organ during his
initial attempt to understand these as-yet-unnamed behaviors
as a better representation of “performance” in the
"satisfaction-causes-performance" controversy (Organ, 1977)
• “The extent to which employees exhibit OCB is a function of
ability, motivation and opportunity.” (Organ et al., 2006, p. 93)
• OCB was the proposed construct coined by Organ during his
initial attempt to understand these as-yet-unnamed behaviors
as a better representation of “performance” in the
"satisfaction-causes-performance" controversy (Organ, 1977)
• Organ (1988 argued that OCB is held to be vital to the survival
of an organization. Organ further elaborated that
organizational citizenship behavior can maximize the
efficiency and productivity of both the employee and the
organization that ultimately contribute to the effective
functioning of an organization.
• Prominent current organizational researchers such as Brief
have supported Organ’s position regarding the importance for
effectiveness of those behaviors which he labeled as
organizational citizenship behavior (George & Brief, 1992)
• Although the current authors know of no studies, which have
specifically investigated the nature and extent of the
relationship between OCB and organizational effectiveness
per se, it is widely accepted among contemporary
organizational behavior theorists, that organizational
citizenship behaviors have an accumulative positive effect on
organizational functioning (Wagner & Rush, 2000)

30. • Office social environment – a working
environment that promotes or is conducive to
employees demonstrating OCB.
• Supervisor awareness – training or educating
management about OCB will make them more
aware of employee displays of OCB. They may
choose to include OCB in their performance
appraisals, or devise their own casual/informal
reward system to encourage OCB.
• Hiring practices – though the impact of
personality on OCB is small, an outgoing,
attentive, enthusiastic employee with a
positive outlook and ‘can do’ attitude will be
more inclined to engage in OCB. If
psychometric testing is a part of your
interview/hiring process, consider looking out
for traits related to OCB, and have these staff
motivate others to perform OCB.
The following are some other tips to
encourage OCB in your workplace.

31. 5 Workplace Design Elements for Happy
Employees

32. • Organ (1988)[3] argued that OCB is distinct
from related constructs (such as
``organizational commitment’’) developed by
organizational researchers.
• While OCB may be empirically related to
organizational commitment (Cohen &
Vigoda, 2000), it is important to emphasize
that OCB refers to a particular class of
employee behaviors, while constructs such
as organizational commitment is essentially
attitude-based (as originally operationalized
in the organizational commitment
questionnaire of Mowday et al., 1979, which
is typically measured by seeking employees’
responses to such scale item statements as
``I find that my values and the organization’s
are very similar’’.
• The unique contribution of Organ was to
identify a class of employee work behaviors
(organizational citizenship behaviors) whose
relationship with job satisfaction, among
other variables, might be meaningfully
examined in the search for a practically
significant workplace behaviors related to
employee job attitudes.
Conceptualizing
OCB

33. Conceptualizing OCB
Organizational citizenship behavior was
described by Organ and his colleagues (Smith,
Organ, & Near, 1983) as having two basic
dimensions:
• Altruism, is helping behavior directed at
specific individuals. When individuals have
specific problems, need assistance, or seek
help, altruistic people go the extra mile in
assisting them.
• generalized compliance, which is a more
impersonal conscientiousness: doing things
“right and proper” for their own sake rather
than for any specific person.

34. Conceptualizing OCB
Currently, the most popular dimensions used to measure
OCB are found in the 5 factor model (Organ, 1988):
Altruism: being helpful (e.g., helping new colleagues and
freely giving time to others)
Courtesy: being polite and courteous; prevent conflict (e.g.,
advance notices, reminders, and communicating appropriate
information)
Conscientiousness: doing more than just the minimum;
attention to detail (prevent/minimise error) (e.g., efficient
use of time and going beyond minimum expectations)
Civic Virtue: showing interest and involvement (e.g. keeping
up to date) with the organisation; defend organisational
policies and practices (e.g., serving on committees and
voluntarily attending functions)
Sportsmanship: tolerating less-than-ideal
conditions;accepting of changes and performs requests
without complaints (e.g., avoids complaining and
whining)

35. Conceptualizing OCB
• Empirical research on the dimensions of organizational
citizenship behaviors (OCB) has generated somewhat
conflicting results.
• A few researchers have been successful in identifying four
categories of OCB (Moorman & Blakely, 1995), but the
weight of the factor analytic evidence suggests a two-factor
structure.
• Williams (1988) also found a two-dimensional definition of
OCB:
1) benefits to the organization in general, such as
volunteering to serve on committees (OCBO), and
2) benefits directed at individuals within the organization,
such as altruism and interpersonal helping (OCBI).
• More recently, Skarlicki and Latham (1995)[37] examined
OCB in a university setting; their data also supported a two-
factor structure, (organizational and interpersonal) could be
referred as OCB.

36. Conceptualizing OCB
In two separate factor analytic
studies, DiPaola and Tschannen-
Moran (2001)[38] found that there
are not five separate dimensions of
the construct, or even two for that
matter, but rather that one
dimension captures all aspects of
OCB. In other words, both benefits
to the organization (helping the
organization) and benefits to the
individual (helping individuals)
combine into a single, bipolar
construct.

37. Potential Pitfalls
There are three main issues to be cautious of when promoting OCB in your workplace.
Discrimination, Be especially wary of implicit gendered expectations – research has shown that men are
rewarded for OCB more than women (Heilman & Chen, 2005), as women are expected to engage in
certain types of citizenship behaviors (such as being altruistic and courteous) more than men.
Organizational justice In addition to the gender bias, if some supervisors reward OCB more than others,
perceived unfairness may increase among certain clusters of employees. This will not only lead to a
decrease in OCB among those not rewarded for it but may have other side effects related to perceived
injustice, such as an increase in counterproductive behavior (e.g. theft, absenteeism) (Marcus & Schuler,
2004).
Habituation If OCB is rewarded regularly, you may find that OCB levels will rise across the organization
over time. What was once considered OCB (e.g. working overtime) may become an internalized
organizational norm, and is no longer spontaneous and voluntary but expected of workers. Research
into this phenomenon, termed citizenship pressure, is relatively recent, and though contested, it may
impact negatively on employee stress levels (Bolino, Turnley, Gilstrap & Suazo, 2010).

38. OCB: A Worthy Investment
• One of the crucial elements of OCB is the
fact that although it is often recognized
and rewarded by managerial staff,
employees do not necessarily make the
connection between performing OCB and
reward gain (especially OCB-I or altruism
and courtesy-related behaviors), and do
not expect rewards (Organ, 1997).
• Given that OCB has such a significant
impact on the productivity and efficiency
of the organization, and workers do not
expect to be reimbursed for their efforts,
OCB should be considered an efficient
way of improving organizational
profitability and reducing costs through,
for example, lowering rates of
absenteeism and turnover.
• At the same time it increases employee
performance and wellbeing, as
cooperative workers are more
productive, and OCB enhances the social
environment in the workplace.

39. References
• Nadim Jahangir, Mohammad
Muzahid Akbar, Mahmudul
Haq, 2004, ORGANIZATIONAL
CITIZENSHIP BEHAVIOR: ITS
NATURE AND ANTECEDENTS,
BRAC University Journal, vol. I,
no. 2, 2004, pp. 75-85
• Deww Zhang, 2011,
Organisational Citizenship
Behaviour, white paper

40. Learning and Giving
For Better Indonesia