CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the Study
Corporate organizations are replete of employees who work at different functional units. These employees, through planning, organizing, controlling and directing, ensures that corporate objectives are effectively and efficiently achieved (Umoh, Amah and Wokocha, 2014). Equally, the employees ensures that work interdependency among themselves are well circumscribed given how limited organizational resources is. These efforts aid in ensuring that both employees and organizational performances are enhance.
In the 21st century business landscape, studies in management literature have been carried out to find out how best employees’ performance could be improved. This has led to plethora of studies-both theoretically and empirically- so as to determine what could be done in order to enhance employees’ performance. Some of those studies include the works of Shamshiri and Peikani (2016), Hashemi (2014), Nielson, Hrivnak and Shaw (2009), and Anvari, Chikaji and Mansor (2015), among others. Though these studies were carried out in different settings but the outcome still remain the same. These studies have emphatically shown that employees’ helping behaviour, otherwise known as OCB, could equally enhance employees’ overall job performance. Since then, the concept of OCB, what it connotes, the antecedents and possible effects on employees’ job performance has greatly been researched on.
The concept of OCB do not recently evolve. At first, Katz and Khan (1964) referred to it as extra-role behaviours. Thereafter, Bateman and Organ (1983) researched on the concept.Though the study of Bateman and Organ (1983) did not bring much clarity on the concept of OCB but it gave a basic foundation. In 1988, Organ termed such extra-role behaviours as Organizational Citizenship Behaviour (OCB). According to Organ (1988), OCB entails employees helping behavior that is discretionary; not directly or explicitly recognized by the organizational reward system; but it facilitate effective and efficient job performance. McKenna (2012) sees OCB as helping others toward organizational goods. Similarly, Farahbod, Azedehdel, Rezaei and Nezhadi (2012) convinced OCB to means behavior that is not part of tasks that are assigned to employees, but employees engage in it out of their personal interest. From the above conceptualizations, we can deduce that OCB entails: ‘voluntary helping behaviours’, ‘behaviours which are not imposed or stated’, and ‘behaviours which cannot be enforced on an employee (Madubuike, 2019).
There are basically five forms of OCB. They are altruism, civic virtue, courtesy, conscientiousness and sportsmanship (Greenberg, 1999) as cited in Ismail (2015). According to Ismail (2015), altruism is a working behaviour that involves helping fellow employee with relevant organizational task (s). Altruistic behaviour, therefore, rest ultimately on the feeling and responsibility of seeing others succeed with assigned task(s) (Emmerick, Hetty, Jawahar and Stone, 2005). Civic virtue represents individual behaviour showing concern on the success of an organization (Ismail, 2015). In the words of Organ (1988), civic virtue is employee’s recognition of being part of an organization. Elsewhere, courtesy entails the extent to which an employee helps fellow employee by taking practical steps to prevent the creation of a problem (Mackenzie, Podsakoff and Fetter, 1993). Conscientiousness refers to compliance, acceptance and adherence to workplace rules, regulations and procedures (Organ, 1988) as cited in Pretrella (2013). More so, Demirkiran, Taskaya and Dinc (2016) sees sportsmanship as the ability of an employee to solve problems with fellow employees, managers and other employees in an organization without complaining. It involves tolerating difficulties in the workplace that are intended to improve the organization (Surya and Unny, 2014). Aside these main variables, other OCB variables couched in dimension of OCB has been used in measuring OCB. In this study, three OCB variable namely: altruism, courtesy and civic virtue would be used.
In OCB studies, OCB has been shown to influence employees’ performance significantly. Employees’ performance, in this case, has been defined as the outcome of an employee assigned task within a period of time (Deadrick and Gardner, 1997). Ying (2012) sees employees’ performance as the overall contribution of employees in an organization towards achieving corporate goals. Thus, engagement in OCB enhances employees’ performance as it ensures that helping behaviours are exchanged among employees, employees communicate on changes that affect their assigned tasks, employees participate in the govemance of the organization, they perform assigned tasks beyond expectations, make creative suggestions on how to improve assigned tasks and refrain from complaining on insignificant issues (Yen and Niehoff, 2004). In aggregate, these positive work attitudes contributes in enhancing employees’ performance.
However, one of the challenges in engaging in OCB revolves on the issue of trust. It is on the issue of trust between the employees and the organization. As an exchange relationship, relationships between employees and their employers is often characterized by social or economic exchanges. It entails, as a basis, that while employers fulfill their own aspect of the contractual responsibility, the employees would be willing to accomplish any assigned task(s . How well employees engage-in such positive behaviours that include OCB depends on the trust relations between the employee and the organization. Though studies on what trust entails have been shifting emphasis due to debates on vulnerability (Mishra, 1996), yet, attempts have been made in giving it a formal connotation. Lewicki, McAllister and Biesc (1998) conceived trust as confident expectations regarding another’s conduct. Homer (1995) sees it as one party’s optimistic expectations of the behaviour of another when the party must make a decision about how to act under conditions of vulnerability and dependence. Cumulatively, the word trust entails the following: (i). It involves a situation where a party reflects on an expectation or belief that the other party will act benevolently (ii). It involves a situation where a party cannot control or force another party to fulfill the expectation and (iii). It involves some level of dependency on the other party so that outcomes of one are influenced by the actions of another.
Trust is an important instrument of social relations in any organization. It involves rational investment in employer-employee relationship in an organization (Chen, Chen and Mendi, 1998). It involves one party trusting on another party to reciprocate on the basis of good gestures received. According to Jones and George (1998), when social relations in an organization is based trust, it results to a number of positive outcomes such as free exchange of vital information, employees high level of involvement in the organization, engagement in helping behaviours, high confidence in fellow employees, extra-role behaviours and communal relationships. Nevertheless, the challenge hovering over social relations in an organization lies on who to prove himself trustworthy first or the willingness to trust others (Aryee, Budhwar and Chen, 2002). Management doubts if employees can fulfill their employment conditions (their contractual duty of care) once they remain committed to assigned task(s). Conversely, employees are full of doubt if the employers can fulfill employment conditions their contractual duty of care once they remain committed to assigned task (s). Therefore, since the basis of every social relation in an organization starts from the management, fair treatment of employees induces reciprocation. Blau (1964) succinctly put it this way; by discharging their obligations for service rendered, individuals demonstrate their trust worthiness and the gradual expansion of mutual service.
In the Nigerian banking industry which Fist bank Nig Plc belong, employee’s enhanced performance are needed for the organization to survive and remain competitive. To achieve these objectives, employees need to demonstrate helping behaviours among themselves. However, this determines to some extent how the organization show how trust worthy they are. Thus, when employees see the organization as being trust worthy, they are prone to taking risks on behalf of the organization. They share and display ideas as well as behaviours that interest the organization. Such employees are ready to display trust worthiness through positive work attitudes and contributions, particularly once that exceed prescribed requirements (Aryee, Budhwar and Chen, 2002). Employees’ workout comes is greatly influenced by individuals’ dispositions, which in this case, refers to the trust worthiness of the employers. Therefore, since how trust worthy an organization is enhances employees’ engagement in OCB, leading to an enhanced employees’ performance, the role of trust in enhancing employees’ performance through OCB should be given adequate consideration.
1.2 Statement of the Problem
Today’s business landscape is very dynamic and hyper-competitive. It requires that employees as well as the organization must remain flexible and innovative in order to be successful. As earlier noted in this study, the effective display of these behavioural tendencies requires that employees in banking industry like Fist bank Nig Plc must be willing to engage-in extra-role behaviours that goes beyond their job requirement as long as organizational trust is guaranteed.
However, in reality, this is not so. The complexity and competitive nature of the business environment has sometimes force management of organizations to take decisions that do not show trust and transparency. For instance, while striving to enhance corporate performance by accomplishing assigned task(s), most employees are retrenched. Employees’ decisions on certain aspect of their job design are reluctantly considered while they hardly partake in decision-making processes that affects them. Overtime, these results to lack of trust on the part of employees. It reduces the propensity of employees engaging in altruism, courtesy and civic virtue as they would feel not being properly treated. It distorts focus and willingness of employees to show commitment to assigned tasks, leading to reduction in their job effectiveness, which in turn affects both individual and organizational performance.
