CHAPTER ONE
Introduction
Successful organisations have employees who go beyond their formal job responsibilities and freely give of their time and energy to succeed at the assigned job. Such behaviour is neither prescribed nor required, yet it contributes to the smooth functioning of the organisation. An organisation cannot survive or prosper without their members behaving as good citizens by engaging in positive behaviours. Because of the importance of good citizenship for organisations, understanding the nature and sources of organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) has long been a high priority for organisational scholars and this takes us to the concept of organisational citizenship behaviour (Podsakoff, Whiting, Podsakoff & Blume, 2009).
In the increasingly dynamic and competitive environment in which organisations operate, this discretionary behaviour, not formally recognized or rewarded, termed Organisational Citizenship Behaviour (OCB) is considered a highly valuable contribution to the effective functioning of an organisation. Organisational behaviour provides knowledge to managers on the understanding of employees’ behavior for the purpose of eliciting cooperation from them in order to achieve organisation’s objective. One of the contributing behaviour which is rather discretionary but proven empirically to increase organisational functioning is organisation citizenship behaviour (OCB). It refers to various forms of cooperation and helpfulness to others that support the organisation’s social and psychological context.
These behaviours are discretional which are not parts of the job description, and are performed by the employee as a result of personal choice. 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. 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).
Though OCB is a spontaneous initiative taken by staff, organisations promote OCB in the workplace through employee motivation, as well as giving employees the opportunity to display OCB; that is, creating a workplace environment that not only allows for, but is conducive and supportive of OCB (Organ, Podsakoff & MacKenzie, 2006).
According to Organ (1988), OCB is defined as work-related behaviours that are discretionary, not related to the formal organisational reward system and in aggregate, promote the effective functioning of the organisation. In addition, OCB extends beyond the performance indicators required by an organisation in a formal job description. Moreover, OCB reflects those actions performed by employees that surpass the minimum role requirements expected by the organisation and promote the welfare of co-workers, work groups, and/or the organisation (Lovell, Kahn, Anton, Davidson, Dowling, Post & Mason, 1999).
Furthermore, Organisational Citizenship Behaviour (OCB) is a construct that enjoins employees to willingly exceed or go beyond their formal and principal job requirements (Organ & Ryan, 1995). The increasing downsizing and complexity of jobs suggests that there is more to do in the workplace and fewer people to do it than ever before. In today’s dynamic workplace, flexibility and innovativeness is increasingly becoming critical especially in most service oriented organisations (Robbins, 2003). As suggested by Organ (1988), the effective functioning of an organisation depends on employee efforts that extend beyond formal role requirements. A distinction has been made between two dimensions of employee behaviour: (1) general compliance (doing what a good employee should do), and (2) altruism (helping specific others) (see Smith et al., 1983; Bateman & Organ, 1983). Later, the concept underwent a number of transformations. For instance, in a review of the research, Organ (1988) identified five distinct dimensions of OCB: Altruism (helping specific others); civic virtue (keeping up with important matters within the organisation); conscientiousness (compliance with norms); courtesy (consulting others before taking action); and sportsmanship (not complaining about trivial matters). However, Organ (1997) further classified OCB dimensions into three parts: helping, courtesy, and conscientiousness. A different view on the dimensionality of OCB came from Williams and Anderson (1991), who divided OCB into two types: (1) behaviours directed at specific individuals in the organisation, such as courtesy and altruism (OCBI); and (2) behaviours concerned with benefiting the organisation as a whole, such as conscientiousness, sportsmanship and civic virtue (OCBO). The present study employs these two dimensions of OCB to achieve the research objective.
