An Exploration into the Consequences of Organizational Citizenship Behaviour for those Who Do

Abstract

Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) is defined as a discretionary behavior that contributes to the maintenance and enhancement of the social and psychological context that supports task performance. OCB can be targeted either at other individuals (OCBI) or the organization (OCBO). Although extant research has explored the nature, antecedents, and consequences of OCB, very few studies have examined the individual level consequences of OCB. Our purpose in this paper is: a) to identify the proximal consequences of OCB; and b) to make these proximal individual level consequences the base for understanding OCB-turnover intention (distal individual level consequence) relationship. In Study 1, we establish that OCBI is positively associated with relatedness need satisfaction and negatively associated with burnout, indirectly through relatedness need satisfaction. We also establish that OCBO is positively associated with psychological health. As psychological health, relatedness need-satisfaction, and burnout are all related to, and subsumed in a broader construct, called ‘subjective well-being’, we explore the role of subjective well-being as a mediator between OCB (I and O) and turnover intentions, in Study 2. Results show that subjective well-being fully mediates the OCBI-turnover intention relationship and partially mediates OCBO-turnover intention relationship. This research contributes to the existing literature in two ways: a) by identifying the consequences of OCB; and b) by examining the mechanisms which make OCB a behavioral predictor of turnover.