Striking a balance between types of organisational citizenship behaviour

Abstract

An increasing number of studies suggest that organisational citizenship behaviours (OCBs) may produce both positive and negative results for organisations and individuals. Few empirical studies, however, evaluate when OCBs are likely to be most or least effective. Based on a sample of 210 participants, and drawing on the entropic citizenship behaviour framework, the theories of conservation of resources, attention capacity and resource allocation, the aim of this study is to examine the relative effects of the personal aspects of OCB (OCB-I); of its impersonal aspects (OCB-O) and of the balanced aspects on employee innovative work behaviours (IWB) and affective commitment. The results indicate that employees who engaged in both types of OCB reported higher IWB than employees who engaged in either OCB-I or OCB-O (at the exclusion of the other). Conversely, the average measures of IWB between employees who engaged in OCB-I and those who engaged in OCB-O separately did not differ significantly. Even though employees who engaged in both OCB-O and OCB-I were more affectively committed than employees who engaged solely in either OCB-O or OCB-I, the differences were not statistically significant. These results and their implications are discussed, and prospects for future research in this area are outlined.