Exploration of positive characteristics in employee engaging in organizational citizenship behaviors

Abstract

Positive Psychology has emerged as an independent area of enquiry in psychology and organizational behavior. Positive Organizational Scholarship (POS) and Positive Organizational Behavior (POB) study positive psychological constructs in organizations. POB argues likelihood of positive outcomes such as satisfaction, well being, improved performance, coping with stress, engagement in positive behaviors, and adaptability to change in people who possess positive characteristics. However, the argument remains largely conjectural and has not been empirically tested. This study tested for the relationship between positive characteristics and positive behaviors of employees.

The positive characteristics included in this study were subjective well being, self‐efficacy,hope, optimism, and resilience. It was proposed that employees with positive dispositions were likely to have a positive attitude towards their work and were also more likely to engage in positive behaviors that are beyond the purview of their defined roles (organizational citizenship behaviors).In previous empirical studies on the antecedents of OCB, the evidence for relationship between personality characteristics and OCB was inconclusive. This study explored the relationship between positive characteristics of an individual; his or her job satisfaction, and tendency to engage in OCB. It was expected that employees who are positive about the future (optimistic), believe that they can reach their goals (high self efficacy and hopeful), positively evaluate their life and work place situation (high subjective well‐being), and are able to fight back when situation demands (resilience) would be more satisfied and be more likely to engage in OCB that benefit the teams they are part of. These behaviors could be in the form of helping colleagues (altruism), taking irritation at the workplace without whining (sportsmanship), showing interest in the organization and its governance (civic virtue), preventing problems for others (courtesy), and going beyond the minimum requirements of the job (conscientiousness).

Data for each individual was collected from two sources. Data on traits and job satisfaction was collected from the respondents themselves and data on OCB was collected from their supervisors. This allowed control for common source variance. Data n superior’s perception of an individual’s positive characteristics was also collected. In all 334 usable responses were collected from a variety of organizations.

The results suggest that only hope, resilience and subjective well being of an individual have a significantly positive relationship with engagement in overall OCB. Among OCB dimensions civic virtue had a positive and significant relationship to all positive characteristics. Conscientiousness was not related to any of the characteristics. Job satisfaction was found to have significant positive relationship with all positive characteristics as well as with OCB and its dimensions.

It was also found that for most positive characteristics and OCB dimensions the relationship was not linear across variations in positive characteristic. For example, people who were high on hope showed a positive relationship with altruism, but those low on hope showed a negative relationship to engagement in altruistic behaviors. This study found that positive characteristics explained a small but significant variance in OCB. A larger variance was explained by positive characteristics in attitude related variable (job atisfaction). The study lends limited empirical support to the postulated relationship between positive characteristics and organizationally relevant positive attitudes and behaviors.