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Research On The Dimensions Of Organizational Citizenship Behavior And It’s Effect Mechanism In The Face Of Job Stressors For Chinese Public Servants

Posted on:2017-02-24Degree:DoctorType:Dissertation
Country:ChinaCandidate:C YeFull Text:PDF
GTID:1226330485969017Subject:Administrative Management
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) is a kind of individual behavior that is discretionary, and not directly or explicitly recognized by the formal reward system. This kind of behavior usually comes from employees" personal willingness. It is not required by in-role tasks and has no relevance with formal reward system. Generally, OCB in the aggregate promotes the effective functioning of the organization. Along with the reform of the administrative system and the accelerating process of the construction of the service-oriented government in China, as the main body of public administration, management and service, the important public management responsibilities that civil servants take have been far beyond the work of in-role behavior, and the quality of the extra-role behavior also plays an important role in achieving the goals of service-oriented government. This indicates that civil servants’ responsibilities and obligations should not be rigidly attached to the contents of job descriptions, especially in the process of the reform of administrative system and under current era background. Such extra-role behaviors as ’care for organization’ ’be ready to help others’,’reform and innovation’,’be strict with oneself’,’set a good example’,’learn to convenience’and so forth should be the reflection of capabilities and competences that Chinese government civil servants should possess. It is because that not only do the extra-role behaviors above-mentioned closely connect with the practical work of civil servants’requirements, but also they are key to improving their ability to fulfill duty. Obviously, OCB is a kind of behavior that Chinese government advocates to civil servants. Although OCB stems from enterprise employees, the difference between government and enterprises determines that OCB of civil servants should be different from that of enterprise employees. Therefore, it is necessary for us to explore the connotation and dimensions of civil servants’OCB.At the same time,for civil servants, the working pressure they are under affects their OCB performance. Compared with those in enterprises, the common job pressures civil servants are under come from (1) the role of the civil servants cannot usually be understood by their family members; (2) the job of civil servants’is relatively trivial and various; (3) the interpersonal relationship in the organization is more complicated; (4) the system of civil servant contains uncertain factors. Although domestic and foreign civil servants encounter similar job pressures, national culture and government culture, to a certain extent, distinguish the working stressors among domestic and foreign civil servants. In China, most researches about civil servants’stress revolve around the job stressors, and many scholars analyze the data based on existing literatures and interview survey. It is concluded that the job stressors of civil servants mainly come from the individual factors, organizational factors and environmental factors. Many scholars agree that stressor of work overload, stressor of superiors, stressor of career development prospects and stressor of interpersonal relationships are the common job stressors to civil servants in Chinese context. Do these job stressors produce important impact on Chinese civil servants’OCB? How do they produce? To understand and to answer these questions are of great significance in promoting and stimulating the implementation of the civil servants’OCB.Based on the research questions above-mentioned, this paper carries out the construction of dimensions of civil servants’OCB and its effect mechanism under job stressors.Firstly, considering that the concept of OCB stems from enterprises, based on literature review, the paper clarifies ideological roots and evolution of the concept from the perspective of enterprises. Academic circles in foreign countries pay attention to OCB research just in recent 20 years and this topic in Chinese contexts tends to be heating up. Therefore, in the similar way, this paper revolves around the concept of OCB, and its dimensions, independent variables and dependent variables to clarify, analyze and summarize the literatures of Chinese and foreign civil servants’ OCB. The paper also focuses on the relationship between civil servants’OCB and working behaviors to promote further research on OCB’s dimension construction and effect mechanism.Secondly, based on the literature review, this study follows guiding ideology of Public Value Management Theory to develop the concept of traditional OCB, trying to give the new definition and understand the concept of OCB towards Chinese civil servants, which provides a path for reference for further research in OCB dimension construction. Meanwhile, the paper explores and discusses the value analysis of civil servants’OCB from social level, organizational level and individual level. In addition, the paper applies the relevant management theories and puts forward such value orientations as ’public-welfare’,’seamlessness’,’personification’ and ’innovation’, which civil servants’OCB should possess. This helps to provide relevant theoretical references for further construction of civil servants’OCB dimension.Thirdly, through the semi-structured interview with the civil servants from different government departments with different ages and position levels, applying the Grounded Theory, namely, open coding, axial coding and selective coding, this paper initially forms a questionnaire of civil servants’OCB, which contains 35 items. Considering the disadvantages of the existing research methods, this paper also applies Content Analysis Method to support. By doing this, author uses literature sampling to excavate and collect extra-role positive behaviors among 49 civil servants who were elected as’People-Satisfying Civil Servants’in 7th Election for Meritorious Deeds in China. This helps to act as an assisting role in designing the questionnaires in a reasonable way. Meanwhile, the paper applies such empirical research methods as exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis to construct measurement model of Chinese civil servants’ OCB which consists of 29 items. This provides objective and clear cognitive paradigm for further opening and clearing OCB dimensions’connotations. The research results show that OCB consists of 6 dimensions, they are:’Family-Maintenance Spirit’,’Altruistic Devotion Behavior’ ’Innovative Implementation Behavior’,’Ethics-Oriented and Self-Disciplined Behavior’,’Courtesy Behavior’and’Self-Study Behavior’Fourthly, the paper examines OCB’s effect mechanism based on civil servants’job stressors. Through reviewing literatures and doing Sojump online questionnaire survey, the paper determines four common job stressors of civil servants; they are stressor of work overload, stressor of superiors, stressor of career development prospects and stressor of interpersonal relationships. On this basis, the paper respectively explores and examines (1) The main effect hypothesis, namely, four different job stressors that have influence on civil servants’OCB; (2) The mediation effect hypothesis, that is, to respectively introduce’Work-Family Conflict’(WFC) and ’Work Depression’(WD) from the perspectives of tensions of family-level and work-level as two mediating variables in the research framework and explore whether these two variables play the mediating role between civil servants’four common job stressors and OCB; (3) The moderating effect hypothesis, namely, to introduce rumination and moderate the relationship between①independent variables (civil servants’four job stressors) and dependent variable (OCB) and ②independent variables (civil servants’four job stressors) and mediating variables (WFC and WD). The research results show that the main effect hypothesis are all tested and verified. It means four different job stressors and civil servants’OCB has negative correlation. After testing the mediating effect hypothesis, which were partially verified and the results showed that, on the one hand, WFC plays partial mediation roles between three job stressors (’stressors of work overload’,’stressor of superiors’ and ’stressor of interpersonal relationship’) and civil servants’ OCB, but it plays complete mediation roles between’stressor of career development prospects’and OCB. On the other hand, WD plays partial mediation roles between two job stressors (’stressor of work overload’ and’stressor of interpersonal relationship’) and civil servants’ OCB, but it plays complete mediation roles between another two job stressors (’stressor of superiors’and’stressor of career development prospects’) and OCB. After testing the moderating effect hypothesis, which were partially verified and the results showed that in the stage of direct effect, rumination respectively moderates the relationships between two job stressors (’stressor of superiors’and’stressor of career development prospects’) and OCB, and it also plays partial moderating role between’stressor of interpersonal relationship’ and OCB. But the moderating effect is not obvious in verifying the relationship between’stressor of work overload’ and OCB. In the stage of indirect effect, rumination moderates the relationships between three job stressors (’stressor of superiors’,’stressor of interpersonal relationship’and’stressor of career development prospects’) and WFC. Meanwhile, rumination also moderates the relationships between two job stressors (’stressor of superiors’and’stressor of career development prospects’) and WD.Finally, based on the dimensions construction of Chinese civil servants’ OCB and the effect mechanism of civil servants’OCB under job stressors, the paper puts forward research conclusion, theory contributions, practice values, management advice and research inadequacies. The paper applies standard empirical research methods, which are advocated in current academic research, to construct brand new civil servants’ OCB dimensions. This may provide relevant references for Chinese civil servants in managing human resources, especially in optimizing civil servants’job behaviors. Specifically, Chinese civil servants can do some self-criticism in their daily work and contextual performance, and six dimensions of OCB can be good references in building up and improving competence and moral cultivation to civil servants. From organizational perspectives, government can use six dimensions of OCB to optimize such key human resource management functions as selection mechanism, performance appraisal, training and development, etc. In addition, as another important part of the enlightenments on the study, the paper advocates that the government can do the followings to make civil servants’working pressures relieved. They are:reasonably managing civil servants’job stressors, managing civil servants’ emotion via eliminating their tensional feeling and strengthening intervention to civil servants’rumination, which helps to promote civil servants’OCB performance and play parts in the construction of service-oriented government.The innovative efforts made in the paper are:to create local civil servants’OCB dimensions and put forward construction concepts and conceptual model in Chinese context; to develop a set of systematic, measurable and local OCB scale for civil servants; to make clear the effect mechanism of Chinese civil servants’OCB; to build effect mechanism of Chinese civil servants from job stressors’perspectives.It makes breakthroughs in the situations where OCB research always focuses on enterprise employees and the paper applies multidisciplinary perspectives and different research methods to explore more.
Keywords/Search Tags:civil servants, organizational citizenship behavior, dimensions of organizational citizenship behavior, job stressors, effect mechanism
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