| Existing work of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) has predominantly examined this type of behavior as an individual phenomenon ignoring its social and work group context. Based on social exchange, social information processing, social learning and behavioral plasticity theories, I propose a multi-level model of OCB, integrating individual characteristics and contextual influences from the job performed, coworkers and group leaders. The current study addresses the following questions: (1) what is the impact of individual attitudes and dispositions on OCB? (2) Are individual OCB influenced by characteristics of the work groups (task cues, group positive affective tone, coworkers' behavioral cues, leader's goal cues and recognition of OCB ) above and beyond individual characteristics? (3) Do individuals react differently to situational stimuli? Two forms of individually-directed OCB, altruism and courtesy, and two forms of organizationally-directed OCB, sportsmanship and civic virtue, were examined. Analyses were performed using a modified OLS procedure that accounts for interdependent errors within groups and heterogenous errors across groups and Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM). Results based on data of 269 employees and 52 managers from 27 locations of a restaurant chain revealed that there was no significant between-group variance in altruism, courtesy, and sportsmanship behavior, while there was significant between-group variance in civic virtue behavior. Results of modified OLS suggested that among the individual level variables, full-time work status, positive affectivity, commitment, pay satisfaction, coworker satisfaction, leader support and peer support were associated with some dimensions of OCB. Among the group level variables, leader's recognition of OCB was associated with more altruism and civic virtue behavior in the group. Additionally, coworkers' civic virtue behavior has positive and significant impact on an individual's civic virtue behavior. When predicting civic virtue, there were also significant interactions between leader's recognition of OCB and the following individual level variables: positive affectivity, commitment, peer support, and leader support, providing some support for behavioral plasticity theory. HLM analyses were conducted for civic virtue behavior. The results of individual and group-level effects were largely consistent with the modified OLS results. These findings demonstrated the importance of considering both individual and group variables when modeling organizational citizenship behavior. |
