Understanding organizational citizenship and counterproductive work behaviors: Examining interactions utilizing an organizational versus interpersonal categorization strategy

An experiment and a field study were conducted to examine the effect of organizational justice, personality, and norms on organizational citizenship (OCBs) and counterproductive work behaviors (CWBs). Organizational norms and organizational justice were manipulated in the experiment, whereas the field study did not manipulate any variables, instead focusing on employees' perceptions of their actual work environments. The present research utilized an organizational versus interpersonal classification for attempting to explain OCBs and CWBs. OCBs and CWBs were divided into those extra-role behaviors targeted at individuals within the organization and those behaviors targeted at the organization itself. The antecedent variables were also divided into the same categories. The trait of conscientiousness was predicted to have a stronger influence on organizationally focused behaviors, whereas the trait of agreeableness was considered to have a stronger impact on interpersonally focused behaviors. Organizational justice was divided into whether the organization in general treats the employee fairly or whether co-workers within the organization treat the employee fairly. Finally, norms of organizational extra-role behaviors versus interpersonal extra-role behaviors were considered. Both studies were conducted to assess the impact of interactions between the three antecedents when predicting OCBs and CWBs. Generally, it was found that interactions play a large role in explaining CWBs and interpersonally-directed OCBs. Interactions did not explain significant variance in organizationally-directed OCBs. Organizational norms and personality traits demonstrated a stronger unique impact on all types of extra-role behaviors than did organizational justice perceptions.