| For over a decade, the study of Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) was limited to the individual level of analysis, and the assumption was that OCB would impact unit-level measures of effectiveness. More recently, researchers have begun to test this assumption and have found that unit-level OCB explains from 20 to 30 percent of the variance in objective indicators of unit-level performance. While researchers have begun to concentrate their efforts in better understanding the outcomes of unit-level OCB, the antecedents of between-unit differences in OCB have not been investigated. In this paper, I address the lack of a conceptualization of unit-level OCB by applying three of Chan's (1998) composition models to the OCB construct. In a similar manner, I discuss how the two antecedents of interest in the present study, fairness perceptions and leadership, have been studied at the individual level and how they can also be conceptualized at the unit level. This discussion forms the basis for the proposed model, where procedural and distributive justice climate are hypothesized to partially mediate the relationship between servant-leadership and unit-level OCB. The model was tested using data collected from employees in the various departments of a grocery store chain (N = 249 departments). The results gave general support for the hypotheses, although there were some differences depending on the source of the OCB ratings (supervisor or subordinate). Overall, while there was some evidence for the mediating role of procedural justice climate, the direct effects of servant-leadership on unit-level OCB were relatively stronger than the mediated effects. Distributive justice climate did not appear to play in role as a correlate of unit-level OCB. Implications for the study of unit-level OCB are discussed. |
