The other side of the story: Reexamining prevailing assumptions about organizational citizenship behavior [An article from: Human Resource Management Review]

This digital document is a journal article from Human Resource Management Review, published by Elsevier in 2004. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
This paper discusses the underlying assumptions of research on organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). It is argued here that previous studies have emphasized the positive features of organizational citizenship while generally overlooking the potentially negative aspects of such behaviors. In contrast to prior research, this paper suggests that (1) citizenship behaviors may result from self-serving motives; (2) citizenship behaviors may be unrelated, or even negatively related, to organizational functioning; and (3) citizenship behaviors may have negative consequences for employees. The implications of this alternative view of citizenship behavior for future theoretical and empirical research are discussed as well.