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Despite an abundance of research conducted on organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) at the individual level of analysis, relatively little is known about unit-level OCB. To investigate the antecedents of unit-level OCB, data were collected from employees of 249 grocery store departments. Structural equation modeling techniques were used to test a model in which procedural justice climate was hypothesized to partially mediate the relationship between leadership behavior (servant-leadership) and unit-level OCB. Models were tested using both employee ratings and manager ratings of unit-level OCB. The results gave general support for the hypotheses, although there were some differences depending on the source of the OCB ratings (supervisor or subordinate), whether the type of department was controlled for, and whether a common method variance factor was included. Overall, the evidence generally supported the association of both servant-leadership and procedural justice climate with unit-level OCB. Building on the current study, a multilevel framework for the study of OCB is presented in conjunction with a discussion of future research directions in four specific areas.
The topic of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) has breathed new energy into researchers formerly perplexed by the seemingly weak relationship between job attitudes and job performance. By moving the definition of performance away from the "core" task behaviors and into the realm of behaviors that support that core, OCB researchers have demonstrated that, in fact, job attitudes do relate to job-relevant behaviors.
Research on OCB at the individual level has flourished since early studies by Bateman and Organ (1983) and Smith, Organ, and Near (1983), but by the mid-1990s researchers began to note the need for more studies of OCB at the unit level of analysis (e.g., Organ & Ryan, 1995; Podsakoff, Ahearne, & MacKenzie, 1997; Podsakoff & MacKenzie, 1997). Although the authors of theoretical papers on OCB had proposed the relationship between OCB and organizational outcomes as one basis for the importance of OCB, little if any research had actually been done up to that point on such relationships. As the relationship between unit-level OCB and organizational outcomes has begun to be addressed (see Podsakoff & MacKenzie, 1997), an additional area for new research has been brought to light: the antecedents of OCB at the unit level.
This study is an attempt to address...