The discretionary efforts of employees to go above and beyond illustrated by organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) provide an important path to organizational success. Organizational work environment characteristics, notably, organizational climates, serve as fundamental mechanisms for eliciting OCBs. However, existing research on organizational climate and OCBs frequently adopts a variable-centered approach that breaks down climate into individual dimensions. In contrast to past research, our goal is to respond to calls to more fully contextualize organizational climate by offering a configuration of climate attributes. Drawing on a typology of research problematizing, we replace the metaphor of individual dimensions with a metaphor of a climate configuration. To theorize and test the relationship between organizational climate and OCBs, we examine organizational values embodied in the competing values framework through a mesolevel organizational climate perspective. Building on the literature on managing paradox, we propose a constructive organizational values climate configuration, which captures how the different dimensions of the competing values framework coexist and work together. In turn, we propose that constructive organizational values climate predicts three types of OCBs: helping, taking charge, and creative behavior. Furthermore, drawing on regulatory focus theory and on the change-oriented and affiliative roots of OCBs, we offer two distinct mediators that shed light on the underlying processes. We test the proposed theory with data from 737 respondents residing in 166 work units in a wide variety of organizations.
The goal of this article is to present qualitative and quantitative reviews of servant leadership literature since its formal inception in 1970. Summarizing previous studies, we theorized and explored issues concerning the conception and relevance of servant leadership, the merits of varied measurements, issues concerning construct dimensionality, and the potential effects of national culture on the relationship between servant leadership and its correlates. We developed theory to distinguish servant leadership from competing leadership theories of transformational leadership and leader-member exchange (LMX) theory and examined the direct and the incremental influence of servant leadership on individual and unit-level outcomes. To consolidate extant research and to guide future theory development we tested a mediational process model linking servant leadership to outcomes. Meta-analytic results supported distinctiveness of servant leadership, showed effects of servant leadership on individual-level and unit-level outcomes, and supported theorized mediating effects of trust and fairness perceptions in the relationship.
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