A Multilevel Study on the Relationships Between Work Characteristics, Self- Efficacy, Collective Efficacy, and Organizational Citizenship Behavior: The Case of Taiwanese Police Duty-Executing Organizations

Abstract

Public security, traffic management, and service for the people are the 3 major functions of policing in Taiwan. This definition encompasses not only the traditional job characteristics, but also the level of contextual characteristics and social characteristics because of police work's characteristics and its frequent interaction with the public. Thus, the present study conducted a multilevel model analysis by taking self-efficacy and collective efficacy as the mediating variables. The purpose was to investigate the influences of motivational work characteristics (knowledge-oriented) and social work characteristics (socially and contextually oriented) of work-design model on the police officers' organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), by using first-line police officers in Taiwan as the research objects. The study showed not only that knowledge characteristics will influence the self-efficacy of a police officer and that self-efficacy can in turn influence individual police officers' OCB, but also the contextual effect of social characteristics, contextual characteristics, and collective efficacy on self-efficacy and individuals' OCB. Additionally, there was a crosslevel moderating effect from contextual characteristics on the relationship between knowledge characteristics and self-efficacy and the relationship between self-efficacy and the individuals' OCB. The authors conclude the article with research implications.

Caregiving Representations at Work and the Moderating Role of Job Self-Efficacy

“…These studies indicated that people with high self-effi cacy express loyalty to the workplace and are more willing to take part in extra-role tasks ( Todd & Kent, 2006 ;Chen & Kao, 2011 ;Beauregard, 2012 ).…”

“…The lack of interaction between job self-effi cacy and caregiving hyperactivation indicates that the latter is expressed under both conditions of job self-effi cacy. Future studies may investigate whether personal resources (such as emotional, material, or motivational) or work characteristics (Chen & Kao, 2011) moderate the associations between hyperactivation and OCB.…”

“…The reason may have to do with the negative perceptions of other people, social insensitivity, and the lack of empathy (typical of caregivers with high deactivation). Caregiving deactivation does not have a similar eff ect among people who scored low on job self-effi cacy because being certain of ability to perform work assignments is probably a pre-condition for helping (Chen & Kao, 2011) and may facilitate the contribution of deactivation personality dimension on OCB-Organizational. The lack of interaction between job self-effi cacy and caregiving hyperactivation indicates that the latter is expressed under both conditions of job self-effi cacy.…”

“…For instance, an individual high in self-effi cacy may be more likely to volunteer to help co-workers with work-related problems, or to attend voluntary meetings, because s/he is better able to proactively plan for these activities and organize the workday to accommodate them. Empirical support of this proposition found that general self-effi cacy predicted personal initiative and "taking charge" behavior at work ( Speier & Frese, 1997 ;Morrison & Phelps, 1999 ) and OCB ( Somech & Drach-Zahavy, 2000 ;Bogler & Somech, 2004 ;Beauregard, 2012 ), while others found that specifi c job self-effi cacy (one's belief in his abilities to perform a necessary job) may also serve as an important factor in predicting both organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBI and OCBO) because an employee is more willing to help others when he feels more certain of his ability to accomplish the work on his own ( Todd & Kent, 2006 ;Chen & Kao, 2011 ). Previous studies indicated that caregiving dimensions are best expressed under certain conditions such as adequate personal resources .…”

Predicting Extra-Role Behaviour: Organisational Support And Role Breadth Self-Efficacy As Predictors

“…Gazetted police officers were chosen because they are more likely to engage in organisational citizenship behaviour than non-gazetted police officers (Chen & Kao 2011). The questionnaires were distributed in Klang valley, Malaysia because of the concentration of gazetted police officers in the area which accounted for sixty percent of the total gazetted police force in Malaysia.…”