Differentiating Good Soldiers from Good Actors*

Abstract

In a qualitative interview study, 20 Hong Kong Chinese informants were asked to report stories about colleagues who were either 'good soldiers' or 'good actors'. In stories about good soldiers, informants attributed their colleagues' organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB) primarily to prosocial or pro-organizational motives. Informants' stories about good actors broke down into three major subcategories of citizenship-related impression management: OCB attributed primarily to impression management motives; alleged pseudo-OCB concomitant with minimal compliance; and alleged pseudo-OCB concomitant with counterproductive behaviour. When distinguishing good soldiers from good actors, informants adopted two criteria for attribution: wilful behavioural inconsistency, i.e. low generality of behaviour across contexts; and alleged false pretence, i.e. discrepancy between claims or allusions and actual deeds. Our findings partially supported a prior hypothesis from attribution theory, that consistency was a criterion for attribution, but indicated that consensus, i.e. correspondence between the focal colleague's behaviour and other employees' behaviour, failed to differentiate good soldiers from good actors. Informants generally regarded OCB as socially desirable only when it was attributed primarily to prosocial/pro-organizational motives. Copyright Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2007.

Research on the organizational citizenship behavior continuum and its consequences

“…They thus concluded that IM is a "viable" theoretical approach for explaining OCB in organizations. Snell and Wong (2007) differentiated pro-organizational motives through a qualitative interview study and OCB attributed primarily to IM, i.e. alleged pseudo-OCB.…”

Collective Dynamics of Citizenship Behaviour: What Group Characteristics Promote Group‐Level Helping?

“…Perceptions of integrity reflect unit members' positive appraisal of others' interpersonal and task‐related motivation (Snell and Wong, 2007). Therefore, when unit members believe that other members are not trustworthy in regard to benevolence and integrity, they may become averse to helping others because of fear that their efforts might be exploited (Choi, 2006; Hart et al., 2001).…”

Voice Behavior, Supervisor Attribution and Employee Performance Appraisal

“…For example, employees could offer some practical suggestions to resolve the interpersonal conflicts among colleagues. When supervisors believe that the voice behavior of the subordinates is driven by an altruistic rather than egoistic motive, they tend to regard the subordinates as "good citizens", which results in positive performance appraisal [35,39,40].…”