Impact of organizational structure and social support on pro-social rule breaking: A frontline perspective

Abstract

Scholars over the past two decades have shed significant light on employee pro-social rule-breaking behaviors. Yet, the organizational and contextual variables and their influence on these behaviors are not properly considered. This paper focuses on frontline pro-social rule breaking and examines the influence of two elements of organizational environment; namely, organizational structure and social support, on the three types of pro-social rule breaking, using cross sectional survey data of frontline employees of two Indian-scheduled commercial banks. The results show that organizational structure and social support have differential influences on job-oriented, customer-oriented, and co-worker-oriented pro-social rule breaking. Researchers deliberated the impact of structural elements; namely, participation in decision-making, hierarchy of authority, job codification, rule enforcement, and perception of social support, thus identifying the drivers and inhibitors of the behaviors. Paper also offers guidelines for managing the three types of pro-social rule breaking via managerial practices and policy interventions.

Servant Leadership and Followers Prosocial Rule-Breaking: The Mediating Role of Public Service Motivation

“…Essential civil service organizations have currently imposed multiple complex policies and rules for ensuring traditional civil services and for preventing the adverse socio-economic impacts of the pandemic ( Gofen and Lotta, 2021 ). Researchers demonstrate that even well-established policies and rules have always shortcomings and that the frontline workers are even more aware of the needs and wicked problems of the societies than the policymakers themselves ( Fleming, 2020 ; John and Shafi, 2020 ). Therefore, there are multiple avenues for rule-breaking for the frontline workers to break rules for prosocial reasons.…”

“…This study has several practical implications. As stated employees, PSRB becomes highly essential for frontline civil workers to ensure efficient civil service provision ( Fleming, 2020 ; John and Shafi, 2020 ), particularly in situations when civil servants are operating under a complex policy and rule environment as the continuing crises of the pandemic. Highly passionate frontline workers know the needs and problems of societies more than the policy and rule makers themselves, and therefore frontline workers as CRTF may break the formal policies and rules to ensure efficient service provision.…”

“…Prosocial rule-breaking was measured using the 13-item scale developed by Dahling et al (2012) . Some examples of the items are “I break organizational rules/policies to do my job more efficiently,” “I disobey organization regulations that result in inefficiency for the organization,” and “I assist other employees with their work by breaking organizational rules.” This scale is recently tested in Pakistan by Asadullah et al (2019) and in the subcontinent of India and Pakistan by John and Shafi (2020) . The Cronbach’s alpha and the second-order CFA values of the scale were [α = 0.92, χ 2 (52) = 139.18, χ 2 / df = 2.18, p < 0.001, CFI = 0.97, TLI = 0.94, RMSEA = 0.05].…”

Servant leadership and employee prosocial rule-breaking: The underlying effects of psychological safety and compassion at work

“…PSRB is referred to as the employees’ violation of written policies and rules with motives to primarily promote the interests of the organizations [ 6 ]. The prevailing written rules have deficiencies and are continuously becoming outdated because of the fast technological innovations and other unexpected changes in the external environment [ 51 , 52 ]. Therefore, employees frequently engage in PSRB particularly on occasions when they notice that the formal rules and procedures are inflexible and outdated for their work efficiency.…”

“…citizens) in off timings, and to facilitate other stakeholders of organizations [ 7 , 53 ]. Bureaucracy is usually rule overburdened and the frontline public servants have first-hand information regarding the issues at the workplace [ 4 ], therefore they are highly likely to break formal rules which restrict rather than promote their service efficiency [ 5 , 51 ]. PSRB has received the attention of scholars and practitioners for improving employees and organizational outcomes.…”