Specific Organizational Citizenship Behaviours and Organizational Effectiveness: The Development of a Conceptual Heuristic Device

Abstract

Organizational citizenship behaviour has generally been associated with organizational effectiveness. However, recent research has shown that this may not always be the case and that certain types of organizational citizenship behaviour such as compulsory citizenship behaviour, may be inimical to the fulfillment of formal goals and organizational effectiveness. Using military historical and business organizational secondary data, the paper maintains that extreme variance in either organizational (task) or personal (social psychological) support organizational citizenship behaviour generates entropic citizenship behaviour which derails completely the effective accomplishment of formal organizational goals. A general model of organizational citizenship behaviour with entropic citizenship behavior as its novel conceptual boundary is developed in the paper, and four specific propositions with implications for future empirical research are delineated.

Entropic Citizenship Behavior and Sustainability in Urban Organizations: Towards a Theoretical Model

“…However, the heuristic is unable to articulate formally the distribution of personal and organizational citizenship behavior that leads to ECB. It is maintained in the current paper that Theil's [8] "evenness of spread" concept can provide the basis for a sounder, more formal and detailed development of the original Coldwell and Callaghan [23] model. Theil [8] uses Shannon's notion of entropy as a measure of dividedness and dispersion more broadly in his development of his "evenness of spread" entropy concept, and provides the basis of the development of a more formal model of organizational citizenship entropy.…”

“…It follows that the more Entropic Citizenship Behavior (ECB) becomes a group level phenomenon in departments constituting an organization, the greater threat it is to the achievement of its goals and its ultimate sustainability. Very briefly, Coldwell and Callaghan [23] in their study of organizational citizenship behavior, found examples from military history and business of the negative effects of extreme forms of personal or organizational citizenship behavior on organizational performance. Examples of fraternization with the enemy in the First World War where British and German frontline soldiers on both sides became involved in initiating non-lethal war activities that acted out belligerence without harmful intent Axelrod [24] demonstrated the effects of extreme personal oriented citizenship behavior where care for survival overrode the Militia's goal on both sides to wage aggressive and lethal warfare to destroy the enemy.…”

“…The original model proposed by Coldwell and Callaghan [23] for OCB, ECB and organizational effectiveness followed the logic of the Laffer curve. The Laffer curve proposes that at tax rates of 0% and 100%, government collects zero tax revenue.…”

“…The heuristic originally proposed as ECB [23] follows the basic logic of the Laffer curve. The OCB, ECB organizational effectiveness heuristic suggests that at very high levels of personally oriented citizenship behavior and very low levels of organizationally oriented citizenship behavior, a situation of ECB will emerge.…”

Academic citizenship and wellbeing: An exploratory cross-cultural study of South African and Swedish academic perceptions

“…Organ (1988) and other researchers regard the extra-role behaviour that contributes to organisational effectiveness by improving individual and work group performance and organisational morale to be organisational citizenship or 'good soldier' behaviour (Organ 1988;Smith, Organ and Near 1983). The term 'good soldier' was incorporated into the concept of OCB and is regarded as transferable to organisations designed for specific purposes, such as political organisations (Graham 1991), the military from which the concept is derived, and business organisations (Borman, Motowidlo, Rose, and Hanser 1983;Coldwell and Callaghan 2014 Borman's (2004) model, consisting essentially of the two main dimensions of personal and organisational support behaviour (including conscientious initiative as it pertains to both aspects), provides the basis for the development of the quantitative and qualitative instruments used in the study. Conscientious initiative through its duality of relevance to both personal and organisational aspects of OCB can be regarded as its core underlying dimension.…”