OCB: Construct clean-up

Reference paper:

Organ, D. W. (1997). Organizational Citizenship Behavior: It’s Construct Clean-Up Time. Human Performance, 10(2), 85–97. doi:10.1207/s15327043hup1002_2

Abstract:

The author argues that it no longer seems fruitful to regard OCB as 'extra-role' , 'beyond the job' or 'unrewarded by the formal system'. A more tenable position that defines OCB along the lines of 'contextual performance' (Borman and Motowidlo, 1993), along with repositioning of the construct, is offered.

(A 50-word quick summary from my understanding)

Quick Notes/queries:

(For my further delving)

Definition

• Can OCBs be conceptualized as behaviors resulting from rights and responsibilities assumed by employee owing to his/her organizational membership? [Note that the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines a citizen as a member of political community who enjoys the rights and assumes the duties of membership. The encyclopedia defines rights as entitlements (not) to perform certain actions, or (not) to be in certain states; or entitlements that others (not) perform certain actions or (not) be in certain states.] In an organizational context, what is perceived by employees as rights and as duties? Do individual and contextual factors influence this perception? Are individuals, who perceive greater entitlements (owing to various reasons such as nature of job, contractual obligations, status or position) or greater moral commitments or obligations, more likely to engage in behaviors such as speaking up, whistle-blowing and helping?

Rewards

• Can OCBs be defined as behaviors that are considered 'worthy of formal recognition' by the organization and its members, rather than as behaviors that are not directly, explicitly or contractually recognized by formal reward system? Does this conceptualization address the problem with noncontractual rewards as outlined in the current study?
• Further to above conceptualization, what if such recognition worthy behaviors are not limited by whether or not they are perceived to be discretionary in nature? This definition evidently precludes the existing distinction of behaviors such as ones contributing to high productivity, technical excellence, innovative solutions, from the behaviors such as helping, civic virtue and compliance. But by specifically bundling all behaviors worthy of formal recognition into one, does it not address the problem that even behaviors contributing technical excellence, high productivity or innovation cannot be guaranteed by contractual obligation?

Motives

• How are prosocial motivations related to OCBs?
• Does it matter if OCB behaviors are intrinsically motivated or not? How are 'wanting to...' (pleasure-based) OCBs different from 'having to...' (pressured-based) OCBs?
• How is impression-management motivation related to OCBs?

Target

• How different are OCBs targeted towards individual and organization in terms of nature, antecedents and consequences? Do certain individual characteristics have stronger dispositional propensities towards OCB-I (for ex: agreeableness) as against OCB-O (for ex: conscientiousness)?

Similar behaviors

• How are proactive behaviors related to OCBs? Does proactivity span both in-role and extra-role behaviors? Are some OCBs not proactive in nature?
• How are prosocial behaviors related to OCBs? Are prosocial behaviors a subset of OCBs?

Others

• What are some extant operational definitions of organizational effectiveness?
• How does job design affect OCBs?