Organizational Citizenship Behavior and Contextual Performance

A Special Issue of Human Performance

Walter C. Borman,Stephan J. Motowidlo

• Éditeur: Psychology Press
• Année: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317758983
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: Psychologie
• Sous-sujet: Geschichte & Theorie in der Psychologie

These articles describe ideas about contextual performance, organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), and similar patterns of behavior that have been developed by scholars working from very different research traditions. It seems that the different research traditions are converging on the same notion--that besides formal job requirements, other patterns of behavior are also critical for organizational effectiveness and survival. These other patterns of behavior have been relatively ignored until recently, but now scholars are trying to define them, determine exactly why and how they are important for organizations, and identify their antecedents. The results of these research efforts-- described by articles in this issue--will help to make it possible to develop new conceptual and practical tools for managing these important behaviors and in that way promote human performance and organizational effectiveness.

Generalized Self-Efficacy As a Mediator and Moderator Between Control and Complexity at Work and Personal Initiative: A Longitudinal Field Study in East Germany

Christa Speier and Michael Frese
Department of Psychology
University of Giessen and University of Amsterdam

Personal initiative is one aspect of contextual performance. Combining the perspective of occupational socialization with the concept of self-efficacy, a general model is proposed and tested that views generalized work-related self-efficacy as an intervening variable in the relation between control and complexity at work and personal initiative. As part of a longitudinal study (N = 463 to 543) in East Germany, two different functions of self-efficacy as an intervening variable were examined: (a) self-efficacy as a mediator and (b) self-efficacy as a moderator. It was found that the relation between control and complexity and concurrent initiative is partly mediated by self-efficacy. In addition, self-efficacy functions as a moderator of the relation between control at work and retrospective initiative. Implications for the general discussion of self-efficacy and contextual performance are suggested.

Personal initiative is a behavior syndrome resulting in an individual’s taking an active and self-starting approach to work and going beyond what is formally required in a given job. More specifically, personal initiative is characterized by the following aspects: (a) is consistent with the organization’s mission, (b) has a long-term focus, (c) is goal oriented and action oriented, (d) is persistent in the face of barriers and setbacks, and (e) is self-starting and proactive (for a more detailed discussion of the concept, see Frese, Fay, Hilburger, Leng, & Tag, 1997; Frese, Kring, Soose, & Zempel, 1996). An individual with high personal initiative would, for example, look into production problems and inform the supervisor of difficulties at work.

This concept is important because it has been shown to be related to the unemployed getting a job, need for achievement, action orientation, problem-(instead of emotion-) focused coping with stress, making career plans and executing them, and wanting to be and being self-employed (Frese et al., 1997).

This article closely examines the mechanisms involved in the development of personal initiative by combining the perspective of occupational socialization (Frese, 1982) with the concept of self-efficacy (Bandura, 1977,1986). A general model that views generalized work-related self-efficacy as an intervening variable in this socialization process is proposed and tested. Our findings should lead to a better understanding of the determinants of personal initiative that in turn may serve as the basis for practical interventions to enhance personal initiative at work.

Relation Between Contextual Performance and Personal Initiative

Initiative is one instance of contextual performance. Taking Borman and Motowidlo’s (1993) approach as a starting point, contextual performance and personal initiative can be said to have the following points in common: (a) they do not directly relate to the technical core, (b) they are common (and equally useful) to all jobs, (c) they relate to volition, and (d) they refer to extra-role activities. Thus, the smooth functioning of the organization (Organ, 1988) is supported by contextual performance and this concept should include initiative.

Extending contextual performance to include personal initiative leads to a better and more well-rounded concept because personal initiative is an important addition to those constructs that are traditionally discussed under the rubric of contextual performance, for example, organizational citizenship behavior (OCB; Organ, 1988) or organizational spontaneity (George & Brief, 1992). First, personal initiative emphasizes the proactive nature of contextual performance. Some of the operationalizations of OCB seem to emphasize the passive and conformistic side more strongly, particularly in the factor “conformity” (Eastman, 1994).

Second, measures of contextual performance (e.g., Motowidlo & van Scotter, 1994) take the tasks at work as given at this point. Personal initiative may actually change the task itself. It may sound like a paradox that contextual performance (which is not directed to doing the task) should change the task. However, this is actually the case for OCB as well because it may lead to task enrichment. But this point has not been emphasized up to now. Thus, task changes may be an outcome of contextual performance. However, initiative is necessary to achieve these task changes.

Third, much of contextual performance has relied on supervisors’ judgments. Although this is an obvious advantage to approaches that rely on one-source information typical of much of questionnaire research, there are also disadvantages. These become particularly evident when considering research on initiative. Initiative threatens the status quo (by suggesting new ways of doing things) and may, therefore, be rejected by supervisors. This point is important when doing studies in Eastern Europe because supervisors tend to be authoritarian and to punish initiative there (Schultz-Gambard & Altschuh, 1993; cf. also Pearce, Branyicki, & Bukacsi, 1994). Thus, OCB may emphasize the short-term positive social lubrication at work, whereas personal initiative aims for the long-term survival of the organization.

Fourth, by investigating initiative, it is possible to relate issues of contextual performance to entrepreneurship or intrapreneurship and thus open up an additional corpus of empirical findings of high importance (Hisrich, 1990) for the study of contextual performance.

Finally, to our knowledge, there has been no study on self-efficacy and contextual performance although self-efficacy is plausibly related to contextual performance in general and initiative in particular.

The Concept of Generalized Work-Related Self-Efficacy

Self-efficacy is defined as “people’s judgements of their capabilities to organize and execute courses of action required to attain designated types of performances” (Bandura, 1986, p. 391). Bandura suggests that self-efficacy has an important impact on human action and performance. It determines the initial decision to perform a behavior, the effort expended, and the persistence in the face of obstacles. Empirical studies have established a relation between self-efficacy and a wide range of human behaviors (e.g., Barling & Beattie, 1983; Stumpf, Brief, & Hartman, 1987; Taylor, Locke, Lee, & Gist, 1984). A recent meta-analysis (Sadri & Robertson, 1993) showed that self-efficacy is positively related both to performance and to choice of behavior in the context of organizational behavior.

Self-efficacy varies in generality (Bandura, 1986). As Bandura stated, “people may judge themselves efficacious only in certain domains of functioning or across a wide range of activities and situations” (Bandura, 1986, p. 396). Despite Bandura’s emphasis on high specificity and high malleability of self-efficacy, we see self-efficacy within the wider concept of Rotter’s (1966,1975) generalized beliefs that Rotter used as a conceptualization of personality variables (cf. Eden & Kinnar, 1991). Two reasons speak for a conceptualization of generalized self-efficacy when predicting initiative. First, following Rotter’s argument (1966, 1975), generalized expectations have an impact on behavior, especially in new and ambiguous situations. Because personal initiative implies that one acts in new and ambiguous situations, generalized expectations are of particular importance here. Second, it follows from the perspective of occupational socialization that the effects of work conditions tend to generalize from the original situation (e.g., Kohn & Schooler, 1982). For example, if the work situation provides opportunities to work on challenging tasks, a person does not only learn that he or she can master these specific tasks, but, additionally, should develop a more general sense of mastery, that is, generalized self-efficacy.

Our study was concerned with personal initiative at work; therefore, self-efficacy was conceptualized as generalized work-related expectation. Thus, our concept is on a medium level of generality that is between a specific concept, for example, of asking whether or not one is able to do a certain task, and a highly generalized concept, for example, asking whether or not one has the capabilities to handle difficult job situations in general. Our concept of work-related generalized self-efficacy should correlate with highly generalized self-efficacy expectations. It should also be related to work-related self-esteem, because self-esteem is a general evaluation of one’s own competencies to deal with work (Gist & Mitchell, 1992; Mohr, 1986).

Although there is a relation between the two constructs of self-efficacy and optimism, they should not be confused. Optimism refers to positive thinking, that is, the belief that one will generally experience good outcomes in life (Scheier & Carver, 1985). Thus, this concept does not presuppose that one has to be active to bring about the positive events. Self-efficacy, on the other hand, refers to the notion that one can bring about positive results through one’s own actions. Because both optimism and self-efficacy (at least implicitly) refer to positive outcomes, there should be some relation between optimism and self-efficacy. But because the process by which this positive outcome is achieved is different, the correlation between measures of these two constructs should not be high.

Self-Efficacy and Personal Initiative

Because personal initiative refers to complex actions that are difficult to maintain despite obstacles, it can be hypothesized that self-efficacy is important for personal initiative. This is so because self-efficacy helps to increase the probability of performing a difficult action and increases the effort and persistence to pursue this action. Conversely, low self-efficacy should impede personal initiative because low self-efficacious individuals tend to avoid challenging situations and to give up quickly in the face of obstacles.

Control and Complexity at Work and Self-Efficacy

People in East Germany are often said to show less personal initiative and self-efficacy than people in West Germany. Frese, Kring, et al. (1996) found empirical evidence for this hypothesis. Their findings suggest that this difference between East and West Germany is mainly due to occupational socialization effects, with control and complexity at work being important in this socialization process.

Bandura (1986) proposed that self-efficacy is developed throughout a person’s learning history. He described four broad sources of information involved in the development of self-efficacy: enactive mastery, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion, and physiological arousal, with enactive mastery being the most important one. In the work context, enactive mastery can be experienced when one is able to make decisions, to work on challenging tasks, and to make use of one’s competencies. Within the concept of occupational socialization (Frese, 1982), enactive mastery implies that there are work conditions that lead to the development of self-efficacy. The most important work conditions are control and complexity at work. Control implies that important decisions can be made by the incumbent. Complexity means performing challenging tasks (Frese, 1989). If control at work is low (nearly every step at work is prescribed), doing the task provides little information about one’s personal effectiveness. Thus, there are few mastery experiences, and, consequently, few opportunities for developing self-efficacy. Complex tasks provide opportunities to apply individual skills and knowledge, thus also serving as a source of experiences relevant for self-efficacy. It follows that both control and complexity at work should have an impact on self-efficacy.

A General Model of the Relation Between Control and Complexity and Personal Initiative: Self-Efficacy as an Intervening Variable

A general model that combines the expected relations between control and complexity, self-efficacy, and personal initiative at work is presented in Figure 1. Self-efficacy is conceptualized as an intervening variable in the relation between control and complexity as predictors and personal initiative at work as criterion. Mediator and moderator functions of an intervening variable may be differentiated (Frese, 1985; James & Brett, 1984).

The mediator function of self-efficacy links the work situation to personal initiative (see “a” in Figure 1). Such a relation implies that control and complexity have a direct effect on self-efficacy, and self-efficacy has a direct effect on personal initiative. Thus, control and complexity have an impact on personal initiative because they help to increase self-ef...

Table des matières

• Cover Page
• Contents
• Copyright Page
• Introduction: Organizational Citizenship Behavior and Contextual Performance
• A Theory of Individual Differences in Task and Contextual Performance
• Organizational Citizenship Behavior: It's Construct Clean-Up Time
• Task Performance and Contextual Performance: The Meaning for Personnel Selection Research
• Beyond Job Attitudes: A Personality and Social Psychology Perspective on the Causes of Organizational Citizenship Behavior
• Impact of Organizational Citizenship Behavior on Organizational Performance: A Review and Suggestions for Future Research
• Organizational Spontaneity in Context
• Generalized Self-Efficacy As a Mediator and Moderator Between Control and Complexity at Work and Personal Initiative: A Longitudinal Field Study in East Germany