OCB and Personality

 

Citizenship behaviours are often mentioned in connection with personality. Thus a valuable question in the field of OCB is whether OCB is influenced by the actor's personality parameters (dispositional), or is a reaction to a particular situation such as the character of co-workers, managers, the organisation etc. (situational) that, as mentioned above, Schnake (1991) dubbed as 'environmental factors'. Arieli (1999) claims that the dispositional aspect is the dominant aspect in the research of OCB, i.e. there is a significant relationship between a person's personality and the OCB that he performs. This relationship may be on the cognitive level and/or on the affective level. In contrast, Organ (1994) presented the results of studies relating to the connection between OCB and the 'big five' personality dimensions: 'extraversion', 'neuroticism', 'agreeableness', 'conscientiousness', 'openness to experience'. In these studies no strong, consistent connection was found between OCB and these dimensions, apart from conscientiousness. Support for the positive relationship between conscientiousness and OCB is also provided by O' Connell, Doverspike, Norris-Watts and Hattrup (2001), in light of a study conducted among Mexican retailers which examined the antecedents of OCB. A similar result was also reported by Organ and Ryan (1995) in a meta-analytic review. They found that 'conscientiousness' and 'agreeableness' were the strongest predictors for OCB. In contrast, the findings of Beaty, Cleveland and Murphy (2001) who examined the relation between personality and contextual performance in 'strong' versus 'weak' situations, showed that the correlation between them alters in situations in which there are different expectations for performance.

 

 

 

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