Organizational citizenship behavior spans altruism, civic virtue, sportsmanship, and conscientiousness

Evidence

Organizational Citizenship Behavior Nineteen self-reported OCB questions were incorporated into the survey, combining items developed by Podsakoff et al. (1990) and Podsakoff, Ahearne, and McKenzie (1997). The questions included in the present study were intended to tap into four types of citizenship behavior identified by Organ (1988). The four types of OCB measured were (1) altruism—behaviors that have the effect of helping others with organizationally relevant tasks; (2) civic virtue—behaviors that indicate that the individual participates in, or is concerned about the life of the organization; (3) sportsmanship—willingness by the employee to tolerate less-thanideal circumstances without complaining; and (4) conscientiousness— behaviors that go beyond minimum role requirements in the areas of attendance, obeying rules, and so forth (Podsakoff et al., 1990). A 5-point Likert scale, ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree, was used to measure OCB. The Chronbach’s alpha reliability coefficient for the 19 items used in this study was .79. — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 1820

Categorization

• DEFINE: OCB is broken into its four canonical subconstructs, useful as a compact operational definition.