Diane Bergeron

Organizational Citizenship Behavior and Career Outcomes The Cost of Being a Good Citizen

Existing research suggests that relationships among organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), task performance, and individual career outcomes are necessarily positive. The authors question this assumption and hypothesize that in organizations with outcome-based control systems, time spent on OCB comes at a cost to task performance. Building on this idea, the authors propose not only that time spent on task performance is more important than time spent on OCB in determining career outcomes (i.e., performance evaluation, salary increase, advancement speed, promotion) in an outcome-based control system but also that time spent on OCB may negatively impact career outcomes. Results based on archival data from 3,680 employees in a professional services firm lend some support for these ideas. Specifically, time spent on task performance was more important than OCB in determining all four career outcomes. Further, controlling for time spent on task performance, employees who spent more time on OCB had lower salary increases and advanced more slowly than employees who spent less time on OCB. These findings suggest that relationships between OCB and outcomes are more complex than originally thought and that boundary conditions may apply to conclusions drawn about the outcomes of OCB.

Disabling the able: Stereotype threat and women's work performance.

Stereotype threat is the risk of confirming a negative stereotype about one’s group as being true of oneself. This laboratory simulation investigated the effect of stereotype threat on women’s performance of a managerial task and explored gender role identification as a moderator of the stereotype threat effect. Specifically, the effect of the stereotype that women are less competent than men in managerial and executive positions was examined. Male and female participants performed a managerial in-basket task in a stereotypically masculine or feminine sex role-typed condition. As hypothesized, women underperformed men in the masculine sex role-typed condition, but not in the feminine sex role-typed condition. These effects were moderated by masculine gender role identification, thus establishing a boundary condition for the stereotype threat effect.

The Dual Effects of Organizational Citizenship Behavior: Relationships to Research Productivity and Career Outcomes in Academe

Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) has been shown to be important for organizational effectiveness, yet less is known about the relationship between OCB and objective outcomes for individuals. We investigate the relationship between OCB and both short-term and longer term outcomes within the context of an outcome-based reward system. We also investigate a type of OCB specific to professional occupations, namely, professional service OCB. Using resource allocation and social exchange theories, we hypothesize that OCB directed internally to the employing organization may have a negative impact on individuals’ productivity and career outcomes while engaging in professional service OCB would be positively related to these outcomes. Results from a survey of 622 faculty members in research universities provide support for these hypotheses. Future research directions are discussed.

When Employees Break Bad: Examining the Dark Side of Citizenship Behaviors at Work

Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) has garnered a strong amount of empirical attention, often focusing purely on the various benefits that enactment of OCB yields for employees and their org...