Predicting Organizational Citizenship Behavior from The Functional Analysis and Role Identity Perspectives: Further Evidence in Spanish Employees

Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) is a prosocial activity with similarities to volunteerism. The purpose of this work is to contribute new evidence about the relevance to OCB of two models of sustained volunteerism, functional analysis and role identity theory. A total of 983 Spanish employees at 49 organizations completed surveys measuring amount of OCB, motives for engaging in citizenship behavior, and the degree to which respondents developed an organizational citizen role identity. The results showed that both motives and role identity were significant predictors of OCB, with motive partially mediating the role identity-OCB relationship. The findings suggest that similar mechanisms are involved in sustaining volunteerism and OCB. El comportamiento ciudadano organizacional es una conducta prosocial que presenta algunas similitudes con el voluntariado. El objetivo del presente estudio es aportar nueva evidencia empírica sobre la importancia del enfoque funcional y el modelo de la identidad de rol, dos modelos del voluntariado sostenido, para explicar este tipo de comportamiento. Un total de 983 trabajadores españoles cumplimentaron un cuestionario que evaluaba la frecuencia de estos comportamientos, los motivos para ponerlos en práctica y el grado en el que habían desarrollado una identidad de ciudadano organizacional. Los resultados hallados muestran que tanto los motivos como la identidad de rol son predictores significativos del comportamiento ciudadano organizacional, y que los motivos ejercen una mediación parcial de la relación existente entre la identidad de rol y este tipo de comportamiento. Estos hallazgos sugieren que mecanismos similares permiten explicar el voluntariado sostenido y el comportamiento ciudadano organizacional.

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