Eliciting OCB through Human Resource Management Practices: Review of the Extant Literature

Transcription

1 Eliciting OCB through Human Resource Management Practices: Review of the Extant Literature Bambale A.J. College Of Business, Universiti Utara Malaysia Shamsudin F.M. College Of Business, Universiti Utara Malaysia Subramaniam C. College Of Business, Universiti Utara Malaysia, Abstract This paper is an attempt to gather various organizational factors identified to have influence in eliciting OCB. This paper is a content analysis that provided a comprehensive and updated development about numerous organizational factors that positively affect employees which in turn elicit OCB. The paper has identified several HRM practices that positively affect OCB in different organizational contexts. HR practices including conducive work atmosphere, equity, empowerment, training and development, job description, socialization, evaluation and rewards were among important HRM practices reported to have positive impact on employee work attitudes and behaviors. These HR practices were demonstrated to influence job satisfaction, commitment, and eventually OCB. The paper is significant to both the theory and practice of HRM. Theoretically, the paper has provided an updated framework for understanding theoretical contributions of various authors to the development of the subject areas of HRM and OCB. This paper has also provided insights for further theory development of both HRM and OCB. Practically, this paper has unveiled updated information concerning HR practices that enhance OCB performance. This paper provided insights into new research directions for further development of HRM theory and practice. Key words: Human Resource Management, Human Resource Practices, Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB). 1

2 Introduction ICBI 2011 One of the most widely studied topics in organizational behavior research in contemporary times is organizational citizenship behavior (Podsakoff and Mackenzie, (1993); Emmerik, Jawahar & Stone (2005). The concept was first introduced by Bateman & Organ (1983). After Bateman & Organ s conceptualization of OCB, the construct was reported to have been refined and strengthened by a number of researchers (Jahangir, Mohammad & Mahmudul, 2004; Khalid & Ali, 2005; Podsakoff & Mackenzie, 1993). OCB construct development was related to the work of Chester Barnard s (1938) concept of the willingness to cooperate; Katz s (1964) and Katz & Kahn s (1966, 1978) distinction between dependable role performance and innovative and spontaneous behaviors. Katz (1964) and Katz and Kahn (1966) explored the behavioral requirements necessary for organizational functioning as innovative and spontaneous activity directed toward achievement of organizational objectives, but that go beyond role requirements, thus leading to a good background for development of OCB construct. Organ (1988) was the first to level employee behaviors beyond the call of duty as organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs). OCB construct was originally defined as individual behavior that is discretionary, not directly or explicitly recognized by the formal reward system, and that in the aggregate promotes the effective functioning of the organization (Organ, 1988, p. 4). Similarly, Allen, Barnard, Rush and Russell (2000) defines organizational citizenship behavior as that which embodies the cooperative and constructive gestures that are neither mandated by formal job role prescriptions nor directly or contractually compensated for by the formal organizational reward system. Research indicates that OCB is beneficial to organizations (Bolino & Turnley, 2003). OCB is essential and critical to organizational functioning (Bateman & Organ, 1983; Organ, 1988). It is widely believed that OCB improves organizational efficiency and effectiveness (Organ, 1988; Podsakoff, Mackenzie, Paine & Bachrach, 2000; Podsakoff & MacKenzie, 1997; Williams & Anderson, 1991). OCB has also been reported to increase social capital and enhance organizational functioning (Bolino, Turnley & Bloodgood, 2002). It was demonstrated that when employees perform extra-role tasks that help co-workers, supervisors, and the organization to achieve results, organizations benefit in the form of improvements in productivity and overall performance (Wright, 2008). Furthermore, OCB can result to organizational efficiency on allocation of financial and human resources (Koster & Sanders, 2006). OCB is also perceived as desirable because such behavior is thought to 2

3 increase available resources and decrease the need for more formal and costly mechanisms of control (Organ, 1988). Considering the immense importance of OCB in organizational life, many studies have investigated its antecedents (Podsakoff et al., 2000). Podsakoff et al. has summarized OCB antecedents into four main categories namely individual characteristics, task characteristics, organizational characteristics and leadership behaviors. Although many studies about OCB antecedents and their classifications along individual, task and organizational characteristics as well as leadership behaviors have been reported in the literature, the classification still appear to be bogus and ambiguous to discern. Hence further refinement and classification of OCB antecedents aimed at logical arrangement and reporting of the OCB antecedents may be important to OCB researchers and practitioners. This paper is an attempt to: (1) identify and classify available human resource management (HRM) factors found to have significant relationship with OCB; (2) identify human resource management (HRM) factors that have not been explored in the OCB research, but have potentials to elicit employee OCB. This new classification will specifically help to provide a better insight into how human resource management (HRM) practices influence employees OCB as well as identifying research gaps regarding HRM factors and OCB relationships. This paper is divided into five sections. Section one discusses the general introduction about the concept of OCB and its importance. Section two discusses the role of HRM function in organizations. Section three discusses human resource management (HRM) factors and their relationships with employee OCB. Section four discusses significance and implication of this paper, and finally section five concludes the paper. The human resource management (HRM) practices Human Resource Management (HRM) function was earlier limited to record-keeping and maintenance only (Ferris, Hochwarter, Buckley, Harrell-Cook, Frink, 1999). Recent development shows a somewhat general consensus that HRM has four key functions namely: staffing, development, reward and evaluation (Toh, Morgeson & Campion, 2008). Employee performance is a function of both ability and motivation (Huselid, 1995). Thus if organizations want to continuously achieve higher performance, it becomes obvious that management pay a great deal of concern to HRM practices. 3

4 Contemporary organizations are challenged increasingly in competitive and rapidly changing environment characterized by a diverse labor market, advancement in information and communication technologies, globalization, deregulation and continuous changing customer demands. To be successful, an organization must be able to improve performance by reducing costs, creating new products and processes, enhancing quality and productivity, and increasing speed to market (Luthans & Sommers, 2005). In this regard, HRM practices play significant role in influencing organizational members to engage in more productive behaviors. Harter, Schmidt and Hayes (2002) argue that effective management of a firm's human resources could generate and increase knowledge, motivation, synergy, and commitment, resulting in a source of sustained competitive advantage for the organization. Similarly, Huselid (1995) argues that HRM practices represent one avenue that can be used by organizations to shape their employees' attitudes and behaviors. Specifically, Huselid (1995) and MacDuffie (1995) have found positive relationship between the HR practices or what others call best practices and firm performance. Additionally, HRM has been reported to contribute to firm performance through information quality (Preuss, 2003), intellectual capital (Youndt & Snell, 2004), and organizational culture (Den Hartog & Verburg, 2004). Extant HRM literature reveals that there are three main perspectives on HRM practices, namely: universalistic approach, contingency approach and configurational approach. The universalistic approach states that there are a set of best practices, which when executed could lead to organizational improvements (Kochan & Osterman, 1994; Pfeffer, 1994). The contingency approach is concerned with contextualizing the various HRM practices to different organizational settings and strategies (Arthur, 1994; Youndt et al., 1996). The configurational approach is concerned with a good fit between various HRM practices and organizational strategy which would improve the HRM-firm performance relationship (Becker and Gerhart, 1996). Given the need for better management of human resource of the firm and the development of high-performance paradigm of HRM, Gupta and Singh (2010) have identified a set of practices that have the potential to contribute to high-performance of organizations. These high performance HR practices include: empowerment, merit-based promotions & performance-based pay, competency development, information sharing, selective staffing, flexible job design and grievance handling procedures. This paper is limited to review of the literature of Gupta & Singh s (2010) identification of high performance HR practices on their 4

5 relationship with OCB. Most of the high performance human resource practices have been found to have significant relationships with OCB (Dizgah, Gilaninia, Alipour & Asgari, 2011), while others have been shown to have potential for eliciting employee OCB (Gupta & Singh, 2010). Therefore, this paper reviews HRM practices, including Gupta & Singh s (2010) classified high performance HR practices and discusses both actual and proposed relationships with OCB. Hence this paper is concerned with two types of review. Firstly, specific review of high performance HR practices and their relationship with OCB along Gupta & Singh s (2010) classification, and secondly general review of HR practices and their relationships with OCB. High-Performance (HRM) Practices And OCB High performance organizations represents organizations devoted to ensuring that their employees are equipped adequately to have the necessary information, skills and incentives make decision essential for innovation, improvement and rapid response to change (Gupta & Singh, 2010). Therefore, organizations that seek to be high performance were believed to be employing what HRM professionals and authors refer as high-commitment, highinvolvement and high-performance HRM practices (Appelbaum, Bailey, Berg, & Kalleberg 2000; Lawler 1986; Walton 1985). All these are HRM approaches that are used to represent attempts by organizations to achieve superior performance. High-performance HR practices are concerned with: (1) high relative skills of the workforce; (2) the opportunity to use those skills (e.g. employee discretion and participation in teams); and (3) incentives such as performance-based pay to induce commitment and discretionary effort; (4) the use of advanced information-based technologies that require a computerliterate workforce (Appelbaum et al, 2000; Delery & Doty, 1996; MacDuffie, 1995). Best human resource management practices have two main characteristics: (1) having capacity to improve organizational performance, and (2) having to be generalizable (Becker & Gerhart, 1996). Lee & Kim (2010) report that, after a survey of 209 employees in 19 firms in Korea, high-performance HR practices or commitment-based HRM are positively related to OCBs. The study also reports that psychological contract types, but not by psychological contract fulfillment was the mediator of the relationship between commitment-based HRM and OCBs. 5

6 Gupta & Singh s (2010) High Performance HR Practices Other Human Resource Management Practices Empowerment Merit-based promotions & performancebased pay Competency development Information sharing Selective staffing Flexible job design Formal grievance procedures Role clarity Centralization Organization right Profit sharing Organizational justice Work environment Organizational culture Organizational climate Organizational socialization Job involvement Task variables Figure 1: Gupta & Singh s (2010) High Performance Hr Practices and Resource Management Practices High Performance Hr Practices High-performance HR practices are concerned with high relative skills of the workforce and the opportunity to use those skills (e.g. employee discretion and participation in teams); and (3) incentives such as performance-based pay to induce commitment and discretionary effort; (4) the use of advanced information-based technologies that require a computer-literate workforce (Appelbaum et al, 2000; Delery & Doty, 1996; MacDuffie, 1995). Best human resource management practices have two main characteristics: (1) having capacity to improve organizational performance, and (2) having to be generalizable (Becker & Gerhart, 1996). Lee & Kim (2010) report that, after a survey of 209 employees in 19 firms in Korea, highperformance HR practices or commitment-based HRM are positively related to OCBs. The study also reports that psychological contract types, but not by psychological contract fulfillment was the mediator of the relationship between commitment-based HRM and OCBs. Gupta and Singh (2010) have identified seven HR practices that have been reported to contribute to high-performance of organizations. However, these HR practices have either significantly related to employee OCB or indicated the potential to contribute to highperformance of organizations. These high performance HR practices include: empowerment, 6

7 merit-based promotions & performance-based pay, competency development, information sharing, selective staffing, flexible job design and formal grievance procedures. First HR practice is empowerment. Short, Greer and Melvin (1994) defines empowerment as a process whereby employees develop the competence to take charge of their own growth and resolve their own problems. It aims at decentralization of decision-making process, thereby allowing employees to participate in decision making processes, problem-solving units and work teams. Boglera and Somech (2004) have empirically found significant influence of teacher empowerment on OCB. The findings demonstrate that teacher empowerment dimensions of status, impact and self efficacy have shown significant influence on OCB. However, only the decision-making dimension did not show significant influence. Need for recognition is a fundamental driver of human behavior and a great source of motivation (Guest 1997; Maslow, 1954). Merit-based promotions refer to non-monetary rewards through which an organization tangibly demonstrates its appreciation of quality work and achievements (Gupta & Singh, 2010). However, rewarding employees based on their performance enhances firm performance (Lawler 1986). Performance-based pay is the second HR practice considered in this section. Gupta & Singh (2010) recognized that performance-based pay may encourage an employee to exhibit discretionary behaviors. They further argue that based on expectancy theory (Vroom 1964), performance-based rewards may motivate employees to exhibit discretionary behaviors that lead to successful completion of projects. Leana & Van Buren (1999) argued that performance-based compensation leads to development of high-quality exchange relationships leading employees to assume the role of good organizational agents thereby encouraging them to spend time doing things for the organization and its members and less time doing things benefiting the individual but not the organization (OCB). The proposition and arguments of the kind of relationship between performance-based pay and OCB were empirically examined and have been found to be positive (Husin, Chelladurai & Musa, 2011; Rubin, Bommer & Bachrach, 2010; Walumbwa, Wu, & Orwa, 2008). This kind of finding has a serious implication to the theoretical foundation of OCBs that the behaviors are not supposed to be rewarded but are only elicited by employees to assist organization or coworkers (Organ, 1988). This finding therefore has established that reward contingent on the employee performance does influence OCB. 7

8 Third HR practice is competency development. Competency development simply refers to employees skills enhancement (Gupta & Singh, 2010). This includes performance appraisal, training and career management practices of the organization. (Gupta & Singh further states that competency development practices enable the employees to understand that they are valued and that the organization is investing in their development so that they may contribute to organizational performance in the long run. On the relationship between performance appraisal and OCB, results show that a sense of fairness and satisfaction in the process of performance appraisal and method of performance appraisal affect employee OCB (Matiaske & Weller, 2005). Employee training is a systematic approach to learning to improve individual, team and organizational effectiveness (Kraiger & Ford, 2007). On the other hand, development is a process of gradual growth to improve individual, team and organizational effectiveness (Garavan, 1997). Employee training is regarded as one of the most widespread human resources (HR) practices (Boselie, Dietz & Boon, 2005). It has been reported that training & development opportunities such as work-life policies and empowerment practices have significant positive relationship with OCB (Ahmad, 2011; Husin, Chelladurai & Musa, 2011; Noor, 2009). Specifically, Ahmad (2011) has further demonstrated that support for training, motivation to learn, training environment and benefits of training are all significantly correlated with all components of OCB (i.e., altruism, conscientiousness, civic virtue and courtesy) except sportsmanship. This suggests the need for organizations in to create conducive environment for learning to employees. Similarly, Dysvik & Kuvaas (2008) reveal significant positive relationship between perceived training opportunities and citizenship behaviors, and this relationship has been fully mediated by intrinsic motivation. The intrinsic motivation was also found to moderate the relationship between perceived training opportunities and organizational citizenship behaviors. The moderation reveals a positive relationship for those with high intrinsic motivation. In a related scenario, a study was conducted on the relationship between union leader training and union members OCB. Skarlicki & Latham s (1997) study reveals that union leader training significantly increases members' perceptions of their leaders' fairness as well as union members' citizenship behavior directed both toward the union as an organization (OCBO) and fellow union members (OCBI). However, results reveal that organizational justice was found to partially mediate the effect of the training on OCBO, but not OCBI. 8

9 Specifically, Skarlicki and Latham (1996) demonstrate that training union leaders in organizational justice principles increase union members' OCB directed at both the union as an organization (OCBO) and individual members of the union (OCBI). Fourthly, information sharing is another important HR practice considered in this paper. Information is an important dimension of high-involvement approach to management (Lawler, 1986). The information shared includes information about the quantity unit output, quality of business unit output, costs, revenues, profitability and customer reactions. Information sharing practices is believed to have strong influence on the internalization of firm goals and values by employees, enhance feelings of mutual trust, and make individuals feel important to the company (Meyer & Allen, 1997; Guerrero & Baraud-Didier, 2004). Additionally, Konrad (2006) argues that information system that provides employees with data that is timely and relevant to their particular work process can influence them personally by either expending or withholding effort, thus information sharing can be a potential OCB antecedent. However, despite the importance of information sharing, no literature on the relationship between information sharing and OCB has been found yet. Fifthly, selective staffing is yet another important HR practice. Selective staffing refers to all those practices that aid careful selection of human resource (Gupta & Singh, 2010). Selective staffing helps in choosing employees who are better performers, have high need for achievement, have internal locus-of-control and like to identify themselves with the knowledgeable people they work with. Selective staffing is meant to emphasize knowledge and human relations skills. Selective staffing influences the quality of the workforce which, in turn may influence employee s citizenship behaviors (Guest, 1997). Employees who see that their colleagues are as competent and qualified as they are might feel more motivated to work with them, help them in their work, empathize with them and share their work load. These practices signal a long-term investment in employees that motivates employees to reciprocate the organization s inducements with discretionary role behaviors. Apart from Gupta & Singh s (2010) argument and proposition that selective staffing may influence OCB, there was no empirical evidence in the OCB literature that selective selection influences employee OCB. Sixth HR practice considered is flexible job design. Flexible job design refers to the ease with which roles structures can be modified (Guest 1997). Lawler (1988) argues that the present- 9

10 day organizations have high level of interdependence and complexity and use the approach of team-based job design and job rotation to get around these difficulties. Despite the importance of flexible job design in the present day organization, no OCB research has yet explored the impact of flexible job design. However, Gupta & Singh (2010) argues that flexible job designs might encourage an employee to exhibit discretionary behaviors. Furthermore, they argue that flexible job design keeps with the collectivist values of some societies, where employees seek comfort and support with each other s company and thus perform better. Finally, grievance handling procedures are considered an important HR practice in this section. A grievance is a wrong or hardship suffered, which is the grounds of a complaint (Wikipedia). Grievance may be termed as a written complaint against actions or lack of action of an employer in matters relating to the terms and conditions of employment. Usually, the right to grieve is a legal right outlined in the specific labor law in a particular setting. Therefore, grievance is a tool available to workers to protect their rights. Huselid (1995) argues that presence of grievance handling procedures will help the employees in addressing their issues and concerns and are important for sustaining high performance of employee. Additionally, formal grievance procedures help to increase the probability that employee participation efforts will be effective because such programs provide a formal mechanism for employer-employee communication on work-related issues (Delaney & Huselid, 1986; Huselid 1995). Thus employee OCB is much easier to occur in the environment where formal grievance procedures are well established and functional. However, the extant OCB literature did not show any empirical study that links grievance handling procedure with OCB. Independent Variable Mediators Moderators Relationship Type S/n with OCB 1 Empowerment Work alienation Empirically significant 2 Merit-based promotions and Nil Nil Empirically significant performance-based pay 3 Competency development Intrinsic Intrinsic Empirically significant motivation motivation 4 Information sharing Nil Nil No empirical link 5 Selective staffing Nil Nil No empirical link 6 Flexible job design Nil Nil No empirical link 7 Grievance handling Nil Nil No empirical link procedures Figure 2: High performance HR practices and organizational citizenship behavior 10

11 Other Human Resource Management Practices And OCB ICBI 2011 This section reviews other HRM practices other than the Gupta & Singh s (2010) high performance HR practices presented above and how they influence employee OCB. Among the important HRM practices found to influence employee OCB include ten general HRM practices as follows: gain sharing, centralization, organizational justice, organizational culture, work environment, organizational climate, organizational right, organizational socialization, role clarity, and supervisory support. Independent Variable Mediators Moderators Nature of Relationship with OCB 1 Gain sharing Organizational Positive significance commitment 2 Centralization Negative significance 3 Organizational justice leader-memberexchange; Anomic feeling Positive significance trust in supervisor 4 Organizational culture Positive significance 5 Work environment P-O fit; Org. Positive significance commitment; Role stressors; and Job burnout 6 Organizational climate Employee commitment Social network ties Positive significance 7 Organizational right Positive significance 8 Organizational socialization Organizational Positive significance identification 9 Role clarity Positive significance 10 Supervisory support Job satisfaction and Positive significance person organization fit, and job tension Figure 3: Other human resource management practices and organizational citizenship behavior Organizational gain is one of the ten significant HR practices that influence OCB. Sharing of organizational gain that affects employees has been found to relate significantly to employee OB. Chiu & Tsai (2007) investigated the effects of profit sharing on OCBs and have found that stock-based profit-sharing and combined-total profit sharing with employees influence OCBs through partial mediation of organizational commitment. However, cash-based profitsharing did not show significant effect on OCBs. O Bannon and Pearce (1999) also found that team-based gain sharing has a positive effect on teamwork dimension of OCB. Centralization defined as the locus of decision making authority within an organization (Raub, 2008) is another important HR practices that influences OCB. When most organizational decisions are made hierarchically, an organizational unit is considered to be 11

12 centralized (Van de Ven & Ferry, 1980). However, a decentralized unit generally implies that the major source of decision making has been delegated by line managers to subordinate personnel (Van de Ven & Ferry, 1980). Empirical study (Raub, 2008) of hotel industry suggests that OCB in terms of helping behavior is negatively affected by a centralized organization structure. Organizational justice has been a major important HR practice that numerous studies have demonstrated its significant influence on OCB (Ali, Mehmud, Baloch & Usman, 2010; Erturk, 2007; Sablynski & Sekiguchi, 2008; Yılmaz & Tas dan, 2009; Zoghbi-Manrique-de- Lara & Melia n-gonza lez, 2009). Specifically, Zoghbi-Manrique-de-Lara & Melia n- Gonza lez (2009) reveals a significant positive effect of all organizational justice dimensions (distributive, procedural and interactional) on OCB cybercivism. The results also support that anomic feeling positively acts as a moderator of the relationship between organizational justice and cybercivism; that with comparatively less anomic feeling, the perception of organizational justice has a stronger impact on cybercivism. Yılmaz & Tas dan (2009) reveal that teachers organizational citizenship perceptions did not vary according to gender, field of study and seniority, whereas their organizational justice perceptions vary according to seniority, but not gender and field of study. More importantly, the results demonstrate a moderate positive relationship between the teachers organizational citizenship and organizational justice perceptions. This finding even though has revealed a moderate positive effect of organizational justice on teachers OCB, effective OCB performance is influenced by teachers perception of justice, hence the need for improving the teachers perception of justice. Additionally, many studies have indicated significant positive effect of organizational justice on OCB through mediating and moderating relationships of different individual, group, organizational, task, and leadership elements. Burton, Sablynski and Sekiguchi (2008) demonstrate that leader-member-exchange has fully mediated the relationship between interactional, distributive and procedural justice and OCBs. Erturk s (2007) study, however, demonstrates that that trust in supervisor has fully mediated the relationship between organizational justice and citizenship behavior directed toward the organization (OCB-O); results also demonstrate that trust in supervisor has partially mediated the relationship between organizational justice and citizenship behavior directed toward the individual employee (OCB-I) of Turkish faculty members. 12

13 In a similar vein, Ehigie and Otukoya (2005) have investigated the impact that perceived organizational support (POS) and perceived fair interpersonal treatment (PFIT) have on organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) in Nigeria. Results of their study have shown support for the independent association of perceived fair interpersonal treatment (PFIT) with OCB. Organ (2005) reports that fair treatment of employees motivates the employees to exhibit OCB because: (1) it produces a sense of unspecified obligation (Pillai, Schriesheim & Williams, 1999) that is repaid with OCB; (2) it builds trust and enhances employees confidence that contributions to the organization, perhaps in the form of OCB, will be rewarded in the future; (3) it increases job satisfaction; and (4) employees like supervisors or managers who are fair and may wish to reward them through OCB for their fairness. Work environment has also been found to be significantly related to OCB. Work environment can be measured by involvement, peer cohesion, supervisor support, autonomy, task orientation, work pressure, clarity, control, innovation and physical comfort (Moos, 1986). Turnipseed, D. (1996) found OCB to be positively related to involvement, peer cohesion, supervisor support, autonomy, task orientation, clarity, innovation and physical comfort work environment variables. The study found only work pressure and control out of the ten work environment variables to be not positively related to OCB. This finding has important implication for management practice and research because environmental variables can be organizationally positive or not. In a related study, Peng and Chiu (2010) in their study of the mediating processes underlying the relationship between supervisor feedback environment and employee OCB have found that supervisor feedback environment influences employees OCB indirectly through person-organization fit, organizational commitment and role stressors and job burnout. This finding is important as it exhibits the importance of supervisor feedback environment in relation to positive employee outcome (OCB). An important contribution to understanding organization induced OCB has also been made. Yu and Chu (2007) conducted a study that aims at gaining insight into ways of creating an environment that facilitates voluntary sharing of knowledge. Part of the findings shows that the attractiveness of the group to individuals and affection similarity were important in establishing a virtual environment within which OCB could be promoted effectively. Specifically, the results indicated that affection similarity is related to OCB. The results also demonstrated the mediating effect of better quality leader member exchange between positive affection and OCB. 13

14 Organizational culture is another important HR practice that has been found to have some significant relations with OCB. Organizational culture has been defined as the specific collection of values and norms that are shared by people and groups in an organization and that control the way they interact with each other and with stakeholders outside the organization (Hill & Jones, 2001). Williams, Rondeau and Francescutti (2007) studied the impact of culture on the job satisfaction, patient commitment and extra-role performance among physicians. Results have demonstrated that culture has a positive impact on OCB. Specifically, patient commitment strongly relates to extra-role behavior; entrepreneurial culture also strongly relates to extra-role behavior. Similarly, investigating the impact of cultural dimensions of in-group collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, performance orientation, humane orientation and their effects on OCB in a diverse workforce, Wollan, Sully de Luque and Grun hagen (2009) have found that in-group collectivistic environment, an environment reflecting stronger uncertainty avoidance, low performance orientation and a high humane orientation, invoke extra-role behavior or OCB. Organizational climate is yet another organizational characteristics influenced by HRM that significantly affect employee OCB. Organizational climate is the atmosphere perceived by the members of the organization to be created by the organization's policies, procedures, and practices (Schneider, 1990). Therefore, organizational climate of the service industries refers to the organization s support for employees activities, work procedures, and behaviors as perceived by employees in all aspects of customer services (Schneider et al., 1998). Garg & Rastogi (2006) has established significant influence of organizational climate on OCB. The finding further reveals that teachers working in public schools demonstrate higher degree of OCB in comparison to private schools. This finding has important implication to management of private schools on the challenge of identifying factors responsible for enhancing OCB among teachers. Supervisory support can be defined as the degree to which supervisors value subordinates contributions and care about subordinates well-being (Kottke & Sharafinski, 1988). On the aspect of service climate of the organization, Dimitriades (2007) explores the usefulness of inter-relationship between service climate and job involvement on customerfocused organizational citizenship behaviors of frontline employees in a diverse cultural context. Results support the well established relationship between service climate and customer-ocb; results have indicated significant relations existing between service climate 14

15 and customer-ocb. This finding is important because it demonstrates that positive work environment can have impact on customers. Additionally, facilitative work practices including collaborative, redefinition of work contributions; proactive availability and strategic self-presentation have been found to enhance group-level organizational citizenship behavior. This study indicates the extent to which facilitative work practices can be significant influence of OCB. Other aspects of organizational climate such as leaning (Turker, In press), safety (Lee, Wu & Hong, 2007) and peer-cooperativeness (Noor, Bhatti & Khan, 2011) have been reported to show significant influence on the employee OCB. Similarly, within context of organizational climate, supervisor support has been found to influence the employee OCB indirectly through two cognitive processes including job satisfaction and person organization fit; and one affective process namely job tension (Chen & Chiu, 2008). Organization right is part of the organizational elements influenced by HRM that impacts on OCB. Derived from Graham (1991), organizational rights are concerned with granting the employees civil, social and political rights (Bienstock, DeMoranville & Smith, 2003). Organizational civil right is concerned with fair treatment for hiring, assignment, evaluation and grievance matters. Organizational social right is concerned with guaranteeing equitable treatment of employees with regard to economic resources such as raises, bonuses, fringe benefits and social status symbols. Organizational political right is concerned with employees ability to participate in and influence the decision making processes of the organization in matters of policies and practices. Bienstock et al. (2003) conducted a study to explore the effects of organization rights and responsibilities on motivating front-line-service employees to deliver high quality service and OCB. Results reveal that service employees perceive organizational rights to be positively associated with OCBs. Further, the results have demonstrated that employee OCBs mediate effective service delivery and enhanced customer perception of service quality. Organizational socialization has been included as an important HR practice that significantly relates to employee OCB. Louis (1980) defines organizational socialization as the process by which an individual comes to understand the values, abilities, expected behaviors, and social knowledge that are essential for assuming an organizational role and for participating as an organization member. Organizational history, language and symbols, values, and goals are crucial content in this process. Ge, Su and Zhou (2010) demonstrate that organizational 15

16 socialization positively relates to OCB. Further, organizational identification has been found to fully mediate the relationship between organizational socialization and OCB and partially mediates the relationship between history socialization and OCB. Role clarity that is concerned with having sufficient information about the responsibilities and objectives of one s job and having knowledge of the behaviors considered appropriate to reach these goals (Kahn, Wolfe, Quinn, Snoek & Rosenthal, 1964) is another HR practice considered in this section of the paper. Organ (2005) argues that role clarity would only be expected to relate to OCB if the manager defines the employee s role broadly enough to include OCB. If the role is narrowly defined, enhanced role clarity might be expected to negatively relate to OCB because the narrow role definition makes it clearer that OCB is not part of the job. Lack of role clarity may result in employees to experience role conflict which may ultimately lead to negative effect on OCB (Meh & Nasurdin, 2011). Role conflict refers to conflict that occur when people face competing role requirements (Rizzo, House & Lirtzman, 1970). Task characteristics have been included among the significant HR practices found to be a significant OCB predictor. Despite their significant influence on OCB, task characteristics received the least research attention (Podsakoff et al., 2000). Job or task characteristics are concerned with how the work itself is accomplished and the range and nature of tasks associated with a particular job (Morgesen & Humphrey, 2006). Several task characteristics including task identity, task significance, task autonomy, task routine, involvement, interdependence, goal interdependence and the intrinsically satisfying nature of the task were investigated in relation to OCB. In their study examining the direct relationships between job characteristics and OCB, Farh, Posdakoff and Organ (1990) found task variables, measured as task scope, directly and significantly influence OCB in the form of altruism and compliance. Thus, an employee with job tasks that intrinsically motivate and produce a sense of enhanced meaning would be expected to perform in the best interest of the organization (compliance) and also be helpful to fellow workers (altruism). In a related vein, Podsakoff, MacKenzie & Bommer (1996) report that task characteristics have strong relationships with OCB dimensions of altruism, conscientiousness, courtesy, and civic virtue. It has been found out that task characteristics of feedback and intrinsically satisfying tasks are positively correlated to OCBs while task routinization negatively 16

17 correlates to OCBs (Krishnan, Omar, Ismail, Alias, Hamid, Ghani, et al., 2010). Similarly, Podsakoff et al., (1993) report positive correlations between task feedback and intrinsically satisfying tasks with OCB dimensions of altruism and conscientiousness, and negative correlations between task routinization and both altruism and conscientiousness. Drago and Garvey (1998) on the other hand demonstrate that job variety positively relates to helping behavior (OCB). Additionally, Samuel and Aubrey (2006) found task significance and job self-efficacy to have a direct and positive impact on helping behavior, conscientiousness and sportsmanship dimensions of OCB. However, in a study of 270 Taiwanese employees, Su and Hsiao (2005) report that job variety and job significance have a significant positive relationship with OCB. The relationship between job characteristics and OCB are not always direct, they are sometimes mediated. Literature reveals the mediating effect of job involvement (Chen & Chiu, 2009), and job satisfaction (Todd & Kent, 2006). Specifically, results demonstrate that three job characteristics (i.e., task identity, task significance, autonomy) positively affect the performance of employee s OCB through mediating effect of job involvement; while skill variety had shown a negative effect on OCB (Chen & Chiu, 2009). Other job related factors that have been fund to significant affect OCB include job standardization (Chen & Chiu, 2009), and job demands (Schaufeli & Bakker, 2004). Job standardization is extent to which employees follow standard operating procedures to perform their jobs, while job demands refer to physical, social, or organizational aspects of the job that require sustained physical and/or psychological effort on the part of the employee. Some examples of job demands in an organizational environment include high workloads, role overload, role conflict, time pressures and shift work (Schaufeli & Bakker, 2004). Implications and Significance This paper that reviews the extant OCB literature is significant to both organizational practitioners and the academics. Although a literature based approach, this paper has generated diverse HRM practices that have been ascertained empirically to exert significance influence on employee OCB. Thus organizational managers may benefit from the different findings and may help them improve their HRM practices for enhanced performance of OCB. 17

18 Academically, this paper is very relevant to researchers and theorists that want to advance the frontier of OCB knowledge. This paper has reported elaborately various relationships between HRM practices and employee OCB. In the process attempts have been made (see figure 1 and 2) to identify individual model relationships between HRM practices as independent variable and OCB as dependent variable. However, this paper has also exposed situations where mediating and/or moderating variables affect different forms of influence on the relationships between HRM practices and OCB, thus presenting research opportunities for future research. Figure 1 and 2 present different influence relationships between high performance HR practices and organizational citizenship behavior; and between other human resource management practices and organizational citizenship behavior respectively. A few cases have been presented to buttress possible research gaps that, for example, future research may likely consider: (1) Work alienation has demonstrated significant mediated effect on the relationship between empowerment and OCB (see figure 1). Hence, researchers may want to extend this model by introducing a moderator. (2) Merit-based promotions/performance-based pay has been demonstrated (i.e., in the same figure 1) as having direct significant influence on employee OCB. Therefore, researchers may also want to explore the possible mediating or moderating effects of relevant variables on the model. (3) Selective staffing even though a significant predictor of employee performance has not been empirically linked to employee OCB, thus OCB researchers may like to explore possible significant influence of the HR practice on OCB. (5) Gain sharing has demonstrated positive significant influence on OCB through the mediating effect of organizational commitment (see figure 2). This finding has implication for future research to perhaps consider a moderating variable for enhanced OCB. (6) Centralization has demonstrated significant negative influence on OCB (see figure 2). In this case, for example, future research may consider testing mediating and moderating variables for possible significant positive relationship. Moreover, future research may explore significant positive influence of centralization using a different organizational context. (7) Organizational right has been shown to directly and significantly influence OCB as depicted in figure 2. The implication for future reserch in this case is that future researchers may like to consider a mediator or moderator that may enhance employee OCB. 18

19 Conclusion 19 ICBI 2011 This paper reviews high performance HR practices classified by Gupta & Singh (2010) and other HRM activities and their relationships with OCB. Gupta & Singh s (2010) HR practices include empowerment, merit-based promotions/performance-based pay and competency development, information sharing, selective staffing, flexible job design and grievance handling procedures. While other HRM activities include gain sharing, centralization, organizational justice, organizational culture, work environment, organizational climate, organizational right, organizational socialization, role clarity and supervisory support. Most of the HRM practices have demonstrated significant positive relationship with OCB such as organizational culture, work environment, and organizational climate; whereas only centralization has been shown to have negative significant relationship with employee OCB. However, extant OCB literature has indicated that some important HR practices, specifically those classified by Gupta & Singh (2010) namely information sharing, selective staffing, flexible job design, and grievance handling procedures, are yet to be explored. Therefore, this study becomes relevant to both organizations and OCB theory. The study has articulated numerous and important HR practices that organization management may employ to enhance employee OCB. However, this study will benefit OCB theory by encouraging future researchers to use some of the important cues provided in this paper. For example, this paper has exposed some models and how variables interact to influence employee OCB, and thus presenting research opportunities for future research to explore. References Ahmad, K. Z. (2011). The Association between Training and Organizational Citizenship Behavior in the Digital World. Communications of the IBIMA, DOI: / Retrieved on August Ali, Z., Mehmud, S. T., Baloch, Q. B. & Usman, M. (2010). Impact of organizational justice on organizational citizenship behavior of bankers of NWFP, Pakistan: An empirical evidence. Interdisciplinary Journal of Contemporary Research in Business, 2, 7, Allen, T. & Rush, M. (2001). The influence of rate gender on ratings of organizational citizenship behavior. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 31, 12, Appelbaum E, Bailey T, Berg P. & Kalleberg A. L. (2000). Manufacturing advantage. Ithaca, NY: Cornell ILR Press.

20 Arthur, J. (1994). Effects of human resource systems on manufacturing performance and turnover. Academy of Management Journal, 37, Barnard, C.I. (1938). The functions of the executive. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bateman, T. S. & Organ, D. W. (1983). Job satisfaction and the good soldier: the relationship between affect and employee citizenship. Academy of Management Journal, 26, Becker, B. E. & Gerhart, B. (1996). The impact of human resource management on organizational performance: progress and prospects. Academy of Management Journal, 39, 4, Bienstock, C. C., DeMoranville, C. W., Smith, R. K. (2003). Organizational citizenship behavior and service quality. Journal of Services Marketing, 17, 4, Boglera, R. & Somech, A. (2004). Influence of teacher empowerment on teachers organizational commitment, professional commitment and organizational citizenship behavior in schools. Teaching and Teacher Education, 20, Bolino, M. C. Turnley, W. H. & Bloodgood, J. M. (2002). Citizenship behavior and the creation of social capital in organizations. Academy of Management Review, 27, 4, Bolino, M. & Turnley, W. (2003). Going the extra mile: Cultivating and managing employee citizenship behavior. Academy of Management Executive, 17, 3, Boselie, P., Dietz, G. & Boon, C. (2005). Commonalities and contradictions in HRM and performance research. Human Resource Management Journal, 15, 3, Chen, C. & Chiu, S. (2008). An integrative model linking supervisor support and organizational citizenship behavior. Journal of Business Psychology, 23, Chen, C. C. & Chiu, S. F. (2009). The mediating role of job involvement in the relationship between job characteristics and organizational citizenship behavior. Journal of Social Psychology, 149, 4, Chen, L., Niu, H., Wang, Y., Yang, C. & Tsaur, S. (2009). Does job standardization increase OCB? Public Personnel Management, 38, 3, 39. Chiu, S. & Tsai, W. (2007). The linkage between profit sharing and organizational citizenship behavior. International Journal of Human Resource Management, 18, Coyle-Shapiro, J. (2002). A psychological contract perspective on organizational citizenship behavior. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 23, 8,