Organizational citizenship behaviors in the era of changing employment patterns: The complementary roles of psychological contracts and protean and boundaryless careers
Career Development International
ISSN: 1362-0436
Article publication date: 23 April 2019
Issue publication date: 23 April 2019
Abstract
Purpose
The increasing flexibility and discontinuity of labor relations have been associated with the development of new forms of psychological contracts as well as the development of more self-directed and mobile career attitudes. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between the forms of psychological contract and protean/boundaryless career attitudes on the one hand and organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB) on the other.
Design/methodology/approach
In total, 458 employees of three large Italian organizations were sampled through a self-report questionnaire. Zero-order correlations were carried out to examine the associations between study variables while dominance analysis, along with multiple linear regression, was used for evaluating their unique contribution with respect to OCB.
Findings
OCB were positively predicted by relational and balanced psychological contracts, protean career attitude and boundaryless mindset.
Practical implications
Organizations must pay particular attention to the content of the psychological contract and the career attitudes of their employees because they influence their willingness to carry out OCB.
Originality/value
The results add new evidence to the careers literature in terms of boundary conditions with regard to the effects of protean and boundaryless career attitudes as well as different forms of psychological contracts.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank Professor Lyons and the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful and precious feedbacks to a previous draft of the paper. Their comments and suggestions have greatly contributed to improve our paper, by showing unexpected further theoretical and methodological developments. Lastly, thanks to Alfonso Landolfi who helped compiling Table III.
Citation
Lo Presti, A., Manuti, A. and Briscoe, J.P. (2019), "Organizational citizenship behaviors in the era of changing employment patterns: The complementary roles of psychological contracts and protean and boundaryless careers", Career Development International, Vol. 24 No. 2, pp. 127-145. https://doi.org/10.1108/CDI-05-2018-0137
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2019, Emerald Publishing Limited