She’s already busy: An exploratory study of women’s workplace attitudes as predictors of organizational citizenship behavior

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to examine women’s organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) or the voluntary, discretionary behaviors employees perform that are not linked to their reward system but benefit organizations. Specifically, it investigates several attitudinal and organizational antecedents relative to two sub-dimensions of OCB: organizational loyalty and helping behaviors.

Design/methodology/approach

Alumnae (n = 160) responded to an e-mail survey regarding their self-reported OCBs, job satisfaction, work engagement and several demographic and organizational variables.

Findings

In this fiscal climate, organizations are challenged with fostering an environment encouraging employees to go beyond job requirements. Findings here suggest that married women who are engaged in work have the highest propensity to do this by engaging in these non-compensated, non-mandated behaviors. However, importantly, differences were found between organizational loyalty citizenship and helping behaviors. An inverse relationship was also found between job tenure and helping behaviors: an interesting result.

Research limitations/implications

An important implication of the research is the dissection and examination of two sub-dimensions of OCB (i.e. organizational loyalty and helping), providing a better understanding of the dimensionality of the phenomenon and how they relate to job satisfaction and work engagement for a significant segment of the American workforce: women.

Originality/value

This study examines the dimensionality of OCB (as called for by previous research) and establishes that not all OCBs can be treated equally, as antecedents vary in their predictability of OCB engagement. Further, this research investigates the relationship between individual job satisfaction components (pay, recognition and supervision) and OCBs to help clarify conflicting findings between OCB and this key workplace attitude.

Citation

Crawley, D.C., Maher, J.K. and Blake-Beard, S. (2015), "She’s already busy: An exploratory study of women’s workplace attitudes as predictors of organizational citizenship behavior", Gender in Management, Vol. 30 No. 4, pp. 286-311. https://doi.org/10.1108/GM-04-2014-0033