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Category: Organizational Citizenship Behavior

  • Performance: Organizational Citizenship Behavior

    In the last byte, we began our discussion on performance management and identified the various stages in it. In today’s byte, we look at how do we define performance and set the stage for other stages in performance management.

    It is very clear from the discussion thus far that employees need to understand their performance expectations very clearly to perform well at work. This process of getting the expectations understood falls under the performance definition stage. Expectations about an individual’s performance will not be on any single dimension, but would be on multi-dimensions – these could include not just the task specific skill but others like interpersonal skills, administrative and finance skills etc depending on the stage at which one is in the career growth.

    Let’s take for example – an individual doctor working in a hospital. In addition to knowing the necessary diagnostic and treatment skills, he/she would be expected to have good interpersonal skills (presented as bed-side manners) to enhance the healing process of a patient. Extending this to other professions, we can clearly see that each specific job in an organization requires its own definition of skills and behaviors essential for excellent performance.

    It would be interesting to remind the readers here of the discussion we had on organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). OCB is a sought after dimension of individual performance that pans across jobs. It involves individual discretionary behavior that promotes the organization and is not explicitly rewarded! This is an important dimension of expectations that organizations look for and hence worth mentioning here.

  • Organizational Citizenship Behavior – Work Attitude

    In the last byte we looked at job satisfaction and the affect of this attitude on behavior. In today’s byte, we look at a positive side effect of job satisfaction called Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB).

    Organizational Citizenship Behavior refers to the behavior that is above and beyond the call of duty.

    A short story I heard about work attitude is what I would like to share here. It revolves around a fresh recruit in an organized retail store who had undergone a training program on work attitude. The usual job of this recruit was to pack all the items of a customer into a few handy cover bags to carry away. Her usual duty didn’t require her to do anything in addition to this. After the attitude training, training she went home and took along with her a few carry bags, over night she spent some time looking out for interesting facts and adages that could inspire people and stuck them on the carry bag. Over time, this initiative of hers began engaging the customers to align towards her counter to get their packing done. The recruit who moved out of what was just defined as her duty got enormous recognition for the initiative she had taken.

    Such a behavior to go beyond the call of duty is important when organizations use teams to get their work done – employees depend on extra help from each other to get things accomplished. Satisfied workers are more likely to want to give something back to their organization because they want to reciprocate their positive experiences.

    Individuals who identify strongly with the organization are more likely to perform OCB. High-self monitors also more likely to perform OCBs. It is often seen that OCBs are contagious, generally an entire department could also benefit from one worker’s OCB.