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The Effects of Organizational Citizenship Behavior On Withdrawal Behavior: A Malaysian Study
The Effects of Organizational Citizenship Behavior On Withdrawal Behavior: A Malaysian Study
The Effects of Organizational Citizenship Behavior On Withdrawal Behavior: A Malaysian Study
a Faculty
P
b Faculty
P
*Corresponding author
Email address: hassan@uum.edu.my
___________________________________________________________________________
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of organizational citizenship behavior
(OCB) on turnover intention and self-reported absenteeism. Data were gathered via
questionnaire from 63 manager-subordinate dyads from star-rated hotels in the northern
region of peninsular Malaysia. OCB was measured based on five dimensions: altruism,
courtesy, sportsmanship, conscientiousness, and civic virtue. Managers provided ratings on
employee OCB. Employees provided self-ratings of turnover intention and absenteeism.
Correlation analysis and multiple regressions were used to analyze the data. The results show
that civic virtue and sportsmanship affect turnover intention significantly and negatively. The
results also indicate that only conscientiousness significantly influenced self-reported
absenteeism.
Key words: absenteeism, turnover, organizational citizenship behavior, withdrawal behavior,
hotel
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INTRODUCTION
The concept of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) was first introduced by
Bateman and Organ (1983) and Smith et al. (1983) and was discussed in greater
detail by Organ in 1988. According to Organ (1988), OCB refers to a general set of
behaviors exhibited by employees such as being helpful, discretionary and going
beyond normal job requirements. Moorman and Blakely (1995) captured the essence
of OCB when they indicated that a good citizen is an employee who offers support to
the organization, even when such support is not verbally demanded. The study of
OCB has received considerable attention in recent years (Farh et al., 1997) and has
been identified as vital to the effectiveness of organization and teams (Bateman and
Organ, 1983; Organ, 1988; Podsakoff et al., 1996). Previous research on OCB has
generally focused on identifying factors affecting or contributing to OCB. Very little
research attention has been given to empirically investigate the consequences of OCB
on organizational effectiveness through direct measures such as job performance or
International Journal of Management and Entreprenuership, 1(1):30-40, 2005
30
indirect measures using surrogates (Angle and Perry, 1981) such as turnover or
absenteeism. According to Podsakoff, McKenzie, Paine and Bacharac (2000),
although over 160 studies have been identified in the literature examining factors that
influence OCB, nevertheless only five studies reported, attempted to investigate
whether OCB does contribute to organizational effectiveness (Chen et al., 1998;
Podsakoff and MacKenzie, 1994; Podsakoff et al., 1996). The present study examines
the influence of OCB on withdrawal behavior by investigating the relationship
between OCB and employee turnover intentions and self-reported absenteeism. The
objective of the study is to provide additional evidence on the relationship between
OCB and turnover intentions that shows a negative relationship and to determine the
influence of OCB on absence behavior with a negative relationship.
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inconsistent with their values and moral standards. Thus, individuals try to maintain
agreement between their behaviors, beliefs and attitudes. This means that individuals
seek to align their attitudes and behavior so that they appear rational and consistent.
Coon (1983) stated that when an individual decided something (form an attitude), the
person then tended to behave in line with what have been decided (formulated
attitude). After making a personal commitment, it is usually thought to shape the
individuals future attitudes and actions. It seems that the contrast nature of
citizenship behavior and withdrawal behavior may suggest one basic link between
these behaviors. Chen et al., (1998) indicated that high levels of OCB reflect
employees high organizational involvement. In contrast, withdrawal behavior is
regarded as undesirable and dysfunctional (Pelted and Xin, 1999) and is potentially
harmful to ones co-worker, group and organization. Based on the logic of cognitive
consistency, it is reasonable to state that high level of OCB is inconsistent with high
level of withdrawal behavior but it is not inconsistent with low level of withdrawal
behavior. Previous studies across a variety of situations (see for example, Parish and
Necessary, 1996; Ward, 1986; Green and Holeman, 2004) indicated that people who
behave in a certain way at one point in time are likely to behave consistently in
future. Taking a cognitive consistency orientation, the present study predicts that
OCB is associated negatively with employees withdrawal behaviors.
Despite over 1,500 studies reported in the turnover literature (Shaw et al., 1998),
previous research on this dysfunctional behavior has focused on such antecedents as
job affect, cognitive process and demographic factors, but has not paid attention to
the role of behavioral antecedents such as OCB. Study by Chen et al. (1998) was the
first study to investigate the relationship between OCB and turnover among technical
workers in the Peoples Republic of China. They found that subordinates who were
rated as exhibiting low levels of OCB were found to be more likely to leave an
organization than those who were rated as exhibiting high levels of OCB.
Specifically, their study revealed that the level of altruism, conscientiousness and
sportsmanship were higher among employees with no turnover than among
employees who left the organization. A later study by Chen et al. (2002), involving
employees of a large multinational bank found that a composite score of individuals
as well as group-level OCB were negatively related to individual turnover intentions.
Recently, Lee et al. (2004) did a study in the financial sector in the US and found that
a composite score of OCB among the employees in that sector was negatively related
to voluntary turnover. Due to the use of limited OCB dimensions and a composite
score of OCB, the relatively few studies cited thus far do not permit much
generalization on the relationship between OCB and withdrawal behaviors, thereby
warranting further investigation and confirmation of research findings. This study
therefore proposes the following general hypothesis:
Hypothesis 1: Organizational citizenship behavior is negatively related to turnover
intention.
Research investigating the relationship between OCB and absenteeism is
relatively sparse. Lee et al., (2004) found that a composite score of OCB was
negatively related to absenteeism in the financial sector. Additionally, it is possible to
argue that since turnover and absenteeism both involve physical withdrawal from the
workplace and thus it would seem likely that they have several factors in common.
International Journal of Management and Entreprenuership, 1(1):30-40, 2005
32
Van Scooter (2000) indicated that extra-role behavior such as OCB demonstrates an
employees willingness to be actively involved in the organization. In contrast,
absenteeism could be an indication of withdrawing efforts from work environment
(Viswesvaran, 2002). Thus, the contrast nature of both behaviors suggests that OCB
should also have a similar effect on absenteeism as in turnover. According to
Podsakoff et al. (2000), although empirical researches have yet to examine the effect
of OCB on a broader dimension of withdrawal behavior, based on the available
empirical evidence (Chen et al., 1998; Lee et al., 2004), a similar pattern of effects
can be expected between OCB and absenteeism. Moreover, Organ (1988) argued that
conscientious employees are those employees who are concerned with the life of the
organization and thus have low inclination towards unscheduled absenteeism. This
study then proposes the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 2:
absenteeism.
METHODS
Procedures and Participants
The respondents of the study were full-time hotel employees and their manager
from five major star-rated hotels in the northern region of peninsular Malaysia.
Employees from this industry were selected due to two major reasons. First, the hotel
industry is facing a high rate of employee turnover. Studies indicated that high
turnover rates in the hotel industry are not country specific but a world epidemic
(Ron, 1997). Second, as a profit making organization, employee OCB is considered
as an important ingredient for hotel organization effectiveness. The diversity and
unpredictability of customer demands, combined with the broad scope of a hotels
services, requires extra effort on the part of employees to go beyond formal duties to
ensure customer satisfaction (Walsh, 2000).
To avoid the problem of common method variance (Podsakoff and Organ, 1986),
data was collected using two separate questionnaires, one of which was completed by
the respondents during working hours. The respondents manager (or head of
department) completed the second questionnaire. Measures of turnover intentions and
absenteeism were collected from respondents and their manager rated OCB in the
second set of questionnaire. The first and the second questionnaires were coded so
that they could be matched. Data collection involved one or two personal trips to
each hotel to obtain approval, explain the objectives of the study and the rating
procedures. A list of employees names was obtained from the Human Resource
department of the respective hotels for the purpose of coding the two sets of
questionnaires. A code number representing a particular employee was printed on
each subordinates questionnaire and the name was printed on the manager
questionnaire for manager evaluation of OCB. Both questionnaires were distributed
and collected with the help of the human resource department of each hotel. In order
to encourage the respondents to cooperate in the study, they were informed that their
individual responses were anonymous, that the survey was not a test and there were
no right or wrong answers, only opinions and ideas matter and participation was
International Journal of Management and Entreprenuership, 1(1):30-40, 2005
33
voluntary. The data collection commenced in early November 2003 and was in
December 2003.
Analysis related to the hypothesis required the matching of managers responses
with specific subordinates. In some cases, subordinates responses were obtained but
no manager ratings to match. In other instances, manager ratings were obtained but
no responses from the subordinates. Thus usable sample for correlating variables
could not include all manager and subordinate responses. On the whole each manager
rated between one and five subordinates but the majority of the managers rated two
subordinates. This ratio is comparatively better than some previous studies whereby
each manager rated up to ten employees (e.g. Cappelli and Rogovsky, 1995). A total
of 69 manager questionnaires and 68 subordinates questionnaires were returned out
of 150 manager and 150 subordinates questionnaires distributed. A detail screening
of the returned questionnaires yielded 63 matched pairs of subordinates and manager
questionnaires, which were used for the subsequent analysis. Average age of the
respondents was 27.6 years. Thirty-eight were males (60.3%) and 25 were females
(39.7%). The average tenure of the respondents was 3.9 years. The low average age
of respondents mirrors the International Labor Organization (2001) report, which
indicates the majority of hotel employees were less than 25 years old.
Measures
Independent Variable: Organizational Citizenship Behaviors
OCB was measured based on the five dimensions scale developed by Podsakoff
and Mackenzie (as cited in Niehoff and Moorman, 1993). Each of the five constructs
- altruism, courtesy, sportsmanship, conscientiousness, and civic virtue - included
items describing specific behaviors. These dimensions have been conceptualized by
Organ (1988) and selected for this study because it is frequently used by researchers
(LePine et al., 2002; Schnake and Dumler, 2003). Managers and subordinates
indicated their agreement on each item using a 5-point Likert scale format ranging
from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5). The psychometric properties of this
scale have been reported in Moorman (1991). The study by Moorman supports a five
dimensions model of OCB and the reported reliabilities are 0.81 (altruism), 0.88
(courtesy), 0.87 (sportsmanship), 0.83 (conscientiousness), and 0.76 (civic virtue).
Minor modifications were made to the questionnaire to suit the study sample. The
words organization and company were replaced by the word hotel. For the
manager questionnaire, every statement about OCB started with the words This
employee.
Dependent Variables: Turnover Intention and Self-reported Absenteeism
Turnover intention was measured using a 3 items scale adapted from Camman et
al. (as cited in Chen et al., 1998). The internal consistency coefficient for this scale
was 0.78 (Chen et al., 1998). The items are: (1) I often think of leaving the hotel, (2)
It is very possible that I will look for a new job within the next year and (3) If I may
choose again, I will choose to work for the current organization. Respondents rated
their level of agreement with each item on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from
strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5). Item 3 was reversely coded during
analysis so that the higher score indicated higher turnover intention. The three items
were averaged to form a single scale for the subjective measure of turnover intention.
International Journal of Management and Entreprenuership, 1(1):30-40, 2005
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RESULTS
Table 1 shows the mean, standard deviation, reliability coefficient, and correlation of
all the variables used in the present study. An examination of results in Table 1
indicates that the reliability for the OCB dimensions ranged from 0.85 (altruism);
0.83 (civic virtue); 0.82 (sportsmanship); 0.80 (courtesy) and 0.70
(conscientiousness). The reliability for turnover intention is 0.78. No alpha
coefficient was computed for self-reported absenteeism because it consisted of only
one question. All variables excepting self-reported absenteeism have been tapped on
a five-point scale. It can be seen that the mean for the five OCB domains are
perceived as somewhat enriched (3.36 to 3.65). The mean of 2.58 on a five-point
scale for turnover intention indicates that most of the respondents were not quite bent
on leaving. The standard deviations of the variables ranged from .62 to 1.08,
suggesting that none of the measures were marked by excessive restriction in range.
The results of the bivariate correlation indicated that the OCB dimension of
sportsmanship clearly had the strongest correlation with employee turnover intentions
(r=-0.48), followed by civic virtue (r=-0.47), courtesy (r=-0.39), and altruism (r=0.37). No significant correlation between conscientiousness and turnover intention
was observed. The correlations were all negative and significant indicating that
relationship between OCB dimensions and turnover intention among hotel employees
was negative. The results of the bivariate correlation also indicated that
International Journal of Management and Entreprenuership, 1(1):30-40, 2005
35
Mean
3.49
3.65
3.61
3.40
3.36
2.58
0.45
SD
0.68
0.62
0.69
0.65
0.69
1.08
0.89
1
(0.85)
0.68**
0.62**
0.62**
0.56**
-0.37**
-0.27*
(0.80)
0.56**
0.53**
0.54**
-0.39**
-0.20
(0.82)
.57**
.45**
-0.48*
-0.19
(0.70)
0.21
-0.22
-0.38**
(0.83)
-0.47**
-0.03
(0.78)
0.09
1
TP
PT
Two simple linear regression analyses were carried out to determine the
relationship between total OCB scores and both withdrawal behaviors. The total
OCB scores accounted for 23% of the variance in turnover intention. This result was
significant, F(1,61) = 18.14, p<0.01. An analysis of the beta weights indicated that
higher total OCB scores were related to lower turnover intention scores (beta=-0.48).
The second simple regression showed that total OCB scores accounted for 7% of the
variance in self-reported absenteeism, which was significant, F(1,61) = 4.56, p<0.05.
The total OCB scores associated negatively to self-reported absenteeism (beta=0.26). Because of the lack of previous research in this area, an exploratory approach
was used to investigate the relationship among the OCB domain and withdrawal
behaviors. Because of its ability to investigate the best fit relationship among
different variables (Hair et al., 1998), two stepwise multiple regression was employed
to identify which types of OCB domains were most related to turnover intention and
self-reported absenteeism. The five OCB domains were used as predictor variables
and the turnover intention scores and self-reported absenteeism as the criterions. In
predicting turnover intentions, sportsmanship, entered in Step 1, accounted for 22%
of the variance, which was significant, F(1, 61)=17.66, p<0.01, and negative (beta=0.47). The civic virtue domain, entered in Step 2, accounted for an additional 8% of
the variance. The increase in variance was significant, F (1, 60) =13.40, p<0.01. The
beta weights indicated that civic virtue was negatively related to turnover intention
(beta=-0.33). Next, to identify which aspects of OCB were most related to selfreported absenteeism, another stepwise regression was carried out and the result
showed that conscientiousness was the only OCB domain entered on a step
accounting for 14% of the variance. There was a significant negative relationship
between conscientiousness and self-reported absenteeism, F (1, 61) =10.29, p<0.01,
beta=-0.38.
1
TP
PT
36
DISCUSSION
This study examined the relationship between OCB, turnover intentions and selfreported absenteeism among hotel employees. Because of the lack of previous
research in this area, this study should be considered exploratory. The data provide
general support for the hypothesis that OCB are related to withdrawal behaviors,
although OCB tended to predict the turnover intentions better than self-reported
absenteeism. The possibility of underreporting of absence incidents probably reduces
the strength of the relationship between OCB and self-reported absenteeism.
Nevertheless, the 14% of absence variance accounted for in this study is roughly
comparable to that commonly found in previous studies such as 15 % by Kohler and
Mathieu (1993) and 12 % by Watson (1981). The results of this study indicate that
sportsmanship and civic virtue were related to turnover intentions. Employees who
were rated as having higher levels of civic virtue and sportsmanship were more likely
to report low turnover intentions. Additionally, employees with higher level of
conscientiousness were more likely to report less absenteeism. Since data for OCB
and withdrawal behaviors were obtained from different sources, the problem of
common method variance can be eliminated (Podsakoff and Organ, 1986). The OCB
absenteeism relationship has not been addressed in prior research, and our finding
is a new contribution to the OCB research stream.
From the theoretical perspective, employees with high level of OCB reported
lower propensity to engage in withdrawal behaviors presumably in an attempt to
maintain their cognitive consistency. Although the study has generally indicated that
OCB as a whole have been shown to be significantly and negatively related to
employee turnover intentions, certain dimensions of OCB appear to be more directly
responsible for the relationship than others. This finding suggests that to retain
employees in a high turnover organization, management needs to focus on nurturing
certain critical aspects of extra role behavior especially civic virtue and
sportsmanship. The finding that conscientiousness explained absence behavior is
generally consistent with theoretical arguments advanced by Organ (1988), which
stated that conscientious employees have low inclination towards absenteeism.
Organ (1988) theorized that conscientious employees improve organizational
effectiveness through its impact on employee attendance whereby these employees
generally avoid unnecessary absence. Even though other factors may also influence
employees turnover decision and absenteeism, the present study demonstrated that
OCB should also be considered as one of the many predictors. This study
demonstrates that the relationship between OCB and withdrawal behavior and the
theoretical justification behind this relationship is applicable to non-Western
organizational members. Some possible limitations of these findings nevertheless
should be noted. Firstly, this study used turnover intentions. However, intention plays
only a partial role in behavior as other factors may interfere with actual turnover
decision (Ajzen and Fishbein, 1980). Secondly, the present study would have been
improved had it been able to use organizational record of absenteeism.
Several lines of future research suggest themselves. Firstly, the sample size of the
present study can be considered small. With larger samples, the models would have
been more stable. Ideally, when using multiple regressions, the sample size will yield
a subject-to-variable ratio of 15:1, which was not achieved in this study. Therefore
the study has to be carried further to include a larger sample. Further, it would be of
International Journal of Management and Entreprenuership, 1(1):30-40, 2005
37
interest to study the impact of OCB on other types of withdrawal behavior such as
lateness behavior or social loafing. It would also be worthwhile to investigate the
presence of possible moderators in research of OCB consequences. Several studies
(e.g., Kuehn and Al-Busaidi, 2002; Turnipseed and Murkison, 2000) found that older
and longer service workers are more likely to exhibit high level of OCB. These may
suggest that OCB may interact with some personal factors such as age and tenure in
explaining employee withdrawal behavior.
The results of this study may have some implications for managers in the hotel
industry. The hotel industry in Malaysia is large. It offers accommodation ranging
from lodging houses to five-star hotels. As a result of the continuing tourism
development, the hotel in Malaysia is also continuingly developed to cater for more
foreign visitors and provide better services. Since employee turnover and
absenteeism can affect product and service quality and consequently, profitability,
the findings of this study suggest that hoteliers need to encourage OCB among its
employees. Hotels that experience high rates of absenteeism probably may want to
improve the level of conscientiousness among its employees. Hoteliers may also
want to enhance the level of sportsmanship and civic virtue among its employees in
order to dissuade them from leaving the hotel. Entrepreneurs who operate smaller
hotels probably may want to foster OCB among its employees in order to develop
committed and loyal employees, which can be a means to enhance the hotels
competitiveness.
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