The moderating effect of communication network centrality on motive to perform interpersonal citizenship

The motive to perform extra-role behaviors such as organizational citizenship remains a compelling and unresolved issue. Researchers are beginning to explore alternative causes for organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) that go beyond the early conceptualizations of OCB as altruistic (Organ, 1988). Among the alter native causes suggested by researchers, individual motive has become a recurring theme (Bolino, 1999; Rioux and Penner, 2001; Bolino et al., 2006). Bolino (1999) suggested that many behaviors characterized as OCB might not be citizenship at all, but well disguised self-promotion driven by impression management motives. These alternative motives have only recently begun to receive attention empirically through Rioux and Penner's (2001) development of the Citizenship Motive Scale. This study furthers the examination of OCB antecedents by examining the conditions in which various motives operate and cause employees to perform citizenship behaviors. Recent research in the area of organizational citizenship behavior has begun to focus on ICB (Settoon and Mossholder, 2002), a facet of OCB (Anderson and Williams, 1996; Rioux and Penner, 2001; Settoon and Mossholder, 2002; Bowler and Brass, 2006). Interpersonal citizenship behavior is defined as helping behaviors directed at other employees that are beyond the scope of one's job description. Meta-analytic research has confirmed that interpersonally focused OCB is a separate construct from organizationally focused OCB as well as in-role performance (Hoffman et al., 2007). Because of the relational component involved in helping others and the inherent social value of helping others, researchers have focused on two forms of antecedents to ICB. One of those antecedents is the relational or network characteristic between the ICB performer and the ICB recipient (Sparrowe et al., 2001; Settoon and Mossholder, 2002; Jones and Schaubroeck, 2004; Organ et al., 2005; Allen, 2006; Bowler and Brass, 2006). The second focus is the study of prosocial motives, organizational concern motives and impression management motives of ICB performers (Rioux and Penner, 2001). The current study merges these two areas by examining the interactive effects of relationship characteristic and individual motive on ICB performance. Specifically, we argue that the influence of some motives, such as pro-social motives and concern for one's organization, remain consistent regardless of characteristics of an individual's network while impression management motives are more likely to influence ICB in particular social network configurations. Citizenship Motives Based on a functional approach to human behavior, Rioux and Penner (2001) developed the Citizenship Motive Scale (CMS) that assesses individual motive to perform specific types of OCB, including ICB. Their approach suggests that one must consider the motive, or purpose served, for engaging in OCB. They developed the scale to reflect three motives for OCB: pro-social, organizational concern and impression management. The pro-social motive is defined as showing a general concern for others and a need to build positive relationships. The organizational concern motive is associated with individuals who generally show pride in their organization and desire for the company to do well. Finally, the impression management motive concerns a desire to attain rewards at work and to avoid looking bad to others in the organization. In their study, Rioux and Penner (2001) related these motives to ICB performance and the expected positive relationships were found between pro-social and organizational concern motives and ICB performance. (1) However, no direct relationship was found between impression management motives and ICB performance. This lack of relationship between impression management motives and ICB is surprising given the strong theoretical rationale for such a relationship, which suggests that helping within organizations is not exclusively driven by selfless motives, but is often driven by impression management motives (e. …