Direct and Indirect Effects of Task Characteristics on Organizational Citizenship Behavior

The purpose of this research was to investigate how a selection of task variables impacts organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). Employees (n = 337) from a manufacturer of sporting goods products completed a survey through onsite group meetings. Two models were estimated to describe both direct effects of task variables upon OCB and indirect effects through the mediator of job satisfaction. Findings were mixed in that some task variables directly impacted particular elements of OCB, while other task variables demonstrated a mediated effect through job satisfaction. Perhaps chief among the discoveries was the positive relationship between job self-efficacy and OCB. Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) has been a popular target of empirical research in recent years. The current interest in OCB can be traced back to Katz (1964), who argued that effective organizations allow for innovative and spontaneous activities by employees that are beyond role prescriptions. Indeed, every factory, department, and office operates daily on a myriad of these acts consisting of cooperation, helpfulness, suggestions, selflessness, and other instances that could be considered "citizenship behavior." Although various descriptions of specific dimensions underlying the concept of OCB abound, the overall construct is generally referred to as those sets of individual behaviors that contribute to the social and psychological context in which the task performance of a job must function. Or, stated differently, OCB can be viewed as the social lubricant of the organizational machinery (Organ, 1997). In a recent meta-analysis of the past fifteen years of organizational citizenship research, Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Paine, and Bachrach (2000) outlined the extent to which a compendium of variables influenced various dimensions of citizenship behavior. Although not previously emphasized in the OCB literature, task variables have demonstrated significant effects upon OCB in the substitutes for leadership literature (Podsakoff & MacKenzie, 1995; Podsakoff, Niehoff, MacKenzie, & Williams, 1993); therefore, Podsakoff and colleagues suggested this to be a fruitful area of exploration. In response to this call for future research, the primary purpose of this study was to examine the impact of task variables upon OCB. There has been much discussion about the effects of task-related variables and work related outcomes, but their relationship with the OCB construct has only been explored in a few studies (Farh, Podsakoff, & Organ, 1990; Podsakoff & MacKenzie, 1995; Podsakoff, Niehoff, MacKenzie, & Williams, 1993). The evidence does support meaningful relationships between task variables and OCB, but generally, the extent and nature of these relationships has not clearly been defined. Most of the correlations between task variables and OCB have been somewhat serendipitously discovered, as they were included in the context of studies examining substitutes for leadership. As such, the purpose of this investigation was to explore direct and indirect effects of task variables upon OCB. Designing a study with two similar models that would allow direct and indirect effects to be tested appropriately was challenging for two reasons: (1) there is a paucity of evidence for direct effects of task variables upon OCB, therefore making it difficult to know where to begin and (2) based upon previous research, the most likely candidate for a mediator of the relationship between task-related variables and OCB was job satisfaction; however, this literature stream has produced a multitude of heterogeneous findings that are very complicated to fuse together in a coherent summary. Nonetheless, our first model hypothesized a direct relationship between task characteristics and OCB following limited correlational evidence from the substitutes for leadership literature and recommendations from Podsakoff et al. (2000), and the other model hypothesized an indirect relationship through the mediator of job satisfaction after consideration of the well-known literature following the work of Hackman and Oldham (1976). …