Exercise 10-1 The Good Soldier: Organizational Citizenship Behavior Dimensions, Counterproductive Behaviors and Performance Evaluation

Exercise 10-1: The Good Soldier (organizational citizenship behavior)

Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) refers to going beyond job requirements and giving extra to the organization. The five dimensions most often associated with OCB are altruism, conscientiousness, courtesy, sportsmanship and civic virtue.

• Part 1: write your current or most recent job title and the top five task requirements of the job (from the job description).
• Part 2: list five behaviors you performed that were not task requirements but benefited the organization, and classify each as altruism, conscientiousness, courtesy, sportsmanship or civic virtue.
• Part 3: list at least three negative job behaviors you have observed (counterproductive work behaviors, from Chapter 3).

Questions:

1. Were these positive and negative behaviors included in your performance evaluation? If not, why not?
2. How would you revise your performance evaluation to include them?
3. How much weight should they carry in pay raises and promotions?
4. Can we measure these extra-role behaviors accurately? If not, are the issues no longer valid?

Original example for study purposes (about 600 words). The job and experiences are illustrative; this exercise must reflect your own job.

Part 1: Job Title and Task Requirements

Job title: Medical Assistant, family medicine clinic [replace with your job]

1. Room patients, measure vital signs and record them in the electronic health record
2. Prepare patients for examinations and assist providers with procedures
3. Administer injections and vaccines as ordered
4. Schedule follow-up appointments and process referrals
5. Clean and stock exam rooms and follow infection control procedures

Part 2: OCB Activities

Part 3: Negative Job Behaviors Observed

• Making disparaging comments about coworkers or patients in the break room (interpersonal counterproductive work behavior)
• Arriving late and taking extended breaks, leaving others to cover rooms (withdrawal)
• Using the clinic’s computers for personal shopping during patient care time (production deviance)

Spector et al. (2006) found that counterproductive work behaviors are not all the same; they include distinct forms such as abuse toward others, production deviance, sabotage, theft and withdrawal, which can have different causes.

Questions

1. Were these behaviors included in my evaluation? Only partly. My evaluation focused on task performance, such as accuracy of vital signs, documentation and attendance. The committee work and helping new coworkers were mentioned informally but not rated, and negative behaviors were addressed only when they became attendance problems. These behaviors were likely left out because evaluation forms are built from the job description, supervisors may not observe extra-role behavior directly, and organizations worry that rating “extra” behaviors can seem subjective or unfair.

2. How would I revise the evaluation? I would add a “contextual performance” section with behaviorally anchored rating scales for teamwork and helping, initiative, cooperation and professionalism, using concrete examples (for example, “regularly assists coworkers when workload is uneven”). I would collect input from peers and team leads through brief 360-degree feedback, since supervisors miss much of this behavior, and I would include a professionalism item that addresses counterproductive behaviors such as disrespect and time misuse.

3. How much weight should they carry? I believe contextual performance should count meaningfully but not outweigh core job performance, perhaps 20% to 30% of the overall rating, with a higher weight for promotion to supervisory roles, where helping, cooperation and civic virtue are central. Research shows that OCBs are associated with organizational effectiveness and that managers already consider them when evaluating employees (Podsakoff et al., 2000), so formalizing them makes evaluations more transparent. However, employees should never be penalized for declining unpaid overtime or extra work, since that would turn voluntary behavior into an unwritten requirement.

4. Can we measure them accurately? Not perfectly. Extra-role behaviors are hard to observe, ratings are vulnerable to halo effects and bias, and some employees may perform OCBs mainly to impress supervisors. But measurement difficulty does not make the issues invalid. These behaviors still affect team functioning, morale and customer service. The solution is to improve measurement by using multiple raters, behavioral examples, documentation throughout the year and rater training, while recognizing that ratings are estimates rather than precise measures.

References

Organ, D. W. (1988). Organizational citizenship behavior: The good soldier syndrome. Lexington Books.

Podsakoff, P. M., MacKenzie, S. B., Paine, J. B., & Bachrach, D. G. (2000). Organizational citizenship behaviors: A critical review of the theoretical and empirical literature and suggestions for future research. Journal of Management, 26(3), 513–563. https://doi.org/10.1177/014920630002600307

Spector, P. E., Fox, S., Penney, L. M., Bruursema, K., Goh, A., & Kessler, S. (2006). The dimensionality of counterproductivity: Are all counterproductive behaviors created equal? Journal of Vocational Behavior, 68(3), 446–460. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2005.10.005

[Your course textbook, Chapters 3 and 10, in APA format.]

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