Organizational Citizenship: A Review, Proposed Model, and Research Agenda

Organizational citizenship was recently proposed as a form of job performance which may be more strongly related to job satisfaction than performance measures employed in previous job satisfaction-job performance research. However organizational citizenship holds more promise for organizational behavior research than merely its relationship to job satisfaction. Organ (1988a) argues that organizational citizenship, in the aggregate, promotes the effective functioning of the organization. Citizenship is defined as "supra-role behavior," that is, behavior which goes beyond formal job descriptions but which is desired by an organization (Organ, 1988a). Examples include helping co-workers who fall behind in task performance, keeping a work area clean, accepting temporary assignments without complaint, volunteering for tasks that are not assigned, and making suggestions which will improve the department (Bateman & Organ, 1983; Smith, Organ & Near, 1983). This paper presents the results of the studies which have been conducted to date, suggests directions for future research, and proposes a model of organizational citizenship to guide this research.