ORGANIZATIONAL CITIZENSHIP BEHAVIOR: ITS RECONCEPTUALIZATION AND TENABILITY IN UNIVERSITY SETTING

Abstract

The concept ‘organizational citizenship behavior’ (OCB) underlies the psychology of loyalty, commitment, and collegiality of employees in organizations. Much research has been done on this concept in business and industrial corporations, but little is known about its relevancy in educational settings. Our study has re-conceptualized OCB and renewed its construct by incorporating a few additional dimensions related to the socio-political nuances of citizenship, and subsequently applied the new conception of OCB via a survey involving university academics as respondents. Our study found that the re-conceptualized OCB was pervasively present among academics in university organizations, which had an extensive variety of interest groups competing for different resources, values, and philosophies in a rather autonomous jurisdiction. This finding implies that even without consciously aware of OCB, the academics have long upheld the tradition of being university citizens, loyal and committed to their area of interest and research.