A predictor become dysfunctional: an investigation of the effect of workload on the relationship between personality and OCB.

Abstract

Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) is a topic that has been widely addressed in management research during the past decade, as many have suggested that OCB’s have a crucial role in the success of an organization. Further understanding the nature of its relationship to individual and job context factors allow practitioners to facilitate such behaviors within their organizations. Although certain personality traits are more inclined to exhibit OCB, their capacity to do so is likely to depend on their level of workload. Therefore, to further extend the development of the nomological network associated with OCB, personality factors and the moderating role of workload to this relationship was examined. A stratified sample size of two hundred employees from diverse organizations have been selected. Results of the hierarchical regression analysis revealed that personality traits strongly related to OCBs and the workload negatively interacted to significantly predict OCBs. The results support theory that links personality factors and workload would demonstrates the interactive effect of workload and personality traits in predicting OCB, suggesting that these factors are likely important factors that could be examined in job design efforts to enhance OCB. The moderating role of the workload is demonstrated as a new contribution of this study. Implications of findings and areas for future research also discussed.