Predicting organisational citizenship behaviour

Abstract
Industrial-Organisational researchers and practitioners continue to advance their knowledge to provide a competitive edge in today’s dynamic work environment. One such emerging area over the past forty years that has captured their interest is the construct of organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB). OCB is a subset of job performance and involves extra-role behaviour in the workplace. Traditionally, the investigated antecedents of OCB have been the variables of job satisfaction and personality. Results of these antecedent studies have been inconsistent, with some researchers finding small to moderate correlations, while other researchers argue against the existence of these relationships. One possible reason for the inconsistent results is that behaviour is complex and usually involves multiple situational and/or individual predictors. Consequently, researching simple correlational relationships between job satisfaction-OCB or personality-OCB may not provide a sufficiently thorough picture of the prediction of OCB.
To address this issue, the current study aimed to advance OCB antecedent research through the development of a multiple antecedent prediction model. The model incorporated the traditional OCB antecedents of job satisfaction and personality, while also including the dispositional variables of positive affect and general mental ability. These variables were initially integrated into one of two main pathways to predict OCB-ability (as measured by interpersonal skills) and job involvement.
The final data sample consisted of 147 Petty Officers from the Royal Australian Navy. Each of these Petty Officers completed self-report measures for personality traits, job satisfaction, affective disposition, general mental ability, interpersonal skills, job involvement, and OCB. In addition, each Petty Officer obtained an OCB and interpersonal skills assessment from three different sources – a supervisor, a peer, and a subordinate. The ratings from each of the three sources were initially assessed to identify the level of similarity between raters sources when using a 360 degree feedback data collection methodology in OCB research. This analysis was followed by the assessment of all collected data against a developed OCB prediction model using structural equation modeling. Goodness-of-fit indices supported the OCB prediction model, which consisted of the two main pathways – interpersonal skills and job involvement (2=12.19, 16, p>0.05; GFI=0.98; AGFI=0.96; CFI=1.00; RMSEA=0.00).
The final model demonstrated that interpersonal skills mediated the general mental ability-OCB, conscientiousness-OCB, and extraversion-OCB relationships. Extraversion and conscientiousness contributed to both pathways with significant but small direct pathways to interpersonal skills and positive affect. Job involvement was observed to mediate the relationships between positive affect-OCB, conscientiousness-OCB, and job satisfaction-OCB. In addition to a direct pathway between positive affect and job involvement being observed, the job involvement pathway also demonstrated partial mediation of the positive affect-job involvement relationship by job satisfaction. 
Results indicated that the strongest contribution to the prediction of OCB was interpersonal skills. This result is important to the area of learning and development within organisations, as individual difference aspects were shown to make smaller contributions to predict OCB through the interpersonal skills and job involvement pathways. It is proposed that it may be possible to develop an individual’s interpersonal skills through training, thereby producing increased levels of OCB in the workplace. However, only 13 percent of the variance in interpersonal skills was explained in the model and further research could investigate other variables that could provide a greater understanding of the interpersonal skills construct and its contribution to OCB.