CHAPTER ONE
Introduction
Successful organisations have employees who go beyond their formal job responsibilities and freely give of their time and energy to succeed at the assigned job. Such behaviour is neither prescribed nor required, yet it contributes to the smooth functioning of the organisation. An organisation cannot survive or prosper without their members behaving as good citizens by engaging in positive behaviours. Because of the importance of good citizenship for organisations, understanding the nature and sources of organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) has long been a high priority for organisational scholars and this takes us to the concept of organisational citizenship behaviour (Podsakoff, Whiting, Podsakoff & Blume, 2009).
In the increasingly dynamic and competitive environment in which organisations operate, this discretionary behaviour, not formally recognized or rewarded, termed Organisational Citizenship Behaviour (OCB) is considered a highly valuable contribution to the effective functioning of an organisation. Organisational behaviour provides knowledge to managers on the understanding of employees’ behavior for the purpose of eliciting cooperation from them in order to achieve organisation’s objective. One of the contributing behaviour which is rather discretionary but proven empirically to increase organisational functioning is organisation citizenship behaviour (OCB). It refers to various forms of cooperation and helpfulness to others that support the organisation’s social and psychological context.
These behaviours are discretional which are not parts of the job description, and are performed by the employee as a result of personal choice. Organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) is a term that encompasses anything positive and constructive that employees do, of their own volition, which supports co-workers and benefits the company. Typically, employees who frequently engage in OCB may not always be the top performers (though they could be, as task performance is related to OCB), but they are the ones who are known to ‘go the extra mile’ or ‘go above and beyond’ the minimum efforts required to do a merely satisfactory job. Organisation will benefit from encouraging employees to engage in OCB, because it has been shown to increase productivity, efficiency and customer satisfaction, and reduce costs and rates of turnover and absenteeism (Podsakoff, Whiting, Podsakoff & Blume, 2009).
Though OCB is a spontaneous initiative taken by staff, organisations promote OCB in the workplace through employee motivation, as well as giving employees the opportunity to display OCB; that is, creating a workplace environment that not only allows for, but is conducive and supportive of OCB (Organ, Podsakoff & MacKenzie, 2006).
According to Organ (1988), OCB is defined as work-related behaviours that are discretionary, not related to the formal organisational reward system and in aggregate, promote the effective functioning of the organisation. In addition, OCB extends beyond the performance indicators required by an organisation in a formal job description. Moreover, OCB reflects those actions performed by employees that surpass the minimum role requirements expected by the organisation and promote the welfare of co-workers, work groups, and/or the organisation (Lovell, Kahn, Anton, Davidson, Dowling, Post & Mason, 1999).
Furthermore, Organisational Citizenship Behaviour (OCB) is a construct that enjoins employees to willingly exceed or go beyond their formal and principal job requirements (Organ & Ryan, 1995). The increasing downsizing and complexity of jobs suggests that there is more to do in the workplace and fewer people to do it than ever before. In today’s dynamic workplace, flexibility and innovativeness is increasingly becoming critical especially in most service oriented organisations (Robbins, 2003). As suggested by Organ (1988), the effective functioning of an organisation depends on employee efforts that extend beyond formal role requirements.
A distinction has been made between two dimensions of employee behaviour: (1) general compliance (doing what a good employee should do), and (2) altruism (helping specific others) (see Smith et al., 1983; Bateman & Organ, 1983). Later, the concept underwent a number of transformations. For instance, in a review of the research, Organ (1988) identified five distinct dimensions of OCB: Altruism (helping specific others); civic virtue (keeping up with important matters within the organisation); conscientiousness (compliance with norms); courtesy (consulting others before taking action); and sportsmanship (not complaining about trivial matters). However, Organ (1997) further classified OCB dimensions into three parts: helping, courtesy, and conscientiousness. A different view on the dimensionality of OCB came from Williams and Anderson (1991), who divided OCB into two types: (1) behaviours directed at specific individuals in the organisation, such as courtesy and altruism (OCBI); and (2) behaviours concerned with benefiting the organisation as a whole, such as conscientiousness, sportsmanship and civic virtue (OCBO). The present study employs these two dimensions of OCB to achieve the research objective.
OCBI refers to the behaviours that immediately benefit specific individuals within an organisation and, thereby, contribute indirectly to organisational effectiveness (Williams & Anderson, 1991). Podsakoff et al. (2000) labeled this dimension as helping behaviour and defined it as voluntarily helping others with work-related problems. While other researchers have addressed this category of behaviour in a number of ways, all are similar to Williams and Anderson’s (1991) definition of OCBI.
The second dimension of OCB includes behaviours benefiting the organisation without actions aimed specifically toward any organisational member or members (e.g., adhering to informal rules, volunteering for committees). Podsakoff et al. (2000) labeled this organisational compliance as it involves an internalization of a company’s rules and policies. Furthermore, Williams and Anderson (1991) defined it as behaviours that benefit the organisation in general. These behaviours include giving prior notice regarding an absence from work or informally adhering to rules designed to maintain order.
The various dimensions of OCB differ in their antecedents. For example; OCB-I was reported to be predicted by concern for others and interpersonal justice, while OCB-O was seen to be predicted by reward-equity, recognition and procedural justice (McNeely & Meglino, 1994; Masterson, Lewis, Goldman & Taylor, 2001).
Furthermore, impression management motive and prosocial values motives have been observed to predict OCB-I more than it does for OCB-O, while organisational concern motive have been observed to predict OCB-O more than it does for OCB-I (Bolino, 1999; Rioux & Peneer, 2011). Finally, various dimensions of OCB are of different levels i.e. OCB-I and OCB-O represents individual-level and organisational-level behaviour respectively. Podsakoff, Blume, Whiting and Podsakoff (2009) reported that individual-level and organisational-level behaviour relate differently with some organisational variables, while individual-level behaviour relate to performance appraisal rating, reward distribution and allocation among employees, organisational-level behaviour relate to employee efficiency, organisational turnover and productivity among employees.
Employees are key asset for any organisation thus organisations that can successfully retain their human resources have an advantage over organisations that cannot. Consequently, attracting and retaining employees has emerged as one of the most important and crucial challenges facing organisations today. The failure to manage workforce attrition is costly and organisations have become more proactive in introducing strategies aimed at retaining employees. Regardless of individual industry, the turnover of employees makes it difficult to secure a work force and costs companies enormous expenses to recruit, hire and train new personnel. Furthermore, to remain competitive in the rapidly expanding global economy and to keep pace with technological advances requires a workforce with robust institutional knowledge; therefore, employee retention is of great importance to business and academic communities (Benko & Weisberg, 2007; Becker, 2007; The Future of Work 2020, 2007). Based on this assumption, it becomes imperative for organisations to work assiduously to prevent employees’ turnover intentions or actual turnover.
Intention to leave and actual turnover are often highly co-related. For this reason, researchers usually use intent to leave as a proxy for turnover. Price and Mueller (1981) developed a model of turnover which proposes that intention to leave is influenced mostly by role related characteristics, facility characteristics, turnover opportunities and job characteristics. Mobley (1977) classified the cause and correlates of turnover into a simple model, which presents the determinants into external economy and mostly organisational variables. The research on employee’s intention to leave however is zooming in at organisational level. One of the organisational variables used is organisational climate which potentially correlates with intention to leave and actual turnover. Employees tend to leave organisations that endure unfavorable work climate as every organisation needs human capital resources to function, when an employee(s) leaves, this can have a variety of effects that not only impact on the organisation but also the individual employee and the wider society (Mobley, 1977). The effects can be positive or negative pending on how the situation pans out. In furtherance to this, a greater understanding of the process of labour turnover can multiply the degree to which the organisation and employees within the organisation can influence these effects. Turnover “as an individual motivated choice behaviour” has been a widely studied variable which as well interest my research on it though not all types of turnover are negative. Voluntary turnover that is dysfunctional and unavoidable can be very costly for any organisation.
Turnover intention and actual turnover has been of interest for both managers and scholars as the pressure for financial performance among private organisations has increased. Hence, a theoretical causal process was proposed to explain this phenomenon. The main antecedent and predictor of employees turnover is organisational climate. Turnover intention and actual turnover are reactions to organisational climate or perceived work environment by employees.
Dissatisfaction with work condition and the belief that an organisation lacks promotion opportunities, good string benefits/remuneration, career opportunities, welfare package and job security can be interpreted which is dependent on how the employee perceived his job and career expectations thus could lead to turnover intention. On the other hand, management must spend time to understand how each worker interprets his/her job and when there is a significant difference between what one sees and what exists, try to eliminate distortions.
Retaining valuable employees is one of the most important issues for competitive organisations today as employees are the most valuable asset in any company. Employee turnover has been the trend in most telecom organizations and the issue of staff retention has continued to plague in the industry.
Turnover intention is a conscious and deliberate willingness to leave the organisation. Tett and Meyer (1993) view turnover intention as one’s propensity to leave an organisation, which leads to skilled employee shortages and affects organisation outcomes. Evidently perception affects the way we behave and how the employee perceives the workplace affects the way they react to their job. When their perception is towards the positive route, they give all the best to the job and remain happy and tend to neglect the job or become less productive, withdrawn, when the perception is on the negative part.
In conclusion, Atkinson and Lefferts (1972) noted that the frequency with which people thought about quitting their job was significantly related to actual termination. Conceptual and actual turnover intentions provide strong support for the proposition that behavioral intentions constituted the most immediate determinant of actual behaviour (turnover).
As today’s businesses continue to struggle to survive or acquire sustainable competitive advantage, it is important for organisations to better understand the factors that influence employees and important employee-oriented work outcomes. The growing significance placed on understanding employees and their behaviour within the organisation has produced a great deal of interest in investigating employee perceptions of climate within the organisation. Work environment or climate perception of employees has significant consequences for both individuals and organisations. Climate or atmosphere in workplace has impact on employee’s motivation, behaviour, attitudes and potentials, which, in turn is predicted to influence organisational productivity (Adenike, 2011). In other words, the climate or the organisational climate is considered very important in the life of organisations due to its clear effects and relations to various regulatory activities. It affects employees’ satisfaction and performance and, thus, the success of the organisation and its ability to continue (Al-Saudi, 2012). For these reasons, organisational climate has been a topic of considerable research over the last thirty years, both theoretically and empirically (Dawson et al., 2009).
Organizational climate is defined as the set of characteristics that describe an organisation and that distinguishes the organisation from other organisations and influences the behavior of people in the organisation (Farooqui, 2012). Organisational climate attempts to identify the environment that affects the behavior of the employees and due to the organisational climate importance on employee’s attitudes and behaviours, researches increasing attention in organisational behaviour literature (Holloway, 2012).
Organisational climate is essentially a perceived state of operation thus can be thought of as the way employees describe an organisational environment to themselves and interpret what they find. However, because this is wrapped up with experience, it impacts on attitude which results to behavioural implications. An inference of example with an autocratic management style could result in an antagonistic organisational climate that creates friction between employees and their employers, which the resultant effect could be withdrawal from the work place and continual replacement. The nature of organisational climate differs from one organisation to another as organisational climate serves as a measure of individual perceptions or feelings about an organisation.
Organisational Climate (OC) can be defined as employee’s perceptions of what the organisation is like in terms of practices, policies, procedures, routines and rewards. In a sense, organisational climate focuses on how organisational participants experience and make sense of their organisations. Climate as a concept does exemplify understanding the psychological phenomena in organizations. Organisational climate can stated to be a reflection of the way that employee and managers see each other and this takes account of the idea that once it is formed, climate can be extremely resistant to modification. This results that when one party perceives that the other behaves in a particular way, the recipient tends to respond accordingly, which in turn evokes perception and behaviour in turn and if it is hostile, this pans out an extremely frosty atmosphere, where each side can undermine the other and this at times leads to turnover intention and actual turnover. Individuals base their behaviour not on the way their external environment actually is but the way they see or believe their environment to be, that is perceptual. Furthermore, employees’ judge issues such as fair play for work performance, remuneration, incentives, appraisals and the adequacy of working conditions about their job in a favorable light. Thus in order to influence productivity, positive attitude to work and reduce turnover intentions and actual turnover, assessment of workers perception to their work place and job is paramount.
Organisational climate is the shared perceptions of and the meaning attached to the policies, practices, and procedures employees experience and the behaviours they observe getting rewarded and that are supported and expected (Ostroff et al. 2003, Schneider & Reichers 1983, Schneider et al. 2011). On the other hand, organisational culture may be defined as the shared basic assumptions, values, and beliefs that characterize a setting and are taught to newcomers as the proper way to think and feel, communicated by the myths and stories people tell about how the organisation came to be the way it is as it solved problems associated with external adaptation and internal integration (Schein, 2010, Trice & Beyer 1993; Zohar & Hofmann, 2012). Until the past two decades or so there have also been significant differences in the methods used to study climate and culture, with the former having been characterized by employee surveys and the latter by qualitative case studies. A historical review of the climate and culture literatures, however, reveals that culture recently has been much more often studied using surveys, and the issues addressed can both overlap and be considerably different from the issues addressed via climate surveys (Schneider et al., 2011; Zohar & Hofmann, 2012).
Organisational climate is influenced by and shapes organisational culture (Hunt & Ivergard, 2007). Organisational culture is more defined than organisational climate; thus organisational culture is a broader pattern of its beliefs and stems from employees’ interpretations of the assumptions, philosophies and values that produces the experienced climate within an organisation (Brown & Brooks, 2002). Organisational climate is a manifestation of the organisation’s culture; it is the here and now (Sowpow, 2006). Organisational climate attempts to identify the environment that affects the behaviour of the employees. It deals with the way(s) employees make sense out of their environment (Reichers & Schneider, 1990). It is primarily learned through the socialization process and through symbolic interactions among the organisation’s members. If the shared perceptions of practices and procedures change or differ in any way, then the results of these changes or differences could produce a different organisational climate (Muchinsky, 1976).
Employees today are more likely than ever to be concerned with how to balance their work and family lives. Competing demands, which arise between work and personal roles, often result in conflict for employees. Furthermore, changes in the demographic make-up of the workforce have been the primary impetus for the increased focus on work and family issues. The entry of women, dual earner couples, and single parents in the workforce underlie some of the most significant trends (Googins, 1991; Googins, GriYn, & Casey, 1994; Parasuraman & Greenhaus, 1997; Zedeck, 1992). Simultaneous to these changes, businesses are experiencing rapid changes. Increased global competition, focus on customer service, and technological advances (which increase an employee’s access to work) contribute to stress for both employees and employers in this highly competitive business world (Parasuraman & Greenhaus, 1997).
Family and work represent two of the most important aspects of adult life. Each of these variables contributes uniquely to our understanding of human behaviour in the work place. Although researchers have examined both variables theoretically and empirically, traditionally the examination of these two crucial domains has been conducted independently of each other. However, researchers have long speculated that these two variables are related, and have since found that this relationship have emerged in the form of conflict thus the concept of family-work conflict will be further discussed more elaborately.
Family-Work role conflict has been defined as “a form of inter-role conflict in which role pressures from the work and family domains are mutually incompatible in some respect” (Flippo, 2005). The conflict occurs when the employee extends their efforts to satisfy their work demands at the expense of their family demands or vice versa (Cole, 2004). Conflict could arise from family interfering with the work activities, such as keeping late night to attend to family issues/chores or from family demands when there is illness with a family member. A significant amount of research has concluded that family-work conflict and work-family conflict are related but distinct constructs (Ajiboye, 2008). Work-family conflict is primarily caused by excessive work demands and predicts negative family outcomes, whereas family-work conflict is primarily determined by family demands and predicts negative work outcomes (Adebola, 2005). Therefore, if an employee is experiencing high levels of family-work role conflict, their roles and responsibilities in family life are interfering with the work domain. Meanwhile, because the employee is more committed to the welfare of the family, this will take priority, reducing or minimizing the resources of time and energy being able to be spending in the work domain. Thus, employees who experience high family role conflict should experience less affective commitment to the organization. However, work-to-family conflict occurs when the domain of work interferes with the family demands and vice versa for work-family conflict (Ajiboye, 2008).
In Greenhaus and Boutell’s study (Willis, O’Conner, & Smith, 2008) family-work conflict is defined as a consequence of inconsistent demands between the roles at work and in the family. In other words, family-work conflict exists when the expectations related to a certain role do not meet the requirements of the other role, preventing the efficient performance of that role (Greenhaus, Tammy & Spector, 2006). Therefore, it could be said that the conflict between family and work domains tends to stem from the conflict between the roles of employees. Several studies reveal that family and work are not two separate domains as they are highly interdependent, having a dynamic relation with one another. While family life is affected by the factors at work, the reverse is also experienced (Trachtenberg, Anderson & Sabatelli, 2009; Namasivayam & Zhao, 2007). In furtherance to the above, work-family conflict occurs when experiences at work interfere with family life like extensive, irregular or inflexible work hours, work overload and other forms of job stress, interpersonal conflicts at work, extensive travel, career transitions, unsupportive supervisor or organization. For instance, an unexpected meeting late in the day or a breakdown of the factory production machine may prevent a parent from attending the child’s graduation party.
Balancing family and work is a challenge in an adult’s life. The increase in dual-career couples and single-parent households and the decrease in traditional, single-earner families mean that responsibilities for work, housework, and childcare are no longer confined to traditional gender roles (Byron, 2005). Further, employees find themselves struggling to juggle the competing demands of family and work. The excessive pressure and scarcity of free time may adversely affect their ability to cope. This can lead to dissatisfaction, absenteeism, poor personal relations, and decreased work performance (Davidson & Cooper, 1992; O’Laughlin & Bischoff, 2005). Furthermore researches have shown that work roles are more likely to interfere with family roles than family roles are likely to interfere with work roles.
How people deal with difficult events, situations, challenges that change their lives vary from one individual to another as they react to such circumstances with a flood of strong emotions and a sense of uncertainty as the case maybe. However people generally adapt well over time to life-changing situations and stressful conditions. What enables them to adapt to situations of life involve the factor of resilience. Resilience is defined as an individual’s ability to properly adapt to stress and adversity. Stress and adversity can come in the shape of family or relationship problems, health problems, or workplace and financial stressors, among others. Individuals demonstrate resilience when they can face difficult experiences and rise above them with ease. Resilience is not a rare ability; in reality, it is found in the average individual and it can be learned and developed by virtually anyone. Resilience should be considered a process, rather than a trait to be had. There is a common misconception that people who are resilient experience no negative emotions or thoughts and display optimism in all situations. Contrary to this misconception, the reality remains that resiliency is demonstrated within individuals who can effectively and relatively easily navigate their way around crises and utilize effective methods of coping. In other words, people who demonstrate resilience are people with positive emotionality; they are keen to effectively balance negative emotions with positive ones (Lazarus, 1993)
Aldwin, (2000) resilience is composed of particular factors attributed to an individual. There are numerous factors, which cumulatively contribute to a person’s resilience. The primary factor in resilience is having positive relationships inside or outside one’s family. It is the single most critical means of handling both ordinary and extraordinary levels of stress. These positive relationships include traits such as mutual, reciprocal support and caring. Such relationships aid in bolstering a person’s resilience. Studies show that there are several other factors which develop and sustain a person`s resilience:
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