Organizational citizenship behavior of IT professionals: lessons from Poland and Germany^*

* Narcyz Roztocki and Piotr Soja are the accepting Editors for this article.

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this research is to investigate the similarities and differences in Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) of male and female information technology (IT) professionals in Poland and Germany, which represent a transition economy and a developed economy, respectively. We examined two dimensions of OCB: individually-oriented (OCBI) and organizationally-oriented (OCBO). We conducted an online survey among 282 Polish respondents and 80 German respondents, using a combination of random and snowball sampling. We observed both similarities and differences between Polish and German IT professionals. Overall, female subordinates evaluated their supervisors’ OCB more positively than did male subordinates. In contrast, female supervisors evaluated their subordinates’ OCB less positively than did male supervisors. Also, it was evident that in Germany employees value OCB more than those in Poland. In conclusion, our findings contribute to the stream of existing research on the relationship between gender, country and OCB in transition and developed economies in Europe.

KEYWORDS:

• Country
• gender
• organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB)
• IT professionals
• transition economy
• developed economy

Acknowledgements

The initial results of this study were presented at the 22nd Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS 2016) hosted in San Diego, CA, USA, August 11–14, 2016. We would like to express our gratitude to conference participants for their inspiring guidance, help, and comments and feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Jolanta Kowal PhD. in economic sciences, Jungian analyst, assistant professor in the Institute of Psychology of Wroclaw University, Poland. She is a member of international scientific associations as AIS, PLAIS (President), IEEE, International Association for Analytical Psychology (Senior President). Her research focuses on psycho-social, economic and analytical aspects of human capital in information systems management, research methodology, and cross-cultural research. Jolanta published numerous papers in journals such as the Journal of Information Systems Management, The Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries, Journal of Business and Economic Management, Journal of Global Information Technology Management, and in a numerous conference proceedings including AMCIS, HICSS, INDIN, LNBIP, ICTM, EMCIS, and ECMLG. Jolanta acted as the conference and track co-chair in AMCIS, ICTM, INDIN, and ECMLG. She is a member of editorial board of the Journal of Information Technology for Development, Journal of American Academic Research, guest editor of the Journal of Information Systems Management, and associated research editor of Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Jolanta has reviewed for ITD, ISM, EJISDC, JBEM, JGTIM, Telematics and Informatics, and LNBIP, among many others.

Alicja Keplinger – psychologist (Doctor of Humanistic Sciences) is an Assistant Professor at the University of Wrocław (at the Institute of Psychology). Her research focuses on problems in psychology, motivation, management, competencies, job satisfaction, business ethics. She is the author of monographs and over seventy scientific articles. She has published in numerous polish journals, for example, the Social Psychological Bulletin ISSN 2569-653X (online) or Journal Econometrics and in proceedings of AMCIS, ICTM, and INDIN. She is a member of the Polish Association of Organizational Psychology.

Juho Mäkiö is full professor of computer sciences at the University of Applied Sciences Emden/Leer, Germany and visiting professor at Peter the Great St.Petersburg Polytechnic University (SPbPU) in the faculty of economics. He studied Computer Sciences and received his PhD in Economics from the Karlsruhe University of Technology. His research focuses on electronic markets and market engineering (generic electronic marketplace), agent based simulation of electronic markets, multi-attribute matchmaking, distributed software development, software offshoring and outsourcing, risk management in distributed software development, development of innovative teaching methods, digital education platforms, and various aspects social aspects concerning IT employees. He has published over 60 papers in journals and refereed conference proceedings. He is a member of ACM, IEEE and Gesellschaft für Informatik.

ORCID

Jolanta Kowal http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6241-9603

Alicja Keplinger http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0509-8049

Juho Mäkiö http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9987-7600

Notes

* Narcyz Roztocki and Piotr Soja are the accepting Editors for this article.