Going beyond borders: Work centrality, emotional intelligence and employee optimism as predictors of organizational citizenship behavior

Abstract

As global market competition heightens and societies becoming more and more complex, the task that now confronts management is no longer in retaining their best performers, but in building a culture that encourages them to go beyond their usual work schedule to engage in other on-the-job, work-related behavior, organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) that is not related to the formal organizational reward system, but promotes the effective functioning of the organizations. Some dispositional variables have been linked to the performance of OCB. Thus, this study attempted to investigate work centrality, emotional intelligence, and employee optimism as predictors of OCB (N = 175) among civil defense corps in the Southeast, Nigeria. The results of the regression analyses computed, which revealed that work centrality has a significant positive predictive value on OCB is in line with our first speculation. Consistent with hypothesis 2, emotional intelligence significantly and positively predicted OCB. In the third hypothesis, the result revealed that employee optimism significantly and positively predicted OCB. The implications of these findings for organizations may be a reemphasis on the importance of these variables in driving OCB. The limitations of the study were highlighted and suggestions for further studies were made.

Keywords:

• work centrality
• emotional intelligence
• employee optimism
• OCB

Public Interest Statement

This study investigated whether employees with work centrality, emotional intelligence, and optimism will be more likely to engage in organizational citizenship behavior among 175 employees of the Nigeria civil defense corps. The results of the regression analyses indicated that employees who see work as an important aspect of their lives were more likely to go the extra mile for the good of the organization; that empathic individuals are more likely to go beyond their work schedule to work for the organization. The results equally showed that employees with positive disposition about life are more likely to engage in extra role behavior to ensure the progress of their organization. It is, therefore, suggested that when employees value the work they do, are empathic and optimistic they tend to allocate extra resources to their jobs and feel happy doing so even when they don’t receive any reward from such prosocial work behavior.

Competing Interests

The authors declare no competing interest.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Fabian O. Ugwu

Fabian O. Ugwu is an industrial/organizational psychologist with research interest in diverse areas of positive organizational behavior and extra role behavior. Most of his publications are in these areas ranging from work engagement to taking charge at work and from work–family interface to organizational citizenship behavior. He also has been interested in personality and other key psychological issues that enhance work performance and leaves employees healthy. Fabian has been much concerned in examining the psychological wellness of workers.

Dorothy Aumbur Igbende

Dorothy Aumbur Igbende has a master’s degree in Clinical Psychology. Her works have appeared in referred reputable local and international journals. She has presented papers at conferences. Her research interests spans from substance use and abuse, psycho-oncology to terrorism. The authors of this paper still hope to continue to extend and expand the course of research in these areas for many more years.