Forbearance in organizational citizenship behaviour

Abstract

We argue for the need to distinguish active positive contributions from forbearance within the concept of organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB). We demonstrate the usefulness of this distinction by showing that forbearance plays a major role in national understandings of OCB. Drawing from institutional theory, we argue that country institutional environments affect what behaviours are considered to be discretionary, and thereby impact the perception of forbearance OCBs. In our study of 524 US and Chinese managers, we found that Chinese respondents were more likely to perceive forbearance from abuse of personal power and forbearance from use of company resources as OCBs and as discretionary actions than US respondents. In contrast, forbearance from complaining about trivial issues and forbearance from inconsiderateness were more likely to be perceived as OCBs and as discretionary behaviours by US than Chinese respondents. In addition, we found that the relationship between country and forbearance OCBs was mediated by the discretionary nature of these behaviours. These results have implications for research on OCB as well as for human resource managers, particularly in an international context.

Keywords:

• discretionary behaviour
• institutional theory
• organizational citizenship behaviour