Motives for Organizational Citizenship Behavior: Personality Correlates and Coworker Ratings of OCB

Abstract

Data were collected from a sample of 262 Korean employees to (a) examine personality correlates of Organizational Citizenship Behaviors (OCBs) motivated by “good soldier” (i.e., prosocial values and organizational concern) and “good actor” (i.e., impression management [IM]) motives and (b) investigate how these OCB motives influenced actual coworker ratings of OCB. Personality variables were measured using the six-dimensional model of personality known as the HEXACO model. As hypothesized, (low) Honesty–Humility is the primary personality dimension underlying IM motivated OCB. Further, Conscientiousness positively related to OCB driven by each of the three motives. Agreeableness, Emotionality, and Openness to Experience also demonstrated relationships with the OCB motives. Second, OCBs for the organizational concern and IM motives, but not for the prosocial values motive, were positively associated with coworker ratings of OCB.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This research was supported by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada grant 410-2011-0089.

Notes

¹For a complete listing of HEXACO–PI–R items, as well as full scale descriptions, please refer to http://hexaco.org.

²For the personality variables, we did not use the multiple indicator approach. The reason for this is that the personality facet scales included in omnibus personality inventories are substantially deviated from simple structure, and a CFA model assuming such a structure would not provide a reasonably good fit to the data and would sacrifice the fit of the model as a whole (see Hopwood & Donnellan, 2010; McCrae, Zonderman, Costa, Bond, & Paunonen, 1996).