Above and Beyond, Again and Again: Self-Regulation in the Aftermath of Organizational Citizenship Behaviors

In this temporally lagged study of employees in a service organization, we examined the ways in which feedback regarding organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) may affect employees' motives to continue performing OCBs over time. Building on the self-regulation approach to citizenship (Bolino, Harvey, & Bachrach, 2012), we propose and test an overall model of OCB motive, others' attribution and feedback, and motive fulfillment to determine their impact on continuing OCB. Using a total sample of 213 employees and structural equation modeling, we found support for most of our model, indicating that instances of OCB initiate a chain of events that can ultimately lead individuals to alter their OCB patterns, based on their own motives, others' motive attributions, and feedback. We also find that feedback regarding OCB can influence motive fulfillment and the motivations to engage in future OCB, although this feedback is most powerful when it comes from peers, as opposed to managers.