Antecedents of Organizational Citizenship Behavior among Academic Staff in Universities in Uganda: A Conceptual Paper

International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) | Volume V, Issue VIII, August 2021 | ISSN 2454–6186

Antecedents of Organizational Citizenship Behavior among Academic Staff in Universities in Uganda: A Conceptual Paper

J. Kabasiita¹, F. E. K. Bakkabulindi², D. Onen^2
1School of Education, Mountains of the Moon University;
²East African School of Higher Education Studies and Development, College of Education and External Studies, Makerere University

Abstract: An employee who displays organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) is likely to have high job performance because he/she requires minimal monitoring from their supervisors. It is therefore important to isolate antecedents of OCB. In this study we use Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Paine and Bachrach’s (2000) model, of OCB to isolate antecedents of OCB among academic staff in universities in Uganda. According the model, we postulate that OCB is a function of employee characteristics, task characteristics, organizational characteristics, and leadership behavior. In this paper, we give the background of the study, the problem; study objectives and significance. We also review literature related to the objectives and draw hypotheses thereof. Using a positivism approach, we suggest the methodology we shall use to test hypotheses.

Key words: Academic staff, Antecedents, OCB, Positivism.

I. BACKGROUND

1.1. Historical Perspective.

The concept of OCB was first formally articulated by Chester Barnard (Barnard, 1938). Barnard proposed the term “willingness to cooperate” defining cooperation as indisputable restraint of oneself, voluntary service for no reward and subjection of one’s own personal interests for the betterment of the organization. From this, one notes that integral to Barnard’s view of willingness to cooperate is the conception of an individual exercising his/ her freewill while participating in a formal system of cooperation. Katz (1964) building on from Barnard described this willingness to cooperate kind of behavior as “innovative and spontaneous behavior”. From the three fundamental types of behavior essential for functioning organization that Katz had suggested, one of the was that an employee should engage in innovative and spontaneous behaviors that goes beyond task prescriptions. Concerning this category, Katz pointed out that an organization which depended solely upon its blue prints of prescribed behavior was a very fragile social system. They contended that every institution depended daily on a myriad of cooperation, helpfulness, suggestions, gestures of goodwill, altruism/ humility, and other instances of what we might call citizenship behavior.
In 1983, Bateman and Organ coined the now popular term organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). Bateman and Organ (1983) defined OCB as organizationally beneficial behaviors and gestures by an employee that could neither be obligatory on the basis of formal role requirement nor elicited by contractual guarantee of remuneration. They posited that OCB consisted of informal assistance an employee could choose to

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