Project Abstract

<p> This study examines the determinants of employee organizational<br>citizenship behaviors (OCBs) among low and middle level employees of utility<br>sector organizations in Nigeria. Primarily, this study explored the role of<br>psychological ownership (PO) as a mediator on the relationship between servant<br>leader behaviors (SLBs) including emotional healing, creating value for the<br>community, conceptual skills and helping subordinates grow and succeed, and<br>employee OCBs. Partial Least Squares Method (PLS) algorithm and bootstrap<br>techniques were used to test the study hypotheses. The results provided support<br>for most of the hypothesized relationship for the study. Specifically,<br>emotional healing, conceptual skills, helping subordinates grow and succeed,<br>putting subordinates first, and psychological ownership are significantly and positively<br>related to both organizational citizenship behaviors that benefit the<br>individual (OCB-I), and the organization (OCB-O). However, creating value for<br>the community is significantly and negatively related to both forms of<br>organizational citizenship behaviors. Additionally, emotional healing, helping<br>subordinates grow and succeed, and putting subordinates first were<br>significantly and positively related to psychological ownership, while creating<br>value for the community was significantly and negatively related to<br>psychological ownership. Furthermore, the results of mediation indicated that<br>six of the ten hypotheses are significant. Therefore, significant positive<br>effects of emotional healing, conceptual skills, helping subordinates grow and<br>succeed, and putting subordinates first and psychological ownership suggest<br>that the variables are important in motivating OCBs. As such, employees should<br>be encouraged to exhibit these behaviors for enhanced performance of<br>organizational citizenship behaviors. Enhanced performance of organizational<br>citizenship behaviors can improve the overall effective function of<br>organizations. Contributions, limitations, and implications are discussed. <br></p>

Project Overview

<p> </p><div><p><b>INTRODUCTION</b></p><p><b>1.1</b>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;<b>Background of the Study</b></p><p>One of the most important areas of concern among<br>organizational theorists and practitioners is organizational effectiveness. A<br>good mechanism for achieving it is through employees‟ willingness to perform<br>their duties beyond the formal specifications of job roles, termed extra-role<br>or discretionary behaviors (Organ, 1990). Increasing number of research on<br>employee‟s discretionary work behaviors signifies the importance of this<br>construct for the success of organizations. Multiple conceptualizations of<br>discretionary employee work behaviors exist in the literature (e.g., pro-social<br>organizational behaviour, extra role behaviour, contextual performance, and<br>organizational citizenship behaviour [OCB]). Organ‟s (1988) conceptualization<br>of OCB has received major research attention compared to other<br>conceptualizations of discretionary employee behaviors (Van Dyne, Cummings,<br>&amp; Parks, 1995).</p><p>Organizational citizenship<br>behaviors (OCBs) are behaviors that are not mandatory on the employees to carry<br>out, but are helpful to the organization‟s effectiveness and goal attainment<br>(Organ, 1988). In his words, Organ (1988, p. 4) defines organizational<br>citizenship behaviour (OCB) as “behaviour that is discretionary, not directly<br>or explicitly recognized by the formal reward system, and in the aggregate<br>promotes the efficient functioning of the organization”. Organizational<br>citizenship behaviors are usually performed by employees to support the<br>interests of the organization even though they may not directly lead to<br>employee</p><p>1</p></div><div><p>benefits (Moorman &amp; Blakely, 1995). However,<br>Organ (1988) acknowledges that OCB could have a beneficial cumulative effect<br>for an individual employee and that the employee might be considering the<br>long-term benefits.</p><p>Employee OCB also benefits<br>organizations directly or indirectly. Direct organizational benefits include<br>volunteerism, assistance between co-workers, and unusual employee attendance to<br>an important meeting, employee‟s punctuality and active participation in organizational<br>affairs (Farh, Podsakoff, &amp; Organ, 1990). Indirect benefits, as Smith,<br>Organ, and Near (1983) stress, include lubricating the social machinery of the<br>organization. Also Katz (1964) considered such discretionary behaviour<br>essential for strong organizational social systems. He posited that the<br>organization gains a measure of systemic resiliency from the small, spontaneous<br>acts of selfless sensitivity, cooperation, and uncompensated contribution.</p><p>Employees exhibit OCBs in various<br>situations. They exhibit OCBs when they help fellow workers who have difficulty<br>in performing their work; when they exhibit endurance and perseverance in<br>performing their jobs; when they avoid doing things or saying things that<br>tarnish the image of their organization; when they spend extra time to achieve<br>objectives; when they perform their job beyond requirements; or generally when<br>they show extra concern about success of their organizations (Organ, 1988).<br>From these scenarios it is clear that OCB could contribute to organizational<br>performance in many ways. Podsakoff, Ahearne, and MacKenzie (1997) argue that<br>OCB has potential to enhance organizational performance through lubricating the<br>social machinery of the organization, reducing friction, and increasing<br>efficiency. OCB may also contribute to organizational success by</p><p>2</p></div><div><p>enhancing co-worker and managerial productivity,<br>promoting better use of scarce resources, improving coordination, strengthening<br>the organization‟s ability to attract and retain better employees, reducing<br>variability of performance, and enabling better adaptation to environmental<br>changes (Podsakoff, Mackenzie, Paine, &amp; Bachrach, 2000). Research<br>demonstrates that OCB can be an important resource to improve organizational<br>performance in complex work environments demanding team oriented work practices<br>(Organ, Podsakoff, &amp; MacKenzie, 2006).</p><p>In any part of this globe,<br>economic development and social welfare are the ultimate goals of any credible<br>and legitimate government (Ali, Ali, &amp; Raza, 2011), and therefore,<br>governments are charged with the responsibility of managing the public<br>resources to ensure social welfare, or generate maximum public good through<br>their established institutions (public utilities). Utility entails all basic<br>inputs required for the proper functioning of the economy and enhancing the<br>standard of living of the individuals (Ariyo &amp; Jerome, 2004). Utility<br>services involve a broad range of activities including water, electricity,<br>transportation and telecommunication. Generally, these services impact greatly<br>on a country‟s living standards, and overall economic growth. Specifically,<br>they affect capacities of the local industries to produce quality and<br>affordable products that can compete favourably in the global marketplace. It<br>has been reported that the public utility sectors account for 7.1% to 11% of<br>the GDP (World Bank, 1994), and the impacts of such services on human<br>development and enhanced quality of life are just apparently enormous (Ariyo<br>&amp; Jerome, 2004).</p><p>However, the Nigerian public utilities<br>have been performing abysmally largely due to employee performance related<br>problems. The problem of poor</p><p>3</p></div><div><p>performance among agencies of public utility sector<br>has been a subject of considerable discussion (Jerome, 1999). Despite heavy<br>investment in capital infrastructures, and high recurrent expenditures,<br>efficient and effective provision of electricity, telephone, water, and<br>transport services has remained a heinous task to achieve. The Nigerian public<br>utilities have started to experience decreasing performance since the Nigeria‟s<br>oil boom years of the 1970s (Ariyo &amp; Jerome, 2004). In more recent times,<br>the problems in the public utility sectors have unfortunately reached crisis<br>proportions when the Nigeria‟s electricity power system almost collapsed by<br>increasingly becoming erratic; water taps continuously remaining dry for most<br>of the time; and the performance of telecommunication and postal services<br>continuously remaining to be very unsatisfactory (Ariyo &amp; Jerome, 2004).<br>The experienced problem of the utility sector has led to negative consequences<br>on the Nigerian economy causing extremely high costs of operations within the<br>real sector, and lowering quality of life and well-being of the average<br>Nigerians (Ariyo &amp; Jerome, 2004). The Nigerian public could no longer get<br>services expeditiously from public sector organizations (Orabuchi, 2005).</p><p>In a survey of ten public<br>corporations in Nigeria, Echu (2008) identified some striking problems that<br>indirectly affect employee willingness to perform beyond the contractual<br>agreement (OCB) and employee performance generally, and consequently leading to<br>overall performance problems of public corporations including public utilities<br>in Nigeria. These striking problems include massive fraud, misappropriation of resources,<br>embezzlement and poor accountability. Other striking management related<br>problems affecting employee OCB and performance include the nature of human<br>resource practices in virtually all the public corporations. As a</p><p>4</p></div><div><p>result of some of these problems, employees become<br>highly disenchanted and, therefore, have lost trust and confidence on<br>management of their corporations consequently leading to large scale<br>dissatisfaction among employees. As repercussions, and reflections of the employees‟<br>dissatisfaction, it has currently become a common practice for employees of<br>Nigeria‟s public organizations to spend most part of their working hours doing<br>things that are not job related and of no value to their jobs (Echu, 2008).<br>Other commonly noticed employee performance related problems include late<br>coming to work, absenteeism, indiscipline, high labour turnover and general<br>lack of commitment, thus, indicating low performance of employees‟ voluntary behaviours<br>(OCB).</p><p>The bulk of the performance<br>problems and deficiencies of the Nigerian public sector could more<br>appropriately be attributed to managerial inefficiencies, and inappropriate<br>leadership approaches. Previous studies have found that the current management<br>capabilities to imbibe the culture of commitment, sacrifice, citizenship,<br>discipline, and general motivation among their subordinates are grossly<br>inadequate to solve performance challenges of various Nigerian organizations<br>especially the public utilities (Echu, 2008). Specifically and summarily, there<br>is a general consensus that the managements of Nigeria‟s public corporations<br>are by and large inefficient and ineffective (Adamolekun &amp; Ayeni, 1990;<br>Dogarawa, 2011; Esu</p><p>&amp; &nbsp;<br>Inyang, 2009; Okeola &amp;<br>Salami, 2012). Ability of management of public utility sector to effectively<br>motivate and sustain positive employee performance might be the most difficult<br>challenge and crucial responsibility to put the public utility sector in order.<br>However, success in achieving sustained positive employee performance for<br>effective functioning of Nigerian public utilities is increasingly becoming an</p><p>5</p></div><div><p>eluding challenge considering the diverse workforce<br>with multi-cultural, religious, ethnic, and sectional backgrounds (Adamolekun<br>&amp; Ayeni, 1990; Echu, 2008).</p><p>In 2000, the intractable<br>performance problem faced by public corporations in Nigeria led to government‟s<br>decision to think of initial commercialization, and final privatization of the<br>government owned corporations. Till date, none among the Nigeria‟s public<br>utilities has gone beyond full commercialization. However, official<br>arrangements for execution of partial privatization programme for the electric,<br>and telecommunication sectors have almost been concluded with a view to desired<br>performance, sanity and efficiency. Although process and structural hiccups to<br>performance can be solved by implementing structural process improvements, or<br>business transformation, stimulating employees to perform at their highest<br>level, as well as sustaining performance improvement still remains a fundamental<br>issue. Indeed, several transformation programs may fail to deliver expected<br>results if the basic factors, including inculcating the art of servant<br>leadership within the organization, and development of psychological ownership<br>for the organization among employees, that can trigger employees‟ motivation to<br>perform beyond their normal call of duty (OCB) remain neglected.</p><p>Servant leadership is a<br>leadership style where a leader places interests of followers‟ over and above<br>his/her own interests (Joseph &amp; Winston, 2005). Servant leadership is motivating<br>to followers/subordinates because it focuses on followers‟ development,<br>community building, authentic leadership, and shared leadership (Laub, 2003;<br>Sendjaya, Sarros, &amp; Santora, 2008). The best indicator of servant<br>leadership is that followers are more likely to become servants themselves. On<br>the other hand, psychological ownership for the organization is a state of mind<br>in which</p><p>6</p></div><div><p>an employee develops possessive feelings for the<br>organization (Dirks, Cummings, &amp; Pierce, 1996). Psychological ownership for<br>the organization is found to be significantly related to positive employee<br>outcomes especially organizational citizenship behaviors (Van Dyne &amp;<br>Pierce, 2004; VandeWalle, Van Dyne &amp; Kostova, 1995).</p><p>The present study is about<br>exploring the impact of servant leadership on employee OCBs through the<br>mechanism of psychological ownership. Performance of organizational citizenship<br>behaviors by employees can be an important panacea for improving performance<br>and effectiveness in the Nigeria‟s ailing public utility sector organizations.<br>Literature has offered support to the role of OCB in improving effective<br>functioning of organizations (Organ <i>et al</i>.,<br>1988, 2006). Research has also indicated that OCB and counterproductive work<br>behaviors are significantly negatively correlated (Baker, 2005), which means<br>that a person high on OCB scale will not likely exhibit signs of deviant<br>behaviour that can have negative effect on production, service delivery and<br>industrial harmony. The ailing or rather ineffective public utility sector<br>organizations, specifically Power Company (PHCN), Telecommunications Company<br>(NITEL) and Water Board (KSWB) are expected to improve their OCB performance<br>when their organizations practice the concept of servant leadership and<br>motivate development of psychological ownership among their employees.</p><p><b>1.2</b>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;<b>Problem Statement</b></p><p>Organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB) as one<br>of the extra-role behaviors has been receiving a great deal of research (Lo<br>&amp; Ramayah, 2009; DiPaola &amp; Mendes</p><p>7</p></div><div><p>da Costa Neves, 2009; Paillé, 2009; Khan, Afzal,<br>&amp; Zia, 2010), and successful organizations encourage employees to do more<br>than their usual job duties (Ahmadi, 2010).</p><p>Leadership style is one of the<br>significant factors found to influence employee OCB. The main leadership styles<br>that have received empirical attention in relation to OCB over the years<br>include transformational leadership (Asgari <i>et<br>al</i>., 2008; Bettencourt, 2004; Schlechter &amp; Engelbrecht, 2006;<br>Vigoda-Gadot, 2007a), transactional leadership (Bettencourt, 2004;<br>Vigoda-Gadot, 2007a) and charismatic leadership (Babcock-Roberson &amp;<br>Strickland, 2010). Only a few studies considered the effect of servant<br>leadership on OCB despite the importance of servant leadership in contemporary<br>business organizations (Ehrhart, 2004; Organ, 2006). Servant leadership is a<br>leadership style that places the followers‟ interests over and above the<br>leader‟s own interest (Joseph &amp; Winston, 2005). Research establishes that<br>servant leadership may be more conducive to organizational citizenship<br>behaviors due to its focus on follower development, community building,<br>authentic leadership, and shared leadership (Laub, 2003; Sendjaya, Sarros,<br>&amp; Santora, 2008). The best indicator of servant leadership is that<br>followers are more likely to become servants themselves. Stone, Russell, &amp;<br>Patterson (2004) argue that the motive of the servant leader„s influence is not<br>to direct others but rather to motivate and facilitate service and stewardship<br>by the followers themselves. Followers‟ service to others and stewardship of<br>organizational resources could be construed as organizational citizenship<br>behaviour.</p><p>One of the prominent early<br>studies that attempted to investigate the effect of servant leadership on OCB<br>is Ehrhart (2004). He found that servant leadership</p><p>8</p></div><div><p>indirectly influenced OCB, specifically helping<br>behaviour, and conscientiousness. Additionally, Walumbwa, Hartnell, and Oke<br>(2010) investigated the mediating effect of commitment to the supervisor, self-efficacy,<br>procedural justice climate, and service climate on the relationship between<br>servant leadership and organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs). Their<br>results revealed partial mediation and recommended for testing other mediators<br>under which OCB will be more significantly enhanced. Another study conducted by<br>Vondey (2010) revealed that servant leadership was significantly but partially<br>correlated with OCB. Since studies on servant leadership and OCB study are<br>still new and limited (Ehrhart, 2004; Vondey, 2010; Walumbwa <i>et al</i>., 2010), more studies are needed<br>to better understand the relationship and to validate further the initial<br>significant relationship between servant leadership and OCB by investigating<br>their relationship in a different context.</p><p>Furthermore, literature reveals<br>that the link between servant leadership and OCB was not only direct, but<br>indirect (Ehrhart, 2004; Walumbwa <i>et al</i>.,<br>2010). It was demonstrated that servant leadership was related to OCB through<br>mechanisms including procedural justice climate (Ehrhart, 2004), commitment to<br>the supervisor, self-efficacy, procedural justice climate and service climate<br>(Walumbwa <i>et al</i>., 2010). Following<br>partial mediation of the tested variables, recommendation for future studies to<br>test other mediators under which OCB will be more significantly enhanced were<br>made (Organ, 2006; Walumbwa <i>et al</i>.,<br>2010).</p><p>Important to the present study is<br>the attempt to establish a relationship between servant leadership and<br>psychological ownership, which previous studies have not considered.<br>Psychological ownership is a state of mind in which an</p><p>9</p></div><div><p>employee develops possessive feelings for the<br>target (Van dyne &amp; Pierce, 2004) such as the job (Peters &amp; Austin,<br>1985), organization (Dirks, Cummings, &amp; Pierce, 1996), the products created<br>(Das, 1993); the practices employed by the organizations (Kostova, 1998); and<br>specific issues in the organizations (Pratt &amp; Dutton, 2000). Servant<br>leadership can be an essential factor for achieving psychological ownership<br>among employees in organizations. Because of certain special features of<br>servant leaders including humility, caring flexibility (Geller, 2009), and<br>egalitarianism (Waterman, 2011), psychological ownership could manifest as a<br>result of servant</p><p>leadership. Therefore, psychological ownership<br>could be one of the expectations from workers in return for experiencing<br>servant leadership.</p><p>Recent studies demonstrate that<br>psychological ownership for the organization is positively related to job<br>satisfaction, organizational commitment and organizational citizenship<br>behaviour (O‟Driscoll, Pierce &amp; Coghlan, 2006; Van Dyne &amp; Pierce, 2004;<br>VandeWalle, Van Dyne &amp; Kostova, 1995), and financial performance (Wagner <i>et al</i>., 2003). Psychological ownership<br>can be a possible integrative and mediating variable in linking servant<br>leadership and OCB. With respect to employees‟ exchange relationship with the<br>organization (Blau, 1964), as a result of positive servant leader behaviors<br>that make employees feel being cared for by the organization, OCB may be<br>motivated. Thus, the mediating potentiality of psychological ownership on the<br>relationship between servant leadership and OCB is likely. Therefore, servant<br>leadership would be tested as an antecedent factor for motivating psychological<br>ownership and as a mediating variable on the relationship between servant<br>leadership and OCB.</p><p>10</p></div><div><p>Precisely, this study attempts to<br>fill two main gaps on predicting employee OCB: (1) investigating the mediating<br>effect of psychological ownership on the relationship between servant<br>leadership and OCB; (2) investigating the influence of servant leadership on<br>psychological ownership. Currently, no study was found in the literature<br>regarding the mediation effect of psychological ownership on servant leadership<br>and OCB relationship. Similarly, there was no study on the relationship between<br>servant leadership and psychological ownership.</p><p><b>1.3</b>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;<b>Research Questions</b></p><p>Referring to the discussion about the need for this<br>research to be carried out as stated earlier, the following questions are to be<br>addressed:</p><p>1. &nbsp; &nbsp; Do<br>servant leader behaviors relate to employee OCB-I and OCB-O?</p><p>2. &nbsp; &nbsp; Does<br>psychological ownership relate to employee OCB-I and OCB-O?</p><p>3. &nbsp; &nbsp; <br>Do servant leader behaviours<br>influence psychological ownership among employees?</p><p>4. &nbsp; &nbsp; <br>Does psychological ownership<br>mediate the relationship between servant leader behaviours and employee OCB-I<br>and OCB-O?</p></div><br> <br><p></p>