Organizational Citizenship Behavior: Verification of a Construct on a Croatian Sample

Abstract

Due to the fact that research on organizational citizenship behavior has never been conducted in Croatia, the main aim of this study was to verify a construct on a Croatian sample. The study was carried out using a survey and included 195 bank employees. The results show a construct that included the following five dimensions: altruism, conscientiousness, civic virtue, courtesy, and sportsmanship. Moreover, the results indicate differences among the particular dimensions with respect to socio-demographic characteristics such as gender, age, position, and working hours. Altruism was the only dimension of the construct which subjects assessed as completely external to the work role, while organizational citizenship behavior, in general, was performed only if such behavior was part of their job description and if they were to be rewarded for it. Furthermore, the results suggest a significant relationship between almost all the dimensions of organizational citizenship behavior and perception of procedural and interactional justice, whereas such a relationship was not obtained for distributive justice. Finally, the results show that perception of the level of procedural justice is the basis of the significant relationship between dimension of altruism and job satisfaction. Further research is needed to verify the construct on heterogeneous samples of employees in different professions. In addition, there is a need for better control of socio-demographic variables. Moreover, considering the fact that subjects perceive organizational citizenship behavior as behaviour that is evaluated and rewarded, further studies should take into account the matched assessment of their superiors.