Job characteristics and organizational citizenship behavior: A multisource study on the role of work engagement

Abstract

Organization-targeted citizenship behaviors (OCB-O) represent a type of the extra-role performance necessary for attaining better organizational results in the ever-increasing global business arena. Building on the Job Demands--Resources theory we examined the mediating role of work engagement in the relationship between perceived job--design characteristics, and OCB-O as an individual-level outcome. We collected survey data using a sample of 255 employee-supervisor dyads to illustrate how formal job resources (task variety and task significance) and job challenges (skill variety and job innovation requirement) are indirectly (via work engagement) related to employee's citizenship behavior aimed towards the benefit of the organization. The paper thus extends the existing research and offers new practical contributions which can be used for increasing the level of extra-role performance efforts through a specific HRM mechanism.