EDITORIAL
CONTEXTUAL PERFORMANCE AND
ORGANIZATIONAL CITIZENSHIP BEHAVIOR IN
HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Stephan J. Motowidlo
University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA
Walter C. Borman
University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA
We are pleased to offer readers of Human Resource Management Review
this special issue on organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and contex-tual performance. Articles included here discuss OCB and contexcontex-tual per-formance from several different perspectives. We believe they highlight many of the most important and interesting theoretical and applied issues in these areas and provide useful insights into their implications for human resource management.
This special issue departs somewhat from the normal editorial policy of
Human Resource Management Reviewin that it includes articles that discuss original empirical research. This does not mean, however, that the editorial policy has changed; we simply felt that some of the important conceptual ideas about OCB and contextual performance could be best articulated with support-ing information about results of empirical research that readers will find in this issue.
The article by Werner directly develops the central theme of this special issue by discussing specific implications of behavioral patterns embraced by the terms, OCB and contextual performance, for managing human resources. He discusses implications for virtually all types of human resource practices, including job analysis, recruitment, selection, training, development, perfor-mance appraisal, compensation, and labor and employee relations.
The next three articles discuss the behavioral content of contextual perfor-mance and OCB. Coleman and Borman report results of a study in which they try to systematically integrate the behavioral content of concepts such as contextual performance, OCB, and extra-role behavior. They settle on three
Direct all correspondence to:Stephan J. Motowidlo, Department of Management, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611-2017, USA.
factors that they label interpersonal citizenship performance, organizational citizenship performance, and job/task citizenship performance.
Paine and Organ's article reports data that suggest that organizational citizenship behavior might be interpreted and, perhaps, evaluated differently in different national cultures. This raises the very interesting possibility that patterns of behavior that are organizationally valued and considered OCB in one national culture might not be organizationally valued or considered OCB to the same extent in another national culture. This, of course, has important implications for the kinds of human resource practices and systems that should be developed in order to improve organizational functioning through OCB.
Graham discusses civic virtue which can be viewed as a specific aspect of contextual performance and OCB. She examines the political and philosophical roots of civic virtue, sorts through the long and rich intellectual traditions that surround this notion, and describes some of its practical implications for human resource management.
The next article, by Van Scotter, considers implications of contextual performance for individual satisfaction and motivation. He argues that if contextual performance is organizationally valued, it is likely also to be rewarded, with the result that people who perform effectively in the contextual part of the performance domain should also be more satisfied and committed. Results of the study he reports tend to support that argument.
Allen's article takes up measurement issues. She reports results of a study that show systematic difference in patterns of agreement between self-reports, peer ratings, and supervisory ratings of OCB. Her results also show that ratings by a single peer or a single supervisor are not particularly reliable for at least some dimensions of OCB, and this should sound a warning for researchers in this area.
Finally, Motowidlo's article considers labeling and definitional issues and argues that the behavioral content of contextual performance and OCB is more important than the labels we attach to these concepts. It also reviews the conceptual status of contextual performance and OCB as multidimen-sional constructs.
We hope this special issue will help readers appreciate more fully how behavioral patterns embraced by the terms, organizational citizenship beha-vior and contextual performance, can affect job satisfaction, job performance, and organizational effectiveness. We also hope it will stimulate further discussion about new and innovative human resource policies and practices to select, train, and motivate people to contribute to organizational effective-ness through these channels.
HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT REVIEW VOLUME 10, NUMBER 1, 2000
