Organizations must tread a careful balance between not demanding that employees perform tasks that go above and beyond their job description yet still encourage employees to take a vital and interested role in giving back to the organization. They must also tread a delicate balance between striving to micro-manage employees to ensure ethical compliance and showing that they trust employees to follow ethical guidelines using their own discretion. As noted by Singh, Pathardikar, and Bandyopadhyay (2012) most organizations trust employees in a manner that is not “readily monitored or enforced” (p.26). The authors call this model that of Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) which is an important component of enhancing organizational performance but which is still at the discretion of the individual employee. Employees are encouraged to become good organizational citizens or “good soldiers” that go above and beyond their personal needs and tasks in a manner that adds to organizational value but does not place undue burdens on employees (Singh, Pathardikar, and Bandyopadhyay, 2012, p.26). Employees must also be sufficiently aware of organizational values and needs so that they are able to act autonomously.
The OCB model runs counter the conventional view of the firm that its sole ethical consideration...
The concept of OCB suggests that employee conduct within the construct of the firm and outwardly must uphold some standards and obligations to the community. Furthermore, it also argues that the type of behaviors reinforced in the model is beneficial for the organization’s overall health, particularly in a newly globalized era where serving a diverse range of consumers and employees is so essential. It is also important that employees are able to interact with a wide range of individuals for the organization to function smoothly.
Influencing positive organizational behavior in a values-based fashion has been shown to have a strong, positive influence in encouraging OCB versus transactional carrot and stick methods. In general, factors such as “demographic factors, gender, employment category, and the level of education had significant impact on OCB,” and employees which believed that the organization was strongly supportive of individuals possessing their types of demographic or personal characteristics had higher levels of OCB (Singh, Pathardikar, and Bandyopadhyay, 2012, p.30). This underlines the fact that both for the good of the organization itself as well as for the well-being of employees, organizations must seek to embrace a diverse system of…
