Who is offering a helping hand?
Associations between personality and OCBs, and the moderating role of team leader
effectiveness
The Authors
IJ. Hetty van Emmerik, Department of Social and Organizational Psychology,
Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands
Martin C. Euwema, Department of Social and Organizational Psychology, Utrecht
University, Utrecht, The Netherlands
Abstract
Purpose – This study aims to examine the relationships between personality and three
types of OCBs (Organizational Citizenship Behaviors), and to test for the potential
moderating effects of team leader effectiveness on the relationship between
personality and OCBs.
Design/methodology/approach – Hypotheses were tested with data from 268
teachers of secondary schools and were analyzed using Zellner's seemingly unrelated
regression.
Findings – The results indicate that extroverts and teachers open for experience
engaged more in OCBs towards their school than introverts and teachers less open for
experience do. Teachers that are more conscientious score higher on OCBs towards
students. That fits with the idea that being conscientious is being careful and
responsible. Teachers with introvert and neurotic personalities become more engaged
in OCBs than extrovert and emotionally stable teachers do when they appreciate their
team leader effectiveness.
Research limitations/implications – Although this study provided only partial
support for the expected relationships between personality and OCBs, the results are
notable for personnel selection. Further, several instances of the moderating role of
team leader effectiveness were found. This indicates that leaders can encourage the
engagement in OCBs, even in the case of thwarting personality characteristics.
Originality/value – The results of this study show some interesting similarities and
differences concerning the different OCBs. For instance, openness to experience was
related to OCBs towards the school and to OCBs towards team members, and the
moderating role of team leader effectiveness acted in the same way for openness to
experience and OCBs towards the school and towards team members.
Article Type: Research paper
Keyword(s): Leadership; Personality; Interpersonal relations; Team leaders;
Individual behaviour.
Journal of Managerial Psychology
Volume 22 Number 6 2007 pp. 530-548
Copyright © Emerald Group Publishing Limited ISSN 0268-3946
In recent years, Organizational Citizenship Behaviors (OCBs) have received ample
attention. OCBs refer to the individual contributions in the workplace that go beyond
role requirements and contractually rewarded job achievements (Organ and Ryan,
1995). Examples of organizational citizenship behaviors include performing extra-job
activities, helping colleagues, meeting workplace rules, and acting according to
organizational policies and procedures regardless of personal inconvenience (Organ
and Ryan, 1995). Various antecedents of OCBs have been identified, including
individual characteristics, task characteristics, organizational characteristics, and
leadership behaviors (Podsakoff et al., 2000). Compared with job performance,
knowledge, skills, and abilities are less likely to be important antecedents of OCBs.
Instead, OCBs probably are better predicted by personality variables than holds for
job performance and evidence has appeared in support of this (e.g. Moorman and
Blakely, 1995; Motowidlo and Van Scotter, 1994). The meta-analytic review of
Organ and Ryan (1995) also demonstrated relationships between personality (i.e.
agreeableness and conscientiousness) and OCBs. However, the strength of these
relationships is often modest and results are not really conclusive, and therefore open
the door to speculation about potential moderators (Borman and Hanson, 1997).
The present study examines the relationships between personality, effective leaders,
and OCBs. First, we examine the extent to which personality factors are associated
with different OCBs. For personnel selection, this is important because this has
implications for predicting which candidates are more likely to engage in OCBs (see
Borman and Hanson, 1997). Second, we also address the relationship between
effective team leaders and OCBs, and test for the potential moderating effects of team
leader effectiveness on the relationship between personality and OCBs. This latter aim
of the study is important because it may indicate to which extent leaders can
encourage the engagement in different types of OCBs, even in the case of thwarting
personality characteristics. Hypotheses will be tested on a sample of teachers of
secondary schools. Educational systems are facing important challenges as they are
confronted with massive changes and organizational restructuring. Reconsideration of
the teacher's activities (e.g. engagement in OCBs) and how these can be promoted,
becomes obligatory under such conditions (see Somech and Drach-Zahavy, 2000).
OCBs in the teaching context
Theoretical arguments to explain why employees engage in OCBs can be found in
intrinsic motivation theory. Intrinsic motivation refers to doing things for its inherent
satisfactions rather than for some separable consequence: When intrinsically
motivated an employee is moved to helping others rather than because of external
rewards (Ryan and Deci, 2002). OCBs and intrinsic motivation are expected to work
in the same way, for instance OCBs reflects spontaneous prosocial gestures at their
own discretion and these activities are largely unaffected by organizational reward
systems. Individuals likely to engage in OCBs may do this to satisfy some individual
needs or to align work behavior with their individual values. Because OCBs are less
likely to be formally rewarded than are required job behaviors, they are presumably
performed by intrinsic motivation mechanisms (Piccolo and Colguitt, 2006).
Further, since personality and work-related attitudes are related to intrinsic
motivation, it is likely that personality variables and work-related variables will also
be related to OCB (Tang and Ibrahim, 1998). The intrinsic rewarding properties of
OCBs may especially be salient and important for teachers, who are acknowledged
for having high stress jobs with low extrinsic rewards.
Although many scholars suggest that OCBs are composed of conceptually distinct
behavioral dimensions, LePine et al. (2002) suggested that these behavioral
dimensions have yet to be distinguished from one another in the empirical literature.
Most of the dimensions of OCBs appeared to be highly related to one another and
there were no apparent differences in relationships with the most popular sets of
predictors. In the present study, we use a different approach and measured OCBs in
relation to different “targets” (i.e. OCBs towards the school, OCBs towards team
members, and OCBs towards students). Such a distinction, that is different from the
distinction into behavioral dimensions, has already been adopted by many researchers
(e.g. Cropanzano et al., 2003; Dunlop and Lee, 2004; Somech and Drach-Zahavy,
2000; Trent, 2004; Van Emmerik et al., 2005). When testing the relationships of
antecedents and moderators OCBs towards different “targets” it will be possible to
examine the relative importance of these factors in explaining OCBs.
Specifically for the teaching profession, Somech and Drach-Zahavy (2000) proposed
three components of teachers' OCBs. The first component consists of OCBs towards
the school. This is a rather impersonal form of OCBs, which does not provide
immediate aid to specific persons. OCBs towards the school refer to behaviors
beneficial to a larger and more impersonal organization. Somech and Drach-Zahavy
suggest that these behaviors represent innovative and initiative activities, which are
not a part of the job description. For example, making suggestions to improve school
performance and volunteering for activities, and being present at open days at school
The second component consists of OCBs towards team members. These OCBs
represent behaviors intentionally directed at helping teachers in one's own team. For
instance, by orienting new teachers, or assisting a colleague with a heavy workload.
These OCBs refer to behaviors beneficial to one's own group of colleagues. This type
of OCBs is also directly linked to traditional measures of OCBs.
The third component consists of OCBs towards students. These OCBs are behaviors
directly and intentionally aimed at improving the quality of teaching and helping
students to improve their achievements. For instance, by staying an extra hour or
helping disadvantaged students. This type of OCBs is not commonly found in more
traditional measures of OCBs. It may be easier for employees to withhold OCBs
beneficial to the organization as a whole rather than to withhold OCBs towards direct
colleagues or their students or other frequent personal contacts.
Conceptually OCBs towards the school are clearly associated with traditional
measures of OCBs (see LePine et al., 2002) and for instance the concept loyal
boosterism measuring the OCBs toward the organization as a rather impersonal form
of OCBs. Loyal Boosterism refers to the promotion of the organizational image to
outsiders and is assessed with items such as “This employee defends the organization
when other employees criticize it” (Kamdar et al., 2006). OCBs towards team
members and OCBs towards students are more personal forms of OCBs and bear
resemblance with the concept of interpersonal helping (Kamdar et al., 2006))
Interpersonal helping refers to helping others when such help is needed and is
assessed with items such as “This employee voluntarily helps new employees settle
into the job” (Kamdar et al., 2006). Recent research has also labeled OCBs towards
the school as OCB-O (towards the organization) and dimensions OCBs towards
colleagues and students as OCB-I (towards the individual) (see for instance, Bragger
et al., 2005).
It is important to make a distinction in different types of targets, since OCBs towards
different targets may have different antecedents. For instance McNeely and Meglino
(1994) reported that helping behaviors directed toward other individuals were
explained by dispositional variables, whereas OCBs directed toward the organization
were explained by perceptions of organizational procedures. Consistent with these
findings, Skarlicki and Latham (1996) found that perceptions of fairness had a greater
impact on OCBs towards the organization than on more personal forms of OCBs.
The direct associations of the Big Five with OCBs
The theoretical basis for predicting OCBs from personality rests on the same
considerations as the prediction of behavior from general attitudes because the
argument is that personality influences behavior through attitudes (Organ, 1994). That
is, measures of personality seldom account for large portions of variance in behaviors
in tightly controlled situations. Yet, personality has predictive power in “weak
situations” (Mischel, 1990), i.e. situations when environments are less clearly
structured in terms of prescribed behavior. It would seem that OCB, by its very
nature, represents behavior that occurs in weak situations (Organ, 1994). Therefore,
personality factors can be expected to account for variance in OCBs (Rioux and
Penner, 2001).
In recent years, a great deal of research on personality characteristics has suggested
that especially five basic personality factors account for most of the variance in
personality (Barrick and Mount, 1991; Costa and McCrae, 1992; Mischel, 1990).
These so-called Big Five dimensions are generally labeled conscientiousness,
agreeableness, openness to experience, introversion, and emotional instability or
neuroticism (Barrick and Mount, 1991; Costa and McCrae, 1992). Conscientiousness
incorporates volitional characteristics, such as hardworking, achievement-oriented,
and persevering. Agreeableness is most commonly associated with being courteous,
flexible, trusting, good-natured, cooperative, forgiving, softhearted, and tolerant.
Openness to experience is commonly associated with being imaginative, cultured,
curious, original, broad-minded, intelligent, and artistically sensitive (Barrick and
Mount, 1991). Wayne et al. (2004) suggest that employees higher in openness to
experience are more accepting of change, not stifled by tradition, and are likely to be
creative. Neuman and Kickul (1998) in their study among 284 retail sales employees
indeed found conscientiousness and agreeableness predicted OCBs. Considering these
characteristics, conscientiousness, agreeableness, and openness to experience can be
expected to be positively related to the engagement in OCBs.
H1. Conscientiousness, agreeableness, and openness to experience will be positively
related to OCBs, i.e. OCBs towards the school, and OCBs towards colleagues, and
OCBs towards students.
Introversion is frequently associated with being not very sociable, gregarious,
assertive, talkative, and active (Barrick and Mount, 1991). This description is in
agreement with the social introversion scale of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality
Inventory (see Groth-Marnat, 2003): Scoring high on this scale suggests that one is
shy, has limited social skills, feels uncomfortable in social interactions, and withdraws
from many interpersonal situations. Persons high on this scale prefer to be alone or
with a few close friends than with a large group. Scores on introversion indicate how
comfortable persons are with interactions, their degree of overt involvement with
others, the effectiveness of their social skills. According to Wayne et al. (2004),
introverts may even accomplish fewer tasks in a given amount of time and might
experience more fatigue than do extroverts, due to lower energy levels.
Emotionally unstable or neurotic individuals can be expected to experience more
negative life events than other individuals, because of their nature and because they
select themselves into situations that foster negative affect (Emmons and King, 1988).
Emotional instability is associated with being anxious, depressed, angry, embarrassed,
emotional, worried, and insecure. Considering these more impeding characteristics,
introversion, and emotional instability can be expected to be negative related to the
engagement in OCBs.
H2. Introversion and emotional instability will be negatively related to OCBs, i.e.
OCBs towards the school, and OCBs towards colleagues, and OCBs towards students.
The direct associations of team leader effectiveness and OCBs
Leadership effectiveness refers to a leader's performance in influencing and guiding
the activities of his or her unit toward achievement of its goals (see Judge et al.,
2002). According to the path-goal theory of leadership (House, 1971), effective
leaders motivate their employees by clarifying the paths by which employees can
attain their goals, and who increase personal outcomes to employees when these goals
have been achieved. Effective team leaders can be identified to the extent that they
satisfy a demanding set of responsibilities associated with leadership, while still
promoting the creativity and leadership ability of team members. Consequently, no
single role or responsibility defines an effective team leader. Rather, effective team
leaders must satisfy a variety of roles, requirements, and responsibilities (Trent,
2004). The formal role of team leader places him/her in a unique position to stimulate
OCBs (Trent, 2004). For instance, effective team leaders may influence OCBs,
because they are likely to be perceived by employees as being supportive. Such
leaders may also be viewed by employees as helpful because it indicates that the
leader is concerned for their welfare. Employees might feel obliged to reciprocate
such supportive behaviors by increasing their engagement in OCBs (Organ et al.,
2006). Podsakoff et al. (2000) indeed found a strong pattern of leader behaviors and
OCBs in their study: Leaders may play a key role in influencing OCBs. Indeed, with a
few exceptions, almost all of the leader behavior-OCBs were significant.
H3. Team leader effectiveness will be positively related to OCBs, i.e. OCBs towards
the school, OCBs towards team members, and OCBs towards students.
The moderating role of team leader effectiveness on the relationship between
personality and OCBs
A leader can do a number of things to promote the extent to which employees want to
or feel they ought to engage in OCBs. However, even highly motivated employees
may not be able to engage in OCBs if their personality profile is impeding them. It is
possible that effective leaders can enhance the engagement in OCBs of these
employees. For instance, through training or modeling forms of OCBs, or by simply
being supportive to the employee (Organ et al., 2006). Hence, a moderating role for
team leader effectiveness can be hypothesized.
H4. Team leader effectiveness will moderate the relationships between personality
and OCBs.
H4a. Under the condition of high team leader effectiveness, conscientiousness,
openness to experience, and agreeableness will be more strongly related to the
engagement in OCBs than under the condition of low team leader effectiveness.
H4b. Under the condition of high team leader effectiveness, the effects of emotional
instability and introversion on OCBs will be buffered, whereas under the condition of
low team leader effectiveness the engagement of OCBs will deteriorate.
Method
Population and sample
Data were collected from teachers working within Dutch secondary schools. The data
collection is part of a research project investigating the adaptation after organizational
change, i.e. implementation of working in student-centered cross-functional teams
within schools. School management and/or principals of the schools were approached
and interviewed. Next, school management announced the study, explained the
purpose of the study, and solicited the participation of the teachers. 1,049 written
questionnaires were sent to the teachers, and 527 were returned, resulting in a
response rate of 51 percent. Since we wanted to control for team size in the analyses,
a specific group was sampled and used in the present study (n=268). This sample
consisted of 163 male (61 percent) and 105 female (39 percent) teachers, the mean
age was 44.8 (SD 11.0) years. The mean organizational tenure of staff was 13.3 years
(SD 10.8). The mean size of the teams they were working in was 10.4 (SD=4.6).
Measures
Big Five: Mowen's (2000) Personality Scale was used to measure the big five
personality factors. The Mowen scale was derived from Saucier's (1992) 40-item
Five-Factor Model scale, which was derived from a much longer Five-Factor
Personality Scale developed by Goldberg (1992). Previous research has established
the convergent validity of Mowen's measures of the five personality factors. In a
study conducted with 218 students, Mowen's scales correlated 0.8 or higher with
Saucier's scales (personal communication with Mowen, see also Mowen, 2000). The
five factor structure was also confirmed in the study of Van Emmerik et al. (2005).
Conscientiousness was measured with: Being orderly, organized, and precise
(alpha=0.91). Introversion was measured: Being shy, bashful when with people, and
quiet when with people (alpha=0.86). Emotional instability (or neuroticism) was
measured with: Being more testy than others, emotions go way up and down, and
moody more than others (alpha=0.86). Openness to experience was measured with:
Being imaginative, finding novel solutions, and frequently feeling highly creative
(alpha=0.82). Finally, agreeableness was measured with the following three items:
Kind to others, tender hearted with others, and sympathetic (alpha=0.72). The scales
used a seven-point Likert-type response format with anchors 1 = strongly disagree
and 7 = strongly agree.
Team leader effectiveness
Leader effectiveness was measured with ten items from Trent (2004). Respondents
were asked to indicate which response best reflected their own team leader for each of
the following items:
1. secures individual member involvement;
2. manages internal team conflict;
3. maintains team focus and direction;
4. secures resources as required;
5. prevents team domination by a member;
6. deals with obstacles confronting the team;
7. coordinates multiple tasks and manages the status of assignments;
8. helps members and the team establish specific goals;
9. clarifies and/or define each member's role; and
10. provides performance feedback to the team and/or individual members.
The scale used a seven-point Likert-type response format with anchors 1 = not
applicable and 7 = very applicable on leader's behavior (alpha = 0.95).
OCBs
OCBs were measured with items adapted from Somech and Drach-Zahavy (2000) and
Konovsky and Organ (1996). The first type of OCBs, OCBs towards the school, was
measured with (alpha=0.73):



organizes social activities for school;
offers suggestions for ways to improve operations; and
always prepared to help this school to perform well.
Second, OCBs towards team members were measured with (alpha=0.79):




orients new teachers even though it is not required;
works collaboratively with others;
helps an absent colleague by assigning learning tasks to the class, and
helps other teachers who have heavy work loads.
Third, OCBs towards students were measured with (alpha=0.67):




stays after school hours to help students with class materials;
stays in class during breaks in order to listen to students;
goes to school on free days to prevent problems in class; and
always prepared to help students.
The scales used a five-point Likert-type response format with anchors 1 = disagree
and 5 = agrees.
Control variables
Several control variables were included in the analysis. Gender was coded 1 (female)
and 0 (male). We included a dummy for fulltime appointment, since hours devoted to
paid work and the engagement in different OCBs may be dependent on the
availability of time. We also included a dummy for tenure greater than two years,
because it may be that employees must have a certain amount of experience in the job
and in their groups before they express their “good intentions” in actual behaviors, i.e.
OCBs (see Dunlop and Lee, 2004). Since job satisfaction may account for unique
variance in OCBs not explained by personality dimensions (Organ and Lingl, 1995),
we included a job satisfaction measure consisting of two items adopted from
Cammann et al. (1983):
1. All in all, I am very satisfied with my job; and
2. In general, I like working here
The scale used a five-point Likert-type response format with anchors 1 = disagree and
5 = agrees and Alpha was 0.85. Although level of education is a known predictor of
helping behaviors (i.e. OCBs), we did not include this in the analyses because the
educational level of teachers is quite fixed/constant.
Check on common method variance
The ten scales used (job satisfaction, 5 × personality, team leader effectiveness, and 3
× OCBs scales) were self-reported and collected at a single point in time, raising
concerns about the influence of common method variance on the results of this study.
Harman's one factor test was conducted to investigate this possibility. We entered all
items of the ten scales into one single factor analysis. If a substantial amount of
common method variance exists in the data, either a single factor will emerge or one
general factor will account for the majority of the variance among the variables. The
factor analysis yielded ten factors accounting for 72 percent of the variance, with all
items loading on the appropriate scales. The first factor accounted for only 20 percent
of the variance, suggesting that a general factor did not account for the majority of the
variance. These results indicate that common method variance is unlikely to be a
serious threat to validity.
Results
Table I presents means, standard deviations, and correlation coefficients for all
measures included in the study. At the univariate level, the three types OCBs are
moderately correlated with each other: OCBs towards school is 0.52 (p<0.01)
correlated with OCBs towards team members, and 0.37 (p<0.01) with OCBs towards
students, OCBs towards team members is 0.27 (p<0.01) correlated with OCBs
towards students. The correlations of the OCBs with the Big Five range from -0.16 to
0.39 and are uncorrelated with team leader effectiveness.
Regression models were estimated with seemingly unrelated regression analysis
(SURE). Rather than solving a set of separate regression equations one by one, SURE
solves the set of equations with the three dependent variables simultaneously while
accounting for correlated errors among the dependent variables (see for example:
Milkie et al., 2004; Van Emmerik and Jawahar, 2005). SURE was chosen, because it
was likely that the three types of OCBs are not independent. For instance, it may be
that employees who engage in one type of OCBs are more susceptible to engage in
other types of OCBs. Reversely, it is also possible that employees who engage in one
of OCBs do not have time or energy to engage in other types of OCBs. We tested this
independence assumption with the Breusch-Pagan test. This test rejected
independence of the three types of OCBs (Chi2(3)=96.21, p<0.01).
To test specifically for interaction effects, the variables were entered in two steps. In
Step 1, the control variables and the independent variables were entered. In Step 2, the
(centered) product variables of each of the big five variables with team leader
effectiveness were entered (see Table II). Since SURE analyses (only) report
unstandardized regression coefficients, the coefficients can be compared within rows.
For example, the association between openness to experience and OCBs towards the
school (b=0.22, p<0.01) is stronger than the association between openness to
experience and OCB towards team members (b=0.12, p<0.01).
H1 predicted that conscientiousness, agreeableness, and openness to experience are
positively associated to OCBs. As can be seen from the results of step 1, this is
supported for openness to experience and OCBs towards the school (b=0.22, p<0.01),
for openness to experience and OCBs towards team members (b=0.12, p<0.01), and
for conscientiousness and OCBs towards students (b=0.08, p<0.01). H2 predicted that
introversion and emotional instability are negatively related to OCBs. This is only
supported for the relationship between introversion and OCBs towards the school
(b=−0.05, p<0.05).
H3 predicted that team leader effectiveness will be positively related to OCBs and we
found no evidence for this association. The only relationship found is the association
of team leader effectiveness with OCBs towards the school (b=−0.07, p<0.05), and
this is not in the expected direction. Further, we predicted a moderating role for team
leader effectiveness on the relationships between the big five and OCBs. Six
interactions were significant: for leadership with introversion (b=0.08, p<0.01) and
with openness to experience (b=0.08, p<0.05) on OCBs towards students. For
leadership effectiveness and conscientiousness (b=−0.05, p<0.05) and openness to
experience (b=0.07, p<0.05) on OCBs towards school. For leadership effectiveness
and instability (b=0.09, p<0.05) and openness to experience (b=0.10, p<0.01) on
OCBs towards team members. Figure 1 provides graphical displays of the significant
interactions (see Provalis Research, 1997).
H4a predicted that the engagement in OCBs for people scoring high on
conscientiousness, openness to experience, and agreeableness will be aided by team
leader effectiveness. The first interaction (see Panel A), between team leader
effectiveness and conscientiousness, is contrary to the expectation. Under the
condition of low team leader effectiveness, the relationship between
conscientiousness and OCBs towards the school is positive, whereas under the
condition of high team leader effectiveness there is only a very weak relationship
between conscientiousness and OCBs towards the school. Panel B (OCBs towards
school), Panel D (OCBs towards team members), and Panel F (OCBs towards
students) show that teachers open for new experience especially benefit from effective
team leaders as far as the engagement in OCBs is concerned.
H4b predicted buffering effects of team leader effectiveness for introversion and
emotional instability. Panel C shows that the engagement in OCBs of emotionally
instable persons deteriorates without an effective team leader, but that under the
condition of an effective team leader the effects of emotional instability are buffered.
Panel E (as in Panel C) shows that the engagement in OCBs of introverts deteriorates
without an effective team leader, but that under the condition of an effective team
leader the negative effects of introversion on the engagement in OCBs are buffered.
The proportions of explained variance in OCBs are also given in Table II. Personality
factors account for more explained variance in OCBs towards school than for OCBs
towards team members and towards students (see proportions of explained variance in
Step 1). However, the moderating role of team leadership (proportions of explained
variance in Step 2) is more important for OCBs towards team members and towards
students, than for OCBs towards the school.
Discussion
In many professional areas OCB is recognized as important for organizational
performance. This might be particularly true for the educational field. Being a
schoolteacher requires extra tasks and time in contact with students, assisting
colleagues, and contributing to the effectiveness of the school. If teachers strictly stick
to their job prescriptions they may contribute less to organizational effectiveness than
when they “offer a helping hand” by the engagement in OCBs. Understanding what
factors contribute to the engagement in different types of OCBs therefore is
important, both theoretically and practically. The current study shows the importance
of teachers' personality, and the moderating influence team leaders can have on the
relation between personality characteristics and OCBs, directed at different groups:
students, colleagues, and the school.
The first aim of the present study was to examine the extent to which personality
factors are associated with different OCBs. The results indicate that extroverts and
teachers open for experiences engaged more in OCBs towards their school, than
introverts and teachers less open for experience do. Perhaps these teachers share the
same sort of general interest in the outside world, i.e. the school as a whole (see
Larson et al., 2002), which makes them more likely to engage in extra activities
because they are more aware of the needs of the school. Teachers high in openness for
experience exerted more energy in all three types of OCBs. These results contradict
the findings of Organ and Ryan (1995), that there are (only) relationships between
agreeableness and conscientiousness and OCBs but and these results do correspond
with the positive relations between openness for experience and innovation and
creativity in teams and organizations found by West et al. (2004). Openness for
experience is related with fantasy, creativity, new actions. Employees scoring high on
this personality dimension will most likely recognize needs in their team and see new
activities as challenging. This might explain why they engage more in all; three types
of OCBs.
The results of this study show some interesting similarities and differences concerning
the different OCBs. For example, we find that teachers that are more conscientious
score higher on OCBs towards students. This fits with the idea that being
conscientious is being careful and responsible (McCrae and Costa, 1985).
Interestingly, conscientious teachers are more caring and helping towards their
students, not towards the school or their colleagues. Highly conscientious teachers
might perceive their primary task as working with the students, who deserve attention
in the first place. Performing this task well is valued highly. However, why would
conscientiousness not be related with helping colleagues? Is it, because working with
students is taken so seriously and therefore demanding? Different relations between
teacher personality characteristics and OCBs are also observed for openness to
experience and introversion. These results offer a promising approach to the OCB
field, in which OCBs usually are related to the organization and colleagues, however
not so much differentiating OCBs towards customers, clients, or students (Organ et
al., 2006). Our study shows the relevance of differentiating between these groups.
Given that most employees in the western world nowadays work in the human service
sector, OCBs towards clients or customers become more and more important, and
relating personality characteristics of professionals (such as teachers) to these
different types of OCBs under explored.
Personality factors accounted for more explained variance in OCBs towards the
school than for OCBs towards team members and towards students. A possible
explanation might be that personality is more important in explaining OCBs towards a
more impersonal target. Further studies have to explore this relationship.
The second aim of the present study was to test for the moderating effects of an
effective team leader on the relationships between personality and OCBs, because this
may show the extent to which team leaders can encourage the engagement in OCBs,
even in the case of thwarting personality characteristics. The present study shows that
teachers with more neurotic and introvert personalities are more sensitive for a good
relation with their team leader. Emotionally stable and extrovert teachers are less
influenced by the relation with their leader when it comes to engagement in OCBs.
And conscientious teachers engaged in OCB towards the school did so particularly
under condition of low team leader effectiveness. teachers with introvert and neurotic
personalities become more engaged in OCBs than extrovert and emotionally stable
teachers do, when they appreciate their team leader effectiveness. This outcome may
have major implications. Team leaders can motivate teachers to become engaged in
OCBs within their school. These OCBs are less dependent on teachers' big five
profile. Different personalities, in our case for teachers, can be engaged in OCB,
depending on the relation with their leader. So far, little research has focused on the
question what actual behaviors of team leaders contribute to this positive relationship.
This suggests differentiation in behavior by team leaders towards team members,
focusing on introvert and neurotic team members. Furthermore, it is likely that
different types of leader behaviors are evaluated positively by teachers, depending on
their personality. This again underscores the importance for differentiation in
leadership towards different team members, based on their personality. This might
conflict with principles of fairness and justice in the team, as is recognized for
example in discussions on LMX approaches to leadership (Scandura and Lankau,
1996).
The results of this study show some interesting similarities and differences concerning
the different OCBs. For instance, openness to experience was related to OCBs
towards the school and to OCBs towards team members, and the moderating role of
team leader effectiveness acted in the same way for openness to experience and OCBs
towards the school and towards team members. Further, personality factors accounted
for more explained variance in OCBs towards the school than for OCBs towards team
members and towards students. Apparently, personality is more important in
explaining OCBs towards a more impersonal target. Reversely, the moderating role of
team leadership was more important for OCBs towards team members and towards
students, than for OCBs towards the school. This implies that the team leader was
more important with respect to promoting OCBs that are targeted at persons. These
results ask for future research that incorporates more diverse targets of OCBs and
potential moderators, to be able to explain more fully the complex relationships
between personality and OCBs. Further, the hypotheses predicted identical effects
between each personality factor and each type of OCB. Since we made a distinction
between more impersonal and more personal targeted OCBs, it will be interesting for
future research to elaborate on predicting differential effects for the Big Five. For
example, that Agreeableness would more strongly predict interpersonal OCBs (toward
team members and toward students) than impersonal OCBs (toward school) based on
the interpersonal basis of agreeableness (Graziano and Eisenberg, 1997). An other
avenue for future research would be to link the OCBs to prosocial dispositions since
prosocial disposition seem to be stable individual differences in prosocial responding
that have their origins in early childhood (Eisenberg et al., 1999)..
Limitations
This study, like all studies, has limitations. The data were collected via self- report
measures and although the Harman's test suggested that common method variance
was not a substantial problem, we recognize the desirability of future research using
alternative approaches. Future research efforts need not only consider using
longitudinal data, but might also focus on multi-source data. It is also recommended
that future research uses more comprehensive definitions of OCBs beyond
professional responsibilities.
Generalizability of the findings may be limited to employees working within
professional organizations. For instance, white collar and professional employees may
be more likely to engage in OCBs than other occupational groups (e.g. blue collar), as
their jobs involve qualities that make it more likely that they will engage in OCBs
(Wilson and Musick, 1997).
Managerial implications
Organizations may benefit from employees that extend their performance beyond
their professional responsibilities and may seek opportunities that actively promote
these behaviors. Research consistently demonstrated that team leaders are important
for success or failure of organizational work teams, making leadership an area that
managers cannot ignore (Trent, 2004; West et al., 2004). As the results of the present
study show, effective leaders may indeed play an important role in buffering negative
consequences of employees' personality characteristics, such as emotional instable,
and introvert teachers. As well as stimulating positive effects of openness in teachers.
For team leaders it seems particularly relevant to develop a positive relationship with
teachers in their team who are more introvert or neurotic. These persons are likely to
be e more sensitive for interpersonal conflicts, and may experience more negative
effects of these (Dijkstra et al., 2005). Team leaders should be encouraged to invest in
good working relationships with more introvert and neurotic team members. Also,
assessing the specific needs of these team members and finding ways to meet those, is
important to achieve an optimal relationship. This might have to do with creating a
quiet working place for introvert teachers, in which they do not get disturbed
constantly, and create clarity and support for more neurotic, easily distressed team
members.
Fulltime working teachers were found to devote more time to OCBs towards their
school and towards team members, than part-time working teachers do. However, no
such relationship was found for OCBs towards students. This might be important for
HRM policies, especially in the Netherlands, where teaching part-time at secondary
schools is rather common practice (only 46 percent of this sample is working fulltime). This might place heavy demands on those teachers that are working full time.
Although the present study provides only partial support for the expected
relationships between personality and OCB, the results are notable for personnel
selection since it is important to be able to predict which candidates are more likely to
engage in OCBs (see Borman and Hanson, 1997). This is particularly true for the
teaching profession, as the effectiveness of the jobs of teachers may largely depend on
doing just a bit more than their formally prescribed activities, and this really can make
a difference. These results contradict the findings of Organ and Ryan (1995), that
there are (only) relationships between agreeableness and conscientiousness and
OCBs. Results of the present study suggest that openness to experience is the most
important element here to use in assessing the perfect candidate when it comes to
OCBs from teachers. Interestingly, given the nature of teaching, which is in essence
inviting students to be open for new experiences and to encourage intellectual
curiosity. Further, it would be a mistake to select only those teachers with highly
stable and extrovert characters. Lot's of anecdotal evidence exists of teachers that are
highly creative and engaged, however not very emotionally stable. The risk for these
teachers is that they get in conflicts with the school system, management, and
colleagues. Support and structure by their team leader may bring the best out of these
teachers. Further research should focus therefore on the specific leadership behaviors
that are appreciated by different personalities.
Figure 1 Moderating role of team leader effectiveness
Table I Means, standard deviations and Pearson correlations
Table II Results of Zellner's seemingly unrelated regression analyses for OCBs
towards school, OCBs towards team members and OCBs towards students
(unstandardized regression coefficients)
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About the authors
IJ. Hetty van Emmerik, PhD Business Administration at Free University, Amsterdam
(1991), is an Associate Professor at the Department of Social and Organizational
Psychology, Utrecht University, The Netherlands. Her research interests broadly
include social relationships in the working context (e.g. mentoring, networking, social
support issues) and the association with various career outcomes (e.g. satisfaction,
commitment, burnout, and work engagement). Complementary interests include
gender differences, diversity within the working context, and differential preferences
of employees. She has published in journals such as Career Development
International, Work and Stress, Work and Occupations, Group and Organization
Management, and Journal of Managerial Psychology. IJ. Hetty van Emmerik is the
corresponding author and can be contacted at: [email protected]
Martin C. Euwema is Associate Professor of Organizational Psychology at Utrecht
University, The Netherlands. He received his PhD at the Free University in
Amsterdam, on conflict management in organizations. His research interests are
conflict management, peacekeeping, negotiation policies and skills, organizational
behavior and change management, and cross-cultural studies on leadership and team
performance. He teaches organizational development, OB, and conflict management.
He has over 20 years' experience as trainer and consultant for both profit and not-forprofit organizations. He has published in international scientific journals, such as
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Journal of Applied Psychology, Work
and Stress, Group and Organization Management, International Journal for Conflict
Management, and others.
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