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Saturday, December 7, 2013

Organizational Citizenship Behavior - Work Attitude

In the last byte we looked at job satisfaction and the affect of this attitude on behavior. In today's byte, we look at a positive side effect of job satisfaction called Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB).

Organizational Citizenship Behavior refers to the behavior that is above and beyond the call of duty.

A short story I heard about work attitude is what I would like to share here. It revolves around a fresh recruit in an organized retail store who had undergone a training program on work attitude. The usual job of this recruit was to pack all the items of a customer into a few handy cover bags to carry away. Her usual duty didn’t require her to do anything in addition to this. After the attitude training, training she went home and took along with her a few carry bags, over night she spent some time looking out for interesting facts and adages that could inspire people and stuck them on the carry bag. Over time, this initiative of hers began engaging the customers to align towards her counter to get their packing done. The recruit who moved out of what was just defined as her duty got enormous recognition for the initiative she had taken.

Such a behavior to go beyond the call of duty is important when organizations use teams to get their work done - employees depend on extra help from each other to get things accomplished. Satisfied workers are more likely to want to give something back to their organization because they want to reciprocate their positive experiences.

Individuals who identify strongly with the organization are more likely to perform OCB. High-self monitors also more likely to perform OCBs. It is often seen that OCBs are contagious, generally an entire department could also benefit from one worker's OCB.

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