Abstract:

Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) refers to the discretionary individual behavior that is not explicitly recognized in a direct way by formal reward systems, and that can promote an effective way of working at organizations. In upper education fields, OCB shows the degree of commitment of professionals working at the University with their Organization. These behaviors can impact the staff’s willingness to fully engage in the process of educating. Organizational routines may require the staff members to put extra efforts in terms of behaviors that may become positive for final outcomes.

Organizational justice approaches suggest how staff’s perception of fair treatment is more likely to develop OCB in the way their work. Organizational feedback is also considered. Based on literature review, a positive feedback on performance has the ability to facilitate intrinsic motivation because it stimulates the sense of competence in the people responsible for successful performance. Therefore, the main objective of this paper consists of describing from a theoretical perspective and by real world evidences how fair treatment and feedback can impact in a positive way on OCB of lecturers at Universities. Two main hypotheses are considered: H1: Education leaders’ interactional justice promotes organizational citizenship behavior in lecturers and H2: Feedback is positively related to the lecturer’s citizenship behavior.

From the methodological perspective, a survey has been used to measure OCB following previous approaches to measure this concept in literature review: altruism, conscientiousness, courtesy, civic virtue, and sportsmanship. Respondents were asked to make a self-evaluation. This construct was assessed by asking a five point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagreed) to 5 (strongly agreed) for each item related to OCB and lecturer’s perception on fair treatment by education leaders and feedback received. Data from a representative sample of 156 lecturers in the area of social sciences of two Spanish Universities, Rey Juan Carlos and Cordoba University have been collected. Structural Equation model (SEM) has been used to validate hypotheses.

Results show that OCB is positively related to the education leaders’ interactional justice. The result supports to the existing literature that interactional justice of leaders promote employees’ citizenship behavior. OCB is also related in a positive way with feedback as suggested in literature review. Universities must therefore promote both aspects: education leader’s interactional justice and feedback to maintain high levels of OCB in lecturers.

Keywords:

Organizational citizenship behavior, fair treatment, interactional justice, feedback, university lecturers.