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Existing research suggests that relationships among organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), task performance, and individual career outcomes are necessarily positive. The authors question this assumption and hypothesize that in organizations with outcome-based control systems, time spent on OCB comes at a cost to task performance. Building on this idea, the authors propose not only that time spent on task performance is more important than time spent on OCB in determining career outcomes (i.e., performance evaluation, salary increase, advancement speed, promotion) in an outcome-based control system but also that time spent on OCB may negatively impact career outcomes. Results based on archival data from 3,680 employees in a professional services firm lend some support for these ideas. Specifically, time spent on task performance was more important than OCB in determining all four career outcomes. Further, controlling for time spent on task performance, employees who spent more time on OCB had lower salary increases and advanced more slowly than employees who spent less time on OCB. These findings suggest that relationships between OCB and outcomes are more complex than originally thought and that boundary conditions may apply to conclusions drawn about the outcomes of OCB.

Stereotype threat is the risk of confirming a negative stereotype about one's group as being true of oneself. This laboratory simulation investigated the effect of stereotype threat on women's performance of a managerial task and explored gender role identification as a moderator of the stereotype threat effect. Specifically, the effect of the stereotype that women are less competent than men in managerial and executive positions was examined. Male and female participants performed a managerial in-basket task in a stereotypically masculine or feminine sex role-typed condition. As hypothesized, women underperformed men in the masculine sex role-typed condition, but not in the feminine sex role-typed condition. These effects were moderated by masculine gender role identification, thus establishing a boundary condition for the stereotype threat effect.In the popular press, there has been some celebration about the fact that women have finally broken through the glass ceiling (Hefferman, 2002;Sharpe, 2000;Wellington, 1998). This optimism may be somewhat premature, because it seems that the glass ceiling has not yet shattered. Women currently comprise 46% of total labor force participants and hold 50% of managerial positions (U. S. Department of Labor, 2002). Yet, at senior levels of management, they comprise less than 12% of corporate officers and board directors and only 5% of highest title holders (e.g., President) in the Fortune 1000 companies (Catalyst, 2001). Despite similar human capital variables (education level, ambition, career commitment), women still progress more slowly than men. Though women have been successful at achieving parity in numbers at the managerial level (U. S. Department of Labor, 2002), the same cannot be said for the executive ranks. These statistics raise the question of whether women have not simply reached a second, higher ceiling.

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Previous research indicates that perceived organizational support (POS) elicits felt obligation on the part of employees who, in turn, reciprocate by helping the organization through the performance of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). However, because gender roles dictate that women should be more helpful than men, women may feel more obligated to engage in OCB even when they experience relatively low levels of POS, whereas men may perform OCB only when they experience relatively high levels of POS. In this article, we use social role theory to predict that the relationship between POS and 3 types of OCB will be stronger for men than for women. Our results, using 4 samples of employeesupervisor dyads, support this prediction. Further, in 2 of those samples, we also investigate the possibility that gender moderates the positive POS-felt obligation relationship and the indirect effect of POS on OCB via felt obligation. Taken together, we find evidence of first-stage moderated-mediation. Specifically, the relationship between POS and felt obligation is moderated by gender, such that this relationship is stronger for men than for women (who feel more obligation, even at relatively low levels of POS). Felt obligation mediated the POS-OCB relationship, but only for men. Our findings suggest that men are more likely than women to need POS to feel obligated to make reciprocal organizational exchanges. Implications and future research directions are discussed.