Going the extra mile and feeling energized: An enrichment perspective of organizational citizenship behaviors.

Abstract

Scholars have voiced concerns about the potential dark side of Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB), arguing that OCB consumes energy, which contributes to a depletion of personal resources and results in poorer well-being. Drawing from research on the meaningfulness of work, we propose a pattern opposite to depletion: that OCB enhances energy, which contributes to an enrichment of personal resources and results in better well-being. This idea was tested over the course of a workweek with 224 day-level ratings from 67 employees and 30 managers working in a service management firm. Three-level hierarchical linear modeling indicated that supervisor-rated daily OCB was positively associated with employees' vigor at the end of the workday, and multilevel structural equation modeling analyses showed that this relationship was mediated by meaningfulness of work. Moreover, we found that the association between OCB and work meaningfulness was stronger for employees with greater role ambiguity. Exploratory analyses revealed that daily in-role performance and daily OCB interacted to predict meaningfulness of work, such that the association between daily OCB and meaningfulness of work was more prominent among those who exhibited high levels of daily in-role performance. We discuss implications of these findings, limitations, and directions for future research.

Outcomes of Meaningful Work: A Meta‐Analysis

“…Scholars have positioned other work-related variables as outcomes of meaningful work, which have demonstrated smaller relations with meaningful work than work engagement, commitment, and job satisfaction. These include self-rated job performance (0.11-0.47; Allan et al, 2016c;Harris et al, 2007), organizational citizenship behaviours (0.20-0.42; Lam et al, 2016;Steger et al, 2012), and withdrawal intentions (−0.10 to −0.62; Arnoux-Nicolas et al, 2016a;Clausen and Borg, 2010). Again, this raises several possibilities.…”

Experiencing meaningfulness climate in teams: How spiritual leadership enhances team effectiveness when facing uncertain tasks

“…These spiritual practices create a warm and caring environment that increases the intrinsic motivation among team members to work (Chen & Li, ). As a result, team members in such environment would perceive their work as significant, valuable, and interesting, resulting in an enhanced sense of work meaningfulness (Lam, Wan, & Roussin, ). Consistent with social information processing theory, spiritual leaders are particularly instrumental in shaping members’ collective perceptions about the meaningfulness of work because of consistent leadership practices in diverse situations.…”

Feeling interrupted—Being responsive: How online messages relate to affect at work

“…Interruptions at work may in fact foster positive outcomes in an indirect way. By stimulating responsiveness, interruptions provide an opportunity for secondary activities such as helping coworkers (Richardson & Taylor, 2012) and subsequently experiencing more meaning at work (Lam, Wan, & Roussin, 2016).…”