Organizational Citizenship of Faculty and Achievement of High School Students

Abstract

All successful organizations, including successful high schools, have employees who go beyond their formal job responsibilities and freely give of their time and energy to succeed. Organ was the first to use the phrase "organizational citizenship behavior" (OCB) to denote organizationally beneficial behavior of workers that was not prescribed but occurred freely to help others achieve the task at hand (Bateman & Organ, 1983). The willingness of participants to exert effort beyond the formal obligations of their positions has long been recognized as an essential component of effective organizational performance. Research on organizational citizenship behavior has produced some intriguing insights in a variety of organizational settings (Organ, 1988; Organ & Ryan, 1995), but it has been neglected in the study of schools. In an earlier paper (DiPaola & Tschannen-Moran, 2001), Organ's concept of organizational citizenship (Organ, 1988; Organ & Ryan, 1995) was developed and applied to public schools. This analysis builds on that earlier work. In this analysis, the concept of organizational citizenship behavior is reviewed and then applied to schools. A set of hypotheses linking organizational citizenship behavior with student achievement in high schools is developed and tested. A significant relationship was found between student achievement on standardized tests and the level of organizational citizenship behaviors of the faculty in the high school sample studied. The relationship remained significant even after controlling for socioeconomic status (SES). Finally, a set of suggestions for further research and a series of practical suggestions for high school administrators are provided.

A Quantitative Study of the Relationship between Distributed Leadership and Organizational Citizenship Behavior: Perceptions of Turkish Primary School Teachers

“…Therefore, the construct of OCB has recently attracted the attention of educational scholars (e.g. Bogler and Somech, 2004;DiPaola and Hoy, 2005;DiPaola and Tschannen-Moran, 2001;Feather and Rauter, 2004;Nguni et al, 2006;Oplatka, 2006;Somech and Ron, 2007). Drawing upon empirical evidence from these studies, it is reasonable to argue that teacher OCBs are crucial for the effective functioning and sustainable improvement of schools.…”

“…As stated by DiPaola and Hoy (2005), teachers are professionals who are required to make professional decisions and committed to the such core functions of the teaching profession as serving best to students by designing and implementing effective classroom practices. It is therefore arguable that teachers as professionals may have tendency to go beyond their formal role descriptions to best serve to meet the diverse needs of students.…”

“…This probably results in extra roles and behaviors for teachers. Considering that OCBs denote to exerting more time and effort to influence school improvement and to build a positive school environment (DiPaola and Hoy, 2005), teachers can be expected to demonstrate more OCBs in schools where distributed leadership is prevalent instead of traditional leadership approaches. Similarly, Oplatka (2006) evidenced that a democratic and participative leadership style was one of the important determinants of OCB in schools.…”

“…However, The OCB Scale developed by DiPaola and Hoy (2005) composed of 12 items; 10 positive and 2 negative items which were reversely encoded. It was adapted into Turkish by Taşdan and Yılmaz (2008).…”

“…Evidence from the related literature highlights that teacher OCBs were associated with school climate (DiPaola and Tschannen-Moran, 2001), organizational identification (Christ et al, 2003;van Dick et al, 2006), student achievement (DiPaola and Hoy, 2005), burnout (Chiu and Tsai, 2006;Emmerik et al, 2005;Schepman and Zarate, 2008;Sezgin and Kılınç, 2012), organizational commitment (Feather and Rauter, 2004), school administrators' organizational power sources (Altınkurt and Yılmaz, 2012), organizational justice (Moorman, 1991), perceived superior support (Somech and Ron, 2007), and perception of empowerment (Bogler and Somech, 2004). School principals' leadership style has been one of the organizational constructs potentially influencing teacher OCBs.…”