The Interactive Effect of Religiosity and Perceived Organizational Adversity on Change-Oriented Citizenship Behavior

Abstract

This study adds to business ethics research by examining how employees' religiosity might enhance their propensity to engage in change-oriented citizenship behavior, as well as how this effect may be invigorated in adverse organizational climates with respect to voluntarism. Two-wave survey data collected from employees in Pakistan show that change-oriented citizenship activities increase to the extent that employees can draw on their personal resource of religiosity and perceive little adversity, measured in this study with respect to whether voluntarism is encouraged. Further, the relative usefulness of religiosity for spurring changeoriented citizenship behavior is particularly strong when employees experience high levels of this organizational adversity, because employees with high religiosity tend to believe that such behavior is more needed in these organizational contexts. For organizations, these results demonstrate that the energy derived from religiosity may stimulate voluntary efforts that invoke organizational change, and the perceived value of such energy allocation is greater when employees perceive organizational environments that provide little encouragement to go beyond formal job duties.

“I Can’t Help at Work! My Family Is Driving Me Crazy!” How Family-to-Work Conflict Diminishes Change-Oriented Citizenship Behaviors and How Key Resources Disrupt This Link

“…Detailing the direct negative link between family-to-work conflict and change-oriented citizenship behavior complements previous research that has primarily focused on positive factors. For example, research has investigated personal characteristics that drive such behaviors, including employees’ promotion focus (Simo et al, 2016), learning orientation (Bettencourt, 2004), openness to experience (Miao & Qian, 2016), and religiosity (Haq et al, 2018), as well as organizational characteristics, such as an openness to change among the firm’s top management (Morrison & Phelps, 1999), empowering leadership (Li et al, 2016), knowledge-oriented work characteristics (Kao, 2017), and an organizational climate that promotes innovation (J. N. Choi, 2007).…”

Job insecurity, work‐induced mental health deprivation, and timely completion of work tasks

“…For example, it might generate a sense of guilt, limit people's personal freedom, or create counterproductive distinctions between believers and nonbelievers (Koenig 2001(Koenig , 2013, but it also can instill people with discretionary energy, offer a sense of meaning to their lives, create community, or provide mental support in challenging circumstances (Koenig 2001(Koenig , 2013Miller and Thoresen 2003). In work settings, employees' religious faith arguably increases affective commitment (Sikorska-Simmons 2005), career-related self-efficacy (Duffy and Blustein 2005), and change-oriented citizenship behavior (Haq et al 2020). Moreover, this personal resource helps employees cope with job-related difficulties, such as workplace incivility (Welbourne, Gangadharan and Esparza 2016), which suggests it might be a relevant tool HR managers can integrate in their efforts to help employees deal with job insecurity (Bernhard-Oettel et al 2011).…”

Perceived contract violation and job satisfaction

“…The data collection took place through a two-wave research design, using a time lag of three weeks. This time period was chosen because it was sufficiently long to mitigate concerns about reverse causality but not so long that significant organizational events could have taken place during the data collection; the three-week time gap also is consistent with previous studies (e.g., De Clercq et al, 2018;Haq et al, 2018). The surveys were in English, the official language of higher education and business communication in Pakistan.…”