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

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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 change-oriented 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.

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Notes

  1. Such extra-role behaviors might include performing tasks that are not technically required as a part of their job, volunteering for extra assignments for which there is no direct compensation, and, generally speaking, going “above and beyond” the call of duty (Organ 1988; Podsakoff et al. 2000).

  2. To avoid social desirability bias, the statement mentioned that “during the course of their workday, people might engage in behaviors that are not formally required,” and the respondents then rated the different examples.

  3. The regression analyses in Table 2 indicate that only organizational tenure has a significant effect on change-oriented citizenship behavior. Following Becker’s (2005) recommendations, we performed a robustness check by re-estimating the regression models without the non-significant control variables, and the hypothesis results remained consistent.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Lahore Business School, The University of Lahore, Lahore, Pakistan

    Inam Ul Haq

  2. Goodman School of Business, Brock University, St. Catharines, ON, L2S 3A1, Canada

    Dirk De Clercq

  3. Small Business Research Centre, Kingston University, Kingston-Upon-Thames, UK

    Dirk De Clercq

  4. School of Business and Economics, University of Management and Technology, Lahore, Pakistan

    Muhammad Umer Azeem

  5. Faculty of Management Sciences, Riphah International University, Lahore, Pakistan

    Aamir Suhail

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  1. Inam Ul Haq
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Haq, I.U., De Clercq, D., Azeem, M.U. et al. The Interactive Effect of Religiosity and Perceived Organizational Adversity on Change-Oriented Citizenship Behavior. J Bus Ethics 165, 161–175 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-018-4076-y

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