IT professionals as organizational citizens

Reviewer: G. Smith

Information technology (IT) workers exhibit significantly less occupational citizenship behavior (OCB) than non-IT workers. This is the major finding of this work. Five types of OCB (altruism, courtesy, sportsmanship, civic virtue, and conscientiousness) are measured in this study. "Investigations of a situational factor-fairness perception-as a predictor of OCB have been ... fruitful." People seem to feel that if the exchange between them and their organization is positive, then their OCB will be enhanced. Procedural justice within an organization, or the perceived fairness of policies and procedures, how company policies are undertaken, and the dignity and respect with which they are communicated, are critical factors. Alarmingly, IT workers are plagued by significantly lower management trust and faith in procedural justice than their non-IT colleagues. Some of the results in this study are not surprising. A fair amount of working life is similar to what you find in other fields. People don't work particularly hard if they are only working for the money, especially if they do not feel like they are being treated fairly. The hazard for the IT field, though, is that the potentially devastating consequences of not helping others are acute in IT work. IT workers need to be proactive in stymieing malware, viruses, security issues, and a whole host of threats. If they are not helpful, these threats proliferate. The authors do not report this fact, though it does seem to be a central implication of their important research. Online Computing Reviews Service

Reviewer: Alexis Leon

In this interesting article, the authors explain the concept, principles, types, and state of current research of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). They also try to find out why the level of OCB among information technology (IT) professionals is significantly lower than that of their counterparts in other areas like operations, accounting, and so on, a fact uncovered by a study conducted in five industries. OCBs are activities (like helping a coworker) that improve the organizational effectiveness and efficiency, but are not considered by the formal reward system. Employees do not get directly rewarded for their citizenship behaviors. Two factors that influence OCB are organizational justice (an employee's perception of how well he or she is treated by the organization) and supervisory trust (the relationship between employees and their superiors). The authors point to the peculiar aspects of IT jobs-more autonomy, reduced supervision, low interaction and communication, tight schedules and deadlines, high workload and work pressure, lack of time to help others, and lack of management support-as the causes of low OCB levels among IT and information systems (IS) professionals. Another possible cause of the lower OCB rating could be the high expectations placed on IT professionals. The authors feel that organizations should create work environments that kindle perceptions of trust and fairness, so that citizenship behaviors will naturally occur. The authors stress the need for detailed and comprehensive studies that cover all aspects of OCB, especially with relation to the peculiarities of the IT and IS professions, to get a complete and accurate picture. This article sheds light on a very serious problem that can harm an organization. The ideas expressed here have immense practical value to IT project leaders, software development team leaders, managers, human resource (HR) personnel, and top management. Online Computing Reviews Service