magazine issue 2 2008 / Issue 6

Taking One for the Team, Even on Your Way Out of the Door

• written by Jeff Joireman

When OCBs are viewed from this perspective, it follows that any factor that increases an employee’s concern with collective well-being (social concerns) and long-term outcomes (temporal concerns) should increase the likelihood that an employee will engage in OCBs. For example, it seems likely that our hypothetical employee Kaitlyn should be more willing to help her coworker out to the extent that she is generally concerned with the well-being of others (e.g., she is high in empathy) and thinks about the long-term consequences of her actions (e.g., tends to be future-oriented). However, recall that Kaitlyn has also lined up another job and will be leaving her company in the near future. This situation is likely to give Kaitlyn a relatively short-time horizon in her organization. If she does help her coworker out, it is unclear whether it will “pay off” in the long-term (e.g., via a returned favor).

Employee Time Horizon

Like Kaitlyn, many employees in today’s economy can expect several career changes over their lifetime. As a result, at any given time, many employees are likely to have adopted a relatively short time horizon within their organizations. In theory, this poses a major dilemma for organizations wishing to encourage OCBs. Indeed, research suggests that people are less likely to cooperate in social dilemmas (Axelrod, 1984) and engage in OCBs (Van Dyne & Ang, 1998) when they have a short-term time horizon within their organizations.

Study Goals and Hypotheses

In an effort to better understand how a short-term time horizon impacts employees’ willingness to engage in OCBs, we conducted several studies involving large samples of MBA students and employees in a large Fortune 500 country in India. Our studies had three goals. First, we sought to determine whether employees actually viewed OCBs as social dilemmas. Second, we evaluated whether employees with a short-term time horizon would be less likely to engage in OCBs. Finally, we examined whether the negative impact of a short-term time horizon would depend on an employee’s level of empathy and/or tendency to base decisions on the future consequences of one’s actions. We hypothesized that a short-term time horizon would lead to a reduction in OCBs among employees who were low in empathy (who presumably help primarily to receive future rewards), but would have little impact on employees who were high in empathy (who tend to help because they are concerned with the other’s well-being). We also hypothesized (somewhat counterintuitively) that a short-term time horizon would lead to a reduction in OCBs among employees who focus on the future consequences of their actions (because these employees would see no future benefit to engaging in OCBs), but would have a less adverse impact on employees who focus on the immediate consequences of their actions.

In-Basket Study

In an effort to generalize our results, we conducted several studies each using a different method for assessing employees’ willingness to engage in OCBs. In our initial studies (Joireman, Daniels, George-Falvy, & Kamdar, 2006), we asked MBA students to respond to an in-basket exercise. Participants were asked to imagine they were a manager in a hypothetical organization, and were presented with a series of 9 in-basket items to which they needed to respond, including

six memos, two formal letters, and a company newsletter. Each item presented three options for action. One option fell below expectations. A second option reflected reasonable behavior. The third option (the OCB) went “above and beyond the call of duty”. The first option required the least amount of time to complete, whereas the third option required the most time to complete. As an example, in one newsletter, employees were encouraged to take time to get to know two new employees. The response options included (a) not spending any time with the new employees, (b) talking with the employees if they happened to bump into them (30 minutes); or (c) scheduling a 30 minute meeting to get to know each employee and see if they need any help getting adjusted (1 hour total). In another memo, an employee is asked to be involved in a trade-show. The response options include (a) not attending; (b) indicating that one’s subordinates will attend (20 minutes to draft a memo); or (c) helping to prepare for the trade-show (1 hour). 

Preliminary studies revealed two important findings: First, participants rated the first option as beneficial to the employee in the short-run, but harmful to the organization in the long-run, and they rated the third option as costly to the employee in the short-run, but beneficial to both the employee and the organization in the long-run. This allowed us to conclude that participants viewed the decision as a social dilemma. A second important finding was that participants viewed the third option as an extra-role behavior (i.e., as a behavior that went above and beyond what would be expected as part of the employee’s typical role). This allowed us to conclude that participants viewed the third option as an OCB. Having established that the in-basket exercise reflected a viable measure of OCBs, which were perceived as social dilemmas, we proceeded to evaluate predictors of participants’ willingness to engage in OCBs.