The Social Dilemma Perspective on Psychological Contract Fulfilment and Organizational Citizenship Behaviour

Abstract

Recent research suggests that employees perceive organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB) as costly while OCB in the aggregate benefits organizations. Employees thus face an OCB dilemma. This study adopts the social dilemma perspective, proposing that employee OCB varies with the three types of psychological contracts (e.g., relational, balanced, and transactional) due to different degrees of perceived social dilemma and explains why employees engage in OCB in the context of varying levels of social dilemmas. We used moderated structural equation modelling to test the mediating and moderating hypotheses using data from 485 supervisor-subordinate dyads from 58 companies in a variety of industries in Taiwan. As predicted, results suggest that employee OCB has the strongest relationship with balanced psychological contract. Results also confirm the mediating role of felt obligations in both relational and balanced psychological contracts and the moderating role of empathie concerns in transactional psychological contract. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these results.