Employees’ Belief in a Just World and Sustainable Organizational Citizenship Behaviors: The Moderating Effect of Interpersonal Intelligence

Abstract

To both survive and develop continuously, enterprises must overcome many kinds of competition and challenges. Cultivating employees’ active and sustainable organizational citizenship behavior is important for enterprises to successfully cope with turbulence and uncertain events during their development. Building on social exchange theory, this study proposes a theoretical framework. In this framework, belief in a just world has a certain predictive effect on organizational citizenship behavior, and this effect is affected by interpersonal intelligence. In this study, we investigated the development level of and factors influencing employees’ organizational citizenship behavior in current organizations. This research adopted the empirical research method of a questionnaire survey, and investigated 230 employees from 15 different enterprises by using the Belief in a Just World Scale, Organizational Citizenship Behavior Scale, and Interpersonal Intelligence Scale. After excluding the questionnaires that did not meet the requirements, a total of 193 valid questionnaires were obtained. To estimate the proposed relationships in the conceptual model, we analyzed the data through SPSS-21. The results showed that belief in a just world, interpersonal intelligence, and organizational citizenship behavior were significantly positively correlated. Interpersonal intelligence played a moderating role between belief in a just world and organizational citizenship behavior; the belief in a just world of individuals with high interpersonal intelligence had a more significant positive predictive effect on organizational citizenship behavior. This meant that under a certain level of belief in a just world, a high level of interpersonal intelligence was more conducive to promoting employees’ sustainable organizational citizenship behavior.