Organisational citizenship behaviours and effectiveness: an empirical study in two small insurance companies

Mining voice of customers and employees in insurance companies from online reviews: a text analytics approach

Purpose

Although insurance companies contribute to about $600 billion of the US gross domestic product and employ 2.7 million people, the overall perception of clients and workers employed in this domain is poor. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to propose recommendations to improve the service quality of insurance companies using the voice of customers and employees that are available online.

Design/methodology/approach

The proposed methodology consists of four stages: extracting text reviews posted by employees and customers, reviewing feedback using bigrams and trigrams, determining topics and identifying quality-associated managerial recommendations using the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) and root cause analysis techniques.

Findings

Our results indicate that primary causes for client dissatisfaction are improper client assistance services, inefficient claims processing, issues related to payments/fees and unresponsive ancillary services. Offering different types of payment methods, immediate car replacement policy and features such as smartphone applications are commended very well. The major reasons for workforce frustrations include long and overly complex training, lack of social events and incentive programs. Coworkers, workplace facilities, clean work environment and other amenities are shown to have a positive impact on employees' satisfaction level.

Originality/value

To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to propose recommendations to improve the service quality of insurance companies using the voice of customers and employees that are available online. The proposed quality-related insights can assist insurance companies in improving the outlook of their workers as well as customers.

The Relationship between Organizational Commitment and Organizational Citizenship Behaviors in the Public and Private Sectors

Organizational Citizenship Behaviors (OCBs) are activities which are voluntary, go beyond the formal obligations of employees, and significantly affect the efficiency of the entire organization. The literature has devoted a lot of attention to them since the beginning of the 1980s. Not only has the nature of OCBs been studied, but so too have their dimensions and antecedents. However, there is a fairly significant research gap in the area of employee manifestations of citizenship behaviors according to type of organization (private and public sectors). This article addresses the issue of organizational commitment as one of the antecedents of OCBs. The research objective is to identify and assess the level of correlation between individual dimensions of organizational commitment and Organizational Citizenship Behaviors in public and private organizations in Poland. A quantitative study conducted on a sample of 323 employees allowed the hypotheses to be verified. In general, there are similar frequencies of Organizational Citizenship Behaviors in the public and private sectors. In public institutions, however, OCBs in the interpersonal dimension are more frequent, while in private institutions they occur more commonly in the organizational dimension. Most positively correlated with OCBs is the affective dimension of organizational commitment.

The costs and benefits of going beyond the call of duty

Purpose

Past research has generally associated organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) with positive individual and organizational outcomes, paying little attention to its possible costs for individuals. Drawing from the conservation of resource theory (COR), the purpose of this paper is to address this gap by developing an integrative framework that simultaneously investigates the potential costs and benefits of OCB for individuals. In addition, the paper also investigates the down-streaming effects of OCB on workplace well-being (job satisfaction and affective commitment) favorably via psychological well-being and unfavorably via role overload.

Design/methodology/approach

A sample of 566 employees working in private sector banks in India was collected by using multi-stage random sampling approach. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test the hypothesized relationships. Parallel mediation regression analysis was used for ascertaining the specific indirect effects of the two parallel mediators.

Findings

Results indicate that OCBs targeted toward co-workers (OCBI), organization (OCBO) and customers (OCBC) were positively associated with psychological well-being. Simultaneously, OCBO was found to be positively associated with higher role overload. Further, psychological well-being and role overload mediated the effect of various dimensions of OCB on employees’ workplace well-being.

Originality/value

The study contributes to the existing literature by investigating both the beneficial and detrimental effects of various dimensions of OCB into one theoretical framework. By doing so, the study attempts to bridge the gap in the literature by linking these two divergent streams of research, i.e. whether OCB is beneficial or costly for individuals.

How authentic leadership promotes individual performance

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to provide a more comprehensive understanding of how authentic leadership (AL) can affect individual performance through creativity and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB)’s mediating roles.

Design/methodology/approach

The sample included 177 leader-follower dyads from 26 private and small and medium-sized organizations. Followers reported their perceptions of AL, and leaders assessed each follower’s level of creativity, individual performance and OCB.

Findings

The findings show that AL has a positive impact on OCB (i.e. altruism, sportsmanship, civic virtue, conscientiousness and courtesy), employee creativity, and individual performance. Creativity partially mediates the relationship between AL and individual performance. Some dimensions of OCB, namely, altruism, civic virtue and courtesy, also play a mediating role in this relationship.

Research limitations/implications

Additional studies with larger samples are needed to determine more clearly not only AL’s influence on individual performance but also other psychosocial variables affecting that relationship.

Practical implications

Organizations can increase employees’ creativity, OCB and individual performance by encouraging managers to adopt more AL styles.

Originality/value

This study is the first to integrate AL, creativity, OCB and individual performance into a single research model, thereby extending previous research. The study also used a double-source method to collect data (i.e. leader-follower dyads) to minimize the risk of introducing common-method variance.

Authentic leadership and performance: the mediating role of employees’ affective commitment

Purpose

This study aims to examine the relationship between authentic leadership (AL), affective commitment and individual performance. More specifically, this study aims to understand how AL influences employees’ affective commitment, how AL influences individual performance, how affective commitment influences individual performance and how affective commitment mediates the relationship between AL and individual performance.

Design/methodology/approach

In total, 212 Portuguese employees participated in this study. A quantitative methodology was used. Baron and Kenny’s linear regression method and Sobel test were used to test the mediation relationship.

Findings

The results reveal that affective commitment mediates the relationship between AL and employees’ performance. In others words, leaders’ authenticity promotes employees’ affective commitment, which, in turn, increases their individual performance.

Practical implications

This research has practical implications for human resource management in organizations, particularly in selection processes and training of leaders and managers. Practitioners looking to increase employee commitment and performance can do so by augmenting the AL.

Originality/value

This study enriches the knowledge about the relevance of emerging areas such as AL theory and responds to the need to understand underlying mechanisms linking AL with workers’ commitment and performance (i.e. testing the construct’s nomological network).

Impact of psychological capital on occupational burnout and performance of faculty members

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact and interrelation between positive psychological capital and occupational burnout among faculty associates of technical and professional training institutions.

Design/methodology/approach

In total, 282 faculty members from 17 technical institutions were selected from the province of Punjab, Pakistan. Results were drawn using bivariate correlation and linear regression on the data that were collected through adopted questionnaire.

Findings

Results of the study revealed that occupational burnout is significantly related to the performance of the faculty of technical institutes and that psychological capital moderates this relationship.

Practical implications

Conclusions from this research suggested that the personality trait of a psychological capital is an essential determinant of job burnout and performance among faculty members; therefore, it must be considered as an essential part of the selection criteria and job-assessment process. This is important, since psychological capital reduces the detrimental impact of occupational burnout on performance outcomes. Further the faculty members with higher psychological capital should be retained to create positive work environment which can be an inspiration for others.

Originality/value

The research provides important information about the impact of personality traits upon the performance of a faculty member who joins an educational institution coming from an industrial environment. Although having similar technological skills required for the position, still the effects of a new environment can cause performance issues, the research insisted that positive personality traits like psychological capital can help in gaining required confidence to perform in a changed environment.

Organizational Citizenship Behavior and Performance

Most of the research on the relationship between organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and performance has been conducted at the individual level. During the past 10 years, however, group-level research on that relationship has begun to appear. This article meta-analytically reviews 38 independent samples ( N = 3,097) in which the relationship between OCB and performance was studied at the group level. The analyses in this study suggest a positive overall relationship between OCB and performance (ρ = .29), as well as the presence of several moderating variables. The theoretical implications of these findings are discussed, and some suggestions for future research are offered.