Contextual Performance/Prosocial Behavior/Organizational Citizenship Behavior

Though the origin of what has come to be called organizational citizenship behavior, contextual performance, or prosocial organizational behavior can be traced to classic management and organizational science treatises, serious theoretical and empirical research in the area began in the late 1970s. Dennis Organ, Walter Borman, Stephen Motowidlo, Phillip Podsakoff, and Scott MacKenzie have been the researchers most instrumental in the development and popularization of this construct. Thanks in no small part to their efforts, and those of a large number of other researchers, organizational citizenship behavior remains a popular topic of research in industrial and organizational psychology.

The relevance of organizational citizenship behavior rests primarily on the persuasive contention that job performance should encompass not only behavior that contributes to the technical core of the ...