By its nature, work has an interpersonal component associated with it, as Blustein has stated. As such, it is only to be expected that researchers have attempted to ascertain the personal as well as situational variables, that foster prosocial behaviors. Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB), an example of prosocial behavior in an organizational context as defined by Bolino & Grant in 2016, has been described previously by Organ, in 1997, as performance that supports the social and psychological environment in which task performance takes place.

In the increasingly dynamic and competitive environment in which organizations are expected to operate, prosocial activities may provide a benefit in a variety of ways.
Several researchers including Lam, Wan & Roussin, and Lev & Koslowsky have focused on their positive effect. Prosocial behavior plays an important role in predicting outcomes such as freeing up resources for greater productivity, as mentioned by Organ and colleagues, increasing the probability that coworkers and managers will be more efficient, will increase services quality and will facilitate the development of a collaborative culture.

In addition, through an individual’s active engagement in OCB, abundant data supports the idea that this ensures personal benefits such as higher status, social ties, or job promotion as recently reviewed by Bolino & Grant.

Moreover, OCB has also been positively linked to workplace constructive deviance, behaviors that break the norm to benefit the organization, as suggested by Galperin in 2012.

Is prosocial behavior always associated with positive outcomes?

More recently, well known organizational researchers have examined the dark side of prosocial behavior and OCB such as burnout, work-family conflicts, role overload, and reduced individual productivity.
This stream of research is still growing.

The theoretical underpinning for much of this research is based on the depletion perspective which claims that personal resources are limited and, therefore, the mere engagement in OCB and prosocial behaviors may consume additional cognitive, emotional, and physical resources with undesirable consequences. This perspective has been extensively tackled by Bolino & Klotz, Halbesleben and colleagues, and Reizer & Hetsroni.

To expand our knowledge with respect to the association between prosocial behaviors and individual, team, and organizational processes, the present series of studies shed light on the ongoing debate whether and when such behaviors are beneficial or harmful to employees.

Given the changing nature of work, it will be especially important for organizations to manage prosocial discretionary behavior in the workplace.
Future research directions and practical implications will be discussed.

Submit your idea

Impact

Frontiers in Psychology

Participating Journals

Impact