American International Journal of Business Management (AIJBM)

ISSN- 2379-106X, www.aijbm.com Volume 2, Issue 12 (December 2019), PP 86-90

Employee Commitment and Organizational Citizenship

Behavior in Nepal

Prakash Shrestha, Ph.D.

Faculty of Management, Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, Nepal.

ABSTRACT: This paper aims to examine the relationship between employee commitment and organizational
citizenship behavior. For the study purpose, the survey instruments were randomly administered to the
employees' five Nepalese companies for a questionnaire survey. A total of 400 questionnaires administered, only
340 valid questionnaires (with a response rate of 85%) were returned and used. The results showed that
affective and normative commitment had positive relations to both factors of organizational citizenship behavior
such as altruism and compliance. The effect of employee commitment found in the present analysis in terms of
organizational citizenship behavior was appealing. These findings imply for the practitioners in initiating
human resources strategies to enhance affective commitment and normative commitment. Organizations can use
the concept of organizational citizenship behavior and employee commitment as the tools for increasing
organizational effectiveness.

KEYWORDS - Altruism, Citizenship behavior, Compliance, Employee commitment, Relations.

I. INTRODUCTION
Employees are strategic resources for successful organizations. Their positive perception and behavior
matter a lot in workplaces. Commitment is one of the key behavioral factors that has a positive effect on the
citizenship behavior of employees at work. Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) refers to individual
helping behaviors and gestures that are organizationally beneficial but are not formally rewarded (Organ, 2000).
It involves discretionary behavior that helps co-workers, supervisors and the organization. Assisting newcomers
into the organization, not abusing the rights of co-workers, not taking extra breaks, attending elective company
meetings and enduring minor impositions that occur when working with others are examples of OCB that help
in coping with various organizational uncertainties (Gautam, 2003).
Organ, Podsakoff, and MacKenzie (2006) stated OCB as "an individual behavior that is discretionary,
not directly or explicitly recognized by the formal reward system, and that ultimately promotes the effective
functioning of the organization. It is voluntarily aiding others with job-related problems. It is also called 'extra-
role behaviour that has great significance at workplaces and for organizations (Tanaka, 2013).
Multidimensional delineations have identified OCB facets such as conscientiousness, sportsmanship,
civic virtue, courtesy, and altruism (Podsakoff, Mackenzie, Moorman & Fetter, 1990; Van Dyne, Cummings &
Parks, 1995; Podsakoff, Ahearne & Mackenzie, 1997).
Organ et al. (2006) mentioned OCB in terms of seven dimensions such as (a) helping: it is acting to
help a specific individual, such as co-workers, superior, or customers, (b) compliance: it is contributing the
work-team, unit, department, or organization, (c) sportsmanship: it is choosing not to protest unfairness or show
dissatisfaction to manager and the organization, (d) civic virtue: it is readiness to participate responsibly and
usefully in the political and governing processes of the organization, (e) organizational loyalty: it is showing
pride in one's organization to people who are not members of that organization, (f) self-development: it is taking
autonomous steps to expand skills and knowledge pertaining to one's own work, and (g) individual initiative: it
involves almost all behaviors that go beyond what is necessary to resolve or avoid problems.
Some other researchers such as Williams and Anderson (1991), and Organ and Ryan (2000) divided
OCB into two types. The first one is the behavior that is directed mainly at individuals in the organization
(Organizational Citizenship Behavior-Individual: OCBI) and next one is the behavior that is concerned more
with helping the organization as a whole (Organizational Citizenship Behaviour-Organization: OCBO).
Courtesy and altruism are viewed as mainly benefiting co-workers whereas conscientiousness, sportsmanship,
and civic virtue are directed at the organization (Organ & Ryan, 2000). This paper focuses on two major factors
of OCB such as altruism and compliance. Altruism represents that OCB which provides aid to specific persons,
e.g., direct team members, and (b) compliance pertains to more impersonal contributions to the organization as a
whole (Organ & Ryan, 2000; Smith, Organ & Near, 983).
Employee commitment is commonly known as organizational commitment. It has been identified for
many years as a central construct in understanding the relationship between the employee and the employer

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 Employee Commitment and Organizational Citizenship Behavior in Nepal

(Meyer & Allen, 2001; Meyer, Stanley, Herscovitch & Topolnytsky, 2002, Shrestha, 2016). This commitment
indicates its significance in binding the individual both to the organization and to courses of action, which are
relevant to the target of the commitment (Meyer & Herscovitch, 2001). Many researchers identified the
relationships between components of employee commitment and a range of discretionary and extra-role
behaviors (Meyer & Herscovitch, 2001) including attendance (Somers & Burnbaum, 1998), performance
(Cropanzano, James & Konovsky, 1993) and organizational citizenship behavior (Organ & Ryan, 2000).
As used in this paper, the term employee commitment is a psychological state that categorizes the
employee's relationship with the organization. It is understood as a commitment to the entire organization. There
are three components of commitment, each of which ties the employees to their organization but the nature of
the 'psychological-bonding' is different (Gautam, 2003). The first one is the affective commitment (AC). It ties
people through their emotional attachment, involvement, and identification with the organization. The
'affectively' committed employee stays because they want to. Next is continuance commitment (CC). It depends
on an employee's awareness of the costs of leaving the organization – people stay because of the cost of losses
associated with leaving the organization. The third one is normative commitment (NC). It rests on employees'
obligatory feelings towards co-workers or management – people stay because they feel an obligation to do so
(Meyer & Allen, 2001). Each component might have different antecedents and, while all lead to a reduced
intention to leave the organization, result in different outcomes for employees' discretionary extra-role behavior
(Gautam, Van Dick & Wagner, 2001).
Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) is one example of discretionary behavior. It is taken to be a
positive outcome of a committed workforce, characterized by voluntary extra-role contributions of employees
that are not recognized by the formal organizational reward system (Organ & Ryan, 1999). This paper focuses
on the relationship between OCB and employee commitment as a form of discretionary extra-role behavior.
Connections between employee commitment and OCB at the individual level may result because positive
attitudes about the job or the organization tend to predispose people toward extra-role behavior (Koberg, Boss,
Bursten & Goodman, 2003). Also, high levels of commitment can create equity pressures that motivate
individuals to provide non-required helping behaviors as repayment for the fulfilment and belongingness they
draw from their work (Moorman & Blakely, 2006). One research shows that affective commitment is among the
affective work reactions that have been offered most often as antecedents to affiliate/promotive extra-role
(Meyer & Allen, 2001). Studies have also found employee commitment to be associated with several OCB
facets (Chen, Hui & Sego, 1998). For example, when defined as a psychological identification with the
organization and its values, employee commitment has also displayed links with OCB. DiPaola and Tschanmen-
Moran (2001) found positive relationships between affective commitment and several OCB dimensions.
Therefore, in this paper OCB is taken as the positive outcome of committed employees. Thus, the present paper
is directed to replicate two factorial citizenship behavior (in terms of altruism and compliance) and to find their
linkage to the three-component organizational commitment (in terms of affective, continuance and normative
commitment) in selected organizations of Nepal.

II. RESEARCH HYPOTHESES

Based on the literature review and above discussions, the following hypotheses have been developed
and tested:
H1: Affective, continuance and normative commitment have a positive and significant relationship with
altruism.
H2: Affective, continuance and normative commitment have a positive and significant relationship with
compliance.

III. RESEARCH METHODS

A field-study research design was followed for the study. Participants and data collection instruments
tools used for the study are discussed below:

Participants
For the study purpose, the survey instruments were randomly administered to the employees' five
leading Nepalese companies (namely Nepal Bank Limited, Rastriya Banijya Bank Limited, Agriculture
Development Bank Limited, Nepal Telecom, and Nepal Television) for questionnaire survey. These companies
were selected by purposive sampling technique to make a heterogeneous sample. A total of 400 questionnaires
administered, only 340 valid questionnaires (with a response rate of 85%) were returned and used. The profile of
the respondents is presented in the following table (1):

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 Employee Commitment and Organizational Citizenship Behavior in Nepal

Table 1: Profile of the Respondents (N =340)

Demographic Variables Categories Frequency Percentage (%)
Gender Male 214 63
Female 126 37
Marital Status Married 185 54
Single 155 46
Job Level Supervisory levels 149 44
Subordinate level 191 56
Education Level Master and above 168 49
Graduate level 172 51

Data Collection Instruments

Present study uses primary data that was collected through a questionnaire survey. The questionnaires
consisting of six items in each employee commitment component (affective commitment, continuance
commitment, and normative commitment) developed by Meyer, Allen, and Smith (1993) were used to examine
three-component employee commitment. Two-factors of OCB such as altruism and compliance were measured
with the scales developed by Smith et al. (1983). Data were generated using a six-point Likert-type scale
anchored by “strongly disagree“ = ‘1’ to “strongly agree” = ‘6’.

IV. EMPIRICAL RESULTS AND FINDINGS

The following sections present empirical results and findings that were obtained from the survey.
Descriptive Statistics
The basic descriptive statistics of the variables are presented in table (2) that includes scale means and
standard deviations. This section also presents Pearson correlations and internal consistencies (Cronbach alpha)
for each scale.

Table 2: Scale Means, Standard Deviations, Pearson Correlations, and Cronbach Alpha
Scales M SD Cronbach Alpha Altruism Compliance
Altruism 5.23 0.73 0.85
Compliance 5.78 0.64 0.82 0.34**
Affective Commitment 5.35 0.78 0.86 0.39** 0.24**
Continuance Commitment 3.68 0.79 0.87 -0.09 -0.14
Normative Commitment 4.86 0.97 0.93 0.35* 0.24**
Note: **p<0.01. *p<0.05

The results show that the Cronbach's alpha of altruism, compliance, affective commitment, continuance
commitment, and normative commitment are 0.85, 0.82, 0.86, 0.87 and 0.93 respectively, Hence, the reliabilities
of the instruments seem sufficient in terms of Cronbach’s alpha. The data set shows high reliability. The
descriptive statistics show that employee commitment and OCB (in terms of altruism and compliance) are stable
and high in the Nepalese context. Pearson correlation coefficients show that both OCB scales (altruism and
compliance) are inter-correlated and show significant positive relationships with affective and normative
commitment scales but fail to show any significant relationship with continuance commitment.

Employee Commitment and Organizational Citizenship Behavior

In this section, we use a regression model to analyze the impact of employee commitment on
organizational citizenship behavior. The following Table (3) and table (4) present the results of the regression
analysis.

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 Employee Commitment and Organizational Citizenship Behavior in Nepal

Table 3: Regression Result of Employee Commitment and OCB (Altruism)

Model I B Std. Error t Sig.
(Constant) 19.69 1.441 14.37 0.00
Affective Commitment 0.19* 0.113 3.34 0.02*
Continuance Commitment -0.07 0.127 3.56 0.21
Normative Commitment 0.31* 0.062 6.56 0.01**
R2 = 0.349, Adjusted R2 = 0.339, F-Value = 35.6
Note: **p<0.01. *p<0.05

Table (3) shows the regression analysis results of OCB (in terms of altruism) based on employee
commitment dimensions. In model I, both affective commitment and normative commitment have a
significantly positive impact on altruism. But continuance commitment has no significant impact on it. Hence,
H1 is partially accepted.

Table 4: Regression Result of Employee Commitment and OCB (Compliance)

Model II B Std. Error t Sig.
(Constant) 12.02 1.158 10.305 0.00
Affective Commitment 0.15* 0.091 -0.598 0.03*
Continuance Commitment -0.14* 0.102 0.217 0.14
Normative Commitment 0.21* 0.05 7.646 0.00**
R2 = 0.457, Adjusted R2 = 0.449, F-Value = 53.39
Note: **p<0.01. *p<0.05

Table (4) shows the regression analysis results of OCB (in terms of compliance) based on employee
commitment dimensions. In model II, both affective commitment and normative commitment have a
significantly positive impact on compliance. But continuance commitment has no significant impact on it.
Hence, H2 is partially accepted.

V. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

This paper proposes organizational citizenship behavior as a positive outcome of employee
commitment. It also assumes there are positive relationships between OCB dimensions (particularly, altruism
and compliance) and employee commitment dimensions (particularly, affective commitment, continuance
commitment, and normative commitment). Even though the concepts of organizational citizenship behavior and
employee commitment (i.e. organizational commitment) were developed in Western culture, but these concepts
are found equally applicable in a very different socio-cultural context of Nepal. The results of present study
show both affective and normative commitment have positive relations to two key elements of organizational
citizenship behavior (i.e. altruism and compliance). However, continuance commitment shows a negative
relation to altruism and compliance.
Both affective commitment and normative commitment show a relatively stronger linkage to altruism
than to compliance. Hence, the conclusion can be made that attitudinally and normatively committed people to
engage in certain types of citizenship behaviors whereas people having continuance commitment show less
interest in OCB. The finding supports the theoretical assumption of Smith et al. (1983) about the distinctiveness
between helping behavior to other employees (altruism) and following organizational norms or rules
(compliance) of OCB. This findings seem to be consistent with the findings of Gautam (2003) concluded that
affective commitment and normative commitment were found positively and continuance commitment
negatively connected or unrelated to OCB.
As one of the key dimensions of employee commitment, an affective commitment binds employees
with their organization. With this commitment, they like or love their organization and they put more efforts on
behalf of the organization. Affectively committed employees always display sustaining behavior with other
coworkers voluntarily because this commitment is grounded in their desire or willingness rather than on an
exchange-based relationship with their organization. This result seems to be consistent with the findings of
Gautam (2003) and Chen, Hui & Sego (2004). Likewise, another key dimension of employee commitment,
normative commitment is a psychological condition where employees find themselves obliged to continue their
membership in organization because of some kind of social, cultural, or contextual norms. In his study, Gautam
(2003) concluded that employees can be expected to perform some extra-role behavior to fulfill their obligation
or to show their gratefulness towards their respective leaders or peers. So, it can be concluded that normatively
committed employees show strong altruism behavior. They are grateful towards the organization and therefore
also engage in compliance behavior to some extent.
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 Employee Commitment and Organizational Citizenship Behavior in Nepal

As a key dimension of employee commitment, continuance commitment ties employees with their
organization because of their living cost awareness. People who hold continuance commitment are more
interested in their benefits rather than supporting peers because of the exchange-based relationship with their
organization. They want to get more from their organization by maintaining their position in the organization.
They may also be skeptical of following company rules and norms. It is, therefore, continuance commitment can
be linked negatively to compliance. This result also seems to be consistent with the findings of Gautam (2003)
and Van Dyne, Graham, and Dienesh (1994). Hence, the effect of employee commitment to the organization
found in the present analysis in terms of organizational citizenship behavior is appealing. These findings imply
for the practitioners in initiating human resource strategies to enhance affective commitment and normative
commitment. Organizations can use the concept of employee commitment and organizational citizenship
behavior as important tools for increasing organizational effectiveness.

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Prakash Shrestha, Ph.D.

Faculty of Management, Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, Nepal.

*Corresponding Author: Prakash Shrestha www.aijbm.com 90 | Page