How the COVID-19 Outbreak Affected Organizational Citizenship Behavior in Emergency Construction Megaprojects: Case Study from Two Emergency Hospital Projects in Wuhan, China

Abstract

The rapid construction of emergency hospitals in areas with a severe COVID-19 outbreak was one of the effective ways to contain and fight the pandemic. However, such rapid construction megaprojects need more than a formal management system to drive the organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) of participants in order to compensate for the lack of formal rules and regulations. Two emergency hospitals especially built for COVID-19 are taken as case studies in this paper to establish a mechanism model and examine the impact of the perceived strength of the COVID-19 event on the emergency megaproject citizenship behavior (EMCB) based on affective events theory (AET). Data from 340 project participants in the two hospitals were collected and tested using structural equation modeling. The results demonstrate that first, the positive affect induced by the COVID-19 event is the direct antecedent that promotes EMCB. Participants’ cognition of event criticality and event novelty was seen to have a positive driving effect on the positive affect. However, their cognition of event urgency and event disruption only triggers negative affect. Second, the positive affect induced by the COVID-19 event was seen to have a strong positive and direct promoting effect on the six dimensions of EMCB. Contrary to expectations, the negative affect induced by the COVID-19 event does not significantly influence the six dimensions of EMCB. This study provides empirical suggestions for project managers on how to motivate EMCB through public emergency management to help achieve project objectives.