How to Foster Project Citizenship Behavior in Construction Industry: Organizational Culture Matters

Abstract

Seller's project citizenship behavior has recently received much attention due to its role in promoting project success and improving the performance of both the overall project and of each stakeholder. However, previous studies have paid insufficient attention to how organizational culture affects a seller's project citizenship behavior, especially in the context of interorganizational conflicts. Therefore, this study explores the influence mechanism of three dimensions of seller's organizational culture with spillover effects (social responsibility, customer orientation, and innovation) on employees’ project citizenship behavior, and investigates the moderating role of interorganizational conflict (task conflict, relationship conflict, and conflict profiles) in the relationship between organizational culture and project citizenship behavior. Based on 248 surveys gathered from the Chinese construction industry, the empirical results show that the social responsibility and customer orientation of a seller's organizational culture have a significant positive impact on the project citizenship behavior of its employees. Meanwhile, interorganizational task conflict negatively moderates the relationship between customer orientation and project citizenship behavior, while relationship conflict positively moderates it. Moreover, the conflict state profile with low task conflict and high relationship conflict is most conducive to enhancing the positive impact of customer orientation on project citizenship behavior. This article reveals the impact of the spillover effect of a seller's organizational culture on its employees’ project citizenship behavior, contributes to organizational culture theory in terms of its spillover effect and the impact on promoting the development of project citizenship behavior, and provides practical guidance for construction practitioners.