Impact of Organizational Citizenship Behavior on Performance in Women's Sport Teams

Abstract

The current study examined the relationship between organizational citizenship behavior and sport team performance and the moderating role of task interdependence in that relationship. Two types of collegiate teams—softball (N = 25) and tennis (N = 15)—were utilized to represent different levels of task interdependence with softball being considered more interdependent than tennis. Athletes (N = 448) answered survey questions concerning organizational citizenship behavior (helping, civic virtue, sportsmanship [due to the historic use of the term “sportmanship” in developing the measures used in this study, that term will be used instead of “sportpersonship”]), team cohesiveness, athlete satisfaction, and transformational leadership behaviors. Researchers collected performance statistics for athletes. Results indicated that helping behavior was the strongest organizational citizenship behavior predictor of performance, but the effect differed between tennis and softball teams.