In Times of an Economic Crisis: Citizenship Behavior and the Role of Team Information Sharing

Abstract

Our study examines how to alleviate the potential backlash in the workplace in terms of OCB that is concomitant to economic turbulence. We draw on social exchange and hypothesize team information sharing as a resource that moderates the negative relationship between adverse working conditions and OCBO. We test our hypotheses by employing a survey research design with 151 employees from 23 small and medium-size enterprises during an acute economic crisis in Cyprus. The findings demonstrate that the negative relationship between adverse working conditions and citizenship behavior is significant for low levels of team information sharing but insignificant for high levels of team information sharing. Our study contributes to the lacuna of research pertinent to employee-centric responses to crisis management.