Joint Efforts: Can We Succeed? Stimulating Organizational Citizenship Behaviors Through a Psychosocial Safety Climate

Abstract

Serious emergencies exacerbate the uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity of the external environment, creating survival challenges for organizations and employees. During emergencies, it becomes more difficult for organizations to leverage organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) from their employees to survive existential crises. From the perspective of resource exchange and investment, we explore the ways that organizations can collaboratively overcome difficulties by motivating their employees to engage in OCBs. Our findings show that (1) a psychosocial safety climate (PSC) that is adopted by an organization can effectively stimulate employee OCBs, which are of greater help to organizations than to coworkers, (2) resilience may be a psychological resource that explains the stimulating effect of a PSC on OCBs, and (3) employee trait gratitude enhances the role of resilience in mediating the relationship between a PSC and helping behaviors (but not civic virtue behaviors). Our findings not only reveal the mechanisms by which organizations can stimulate employee OCBs when the two face survival challenges during serious emergencies but also provide a recommendation for managers to focus on employee mental health and resilience during crises.