Organizational citizenship behavior at Catholic institutions of higher education

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to conduct an exploratory investigation of OCB, trust, and commitment among faculty and staff within Catholic IHEs. Faculty and staff from two Catholic IHEs were the focus of the study. Twenty-five schools were randomly selected from the 50 largest Catholic IHEs by undergraduate enrollment, identified from the 2012 list of Catholic IHEs officially recognized by the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities (ACCU). The successful operation of Catholic IHEs appears to require high levels of trust and commitment. They benefit from higher levels of OCB, as they endeavor to work in common with other IHEs and, concurrently, extend efforts to adhere to the norms and expectations of John Paul II’s 1990 Apostolic Constitution on Catholic Universities, Ex Corde Ecclesiae. Catholic IHEs are tasked with fostering spiritual growth and the Catholic intellectual tradition of dialogue between faith and reason. To address the study objectives, the relationships between the variables of OCB, employee trust, and organizational commitment within two Catholic IHEs were investigated. The research included (a) investigating the traditional conceptualizations of OCB, trust, and commitment with the goal of further defining them as multi-level concepts; (b) designating core concepts of OCB, interpersonaland system-level trust, and commitment; (c) developing a model of OCB, employee trust, and commitment refining from existing theoretical bases; (d) application of core concepts to explore the dimensionality of faculty and staff members’ OCB; (e) exploring the relationship between OCB constructs and levels of trust and organizational commitment; and (f) identification of any moderating effects by comparing these relationships at the different IHEs.