Promoting Multifoci Citizenship Behavior: Time‐Lagged Effects of Procedural Justice, Trust, and Commitment

Abstract

To explain why procedural justice leads to organisational citizenship behavior (OCB), both commitment and trust have been studied—but never concurrently. Moreover, as employees aim their behaviors toward distinct targets in the workplace, citizenship behaviors as well as commitment and trust should be considered as multifoci constructs. To address this, 204 industrial workers were surveyed over a period of three years. Data were analysed with Mplus using structural equation modeling. Our time‐lagged findings show that procedural justice was linked to OCB, and that this link was mediated successively by trust and commitment. Moreover, we found target‐specific effects: Procedural justice effects on organisational citizenship behavior were mediated by organisational trust and organisational commitment, whereas procedural justice effects on co‐worker citizenship behavior were mediated by co‐worker trust and co‐worker commitment. These results underscore the importance of including multifoci trust for understanding the procedural justice–OCB link. We discuss theoretical implications for studying target‐specific citizenship behaviors and their antecedents, and deduce practical implications for fostering multifoci citizenship behaviors.