Should faith and hope be included in the employees' agenda?

Abstract

PurposeAnomia (from the Greek, an‐: absence, and ‐nomos: law) describes pessimistic feelings such as social detachment and little faith in human relations. This study seeks to examine an explanation of how and why person‐organization fit (POF) – operationalized as value congruence – may influence organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) directed at the organization (OCB‐O) and individuals (OCB‐I). The thesis is that unfavorable POF will elicit employees' anomic feelings, which in turn will prompt them to reciprocate with decreased OCB.Design/methodology/approachData were collected from 84 of the 198 (42.4 percent) employees of a provincial Spanish Social Security agency. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test mediation.FindingsThe results support that POF predicts anomic feelings that, in turn, fully mediate the link between POF and OCB‐O, but not with OCB‐I.Research limitations/implicationsThe employees surveyed have job conditions inherent to the peculiarities of the public sector that may limit the ability to extrapolate the findings to the private sector.Practical implicationsThe findings offer a better understanding of the way POF is able to affect OCB, and suggest that actions designed to promote POF may be useful in managing anomic processes in the workplace.Originality/valueAnomia as a mediator in the relationship between POF, as value congruence, and OCB has not been empirically studied.