The virtuous cycle of prosocial behaviour and perceived prosocial impact in organizations: a longitudinal three-wave study

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study aims to deepen our understanding of the dynamics of prosociality in organizations by examining how organizational citizenship behaviour relates to perceived prosocial impact. First, we propose that a sense of prosocial impact is a rewarding experience that could motivate employees to engage in more prosocial behaviour over time, thus predicting increased OCB. Second, organizational citizenship behaviour can be directed towards other individuals (OCBI) or towards the organization (OCBO), with partly different antecedents and consequences. We propose that engaging in OCBI is prone to increase perceived prosocial impact as there the helping is aimed at concrete individuals, while engaging in OCBO, in being more indirectly prosocial, is either a weaker or non-existent predictor of future perceived prosocial impact. Using longitudinal data collected in three waves (N1 = 631, N2 = 240, and N3 = 148), we found that OCBI (but no OCBO), prospectively predicts perceptions of prosocial impact. Additionally, we find evidence for perceptions of prosocial impact prospectively predicting both subsequent OCBI and subsequent OCBO. As such, our research shows a virtuous cycle of prosociality between individually focused prosocial behaviours at work and perceived prosocial impact at work, which has theoretical and practical implications for both employee well-being and motivation as well as the performance of organizations.