Within-Person Approaches to the Study of Organizational Citizenship Behaviors: Antecedents, Consequences, and Boundary Conditions

Abstract

This chapter provides a review of the nascent (but growing) literature on organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) at the within-person level of analysis. We organize our review of the existing literature chronologically, discussing antecedents and consequences of within-person fluctuations in OCB. After providing a narrative review of the literature, we provide a quantitative summary of the literature via meta-analysis, summarizing the within-person relationships between OCB and its most common within-person correlates (i.e., positive affect, negative affect, job satisfaction, stressors, strain, and task performance). Looking to the future of OCB at the within-person level of analysis, we suggest that researchers can contribute to the domain by tailoring the measurement of OCB to the within-person level of analysis, better illuminating the causal direction between OCB and affect, clarifying the relationship between OCB and counterproductive work behavior at the within-person level, expanding the “dark side” of within-person OCB, exploring between-person differences in within-person OCB variability, and incorporating new theories.