An analytic approach to assessing organizational citizenship behavior

Abstract

This study examines the organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) of employees by designing and developing an analytic network process (ANP) methodology. The viability of the proposed methodology is demonstrated via the sales representatives of Beko, a brand name controlled by Ko Group. We first develop a conceptual framework based on qualitative research methods in-depth interviews and focus group sessions. We employ the principles of ANP methodology to examine and discover the inter-relationships among the OCBs. This process results in a descriptive model that encapsulates the findings from both qualitative and analytics methods. Necessity, altruism, departmental, compliance, and independence are the underlying dimensions of OCBs found to be the most influential/important. The key novelty of this study resides in designing and developing a prescriptive analytics (i.e. ANP) methodology to evaluate the OCBs, which is rare in the area of organizational behavior (a managerial field of study that have been dominated by traditional statistical methods), and thus serves as a useful contribution/augmentation to the business/managerial research methods, and also extends the reach/coverage of analytics-based decision support systems research and practice into a new direction. The nature of interdependencies between OCBs of sales representatives is examined.Use of analytic techniques in studying OCBs is shown to be highly effective.ANP lends itself as a viable MCDM tool to identify the prevailing OCBs.Necessity, altruism, compliance and independence are found to be the most important OCBs.Use of ANP on OCBs in Turkey contributes to DSS research in emerging countries.