In this interesting article, the authors explain the concept, principles, types, and state of current research of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). They also try to find out why the level of OCB among information technology (IT) professionals is significantly lower than that of their counterparts in other areas like operations, accounting, and so on, a fact uncovered by a study conducted in five industries.

OCBs are activities (like helping a coworker) that improve the organizational effectiveness and efficiency, but are not considered by the formal reward system. Employees do not get directly rewarded for their citizenship behaviors. Two factors that influence OCB are organizational justice (an employee’s perception of how well he or she is treated by the organization) and supervisory trust (the relationship between employees and their superiors).

The authors point to the peculiar aspects of IT jobs—more autonomy, reduced supervision, low interaction and communication, tight schedules and deadlines, high workload and work pressure, lack of time to help others, and lack of management support—as the causes of low OCB levels among IT and information systems (IS) professionals. Another possible cause of the lower OCB rating could be the high expectations placed on IT professionals.

The authors feel that organizations should create work environments that kindle perceptions of trust and fairness, so that citizenship behaviors will naturally occur. The authors stress the need for detailed and comprehensive studies that cover all aspects of OCB, especially with relation to the peculiarities of the IT and IS professions, to get a complete and accurate picture.

This article sheds light on a very serious problem that can harm an organization. The ideas expressed here have immense practical value to IT project leaders, software development team leaders, managers, human resource (HR) personnel, and top management.