A study examining the effects of personality on organisational citizenship behaviour and the mediating role of leader-member exchange

Abstract

Organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) brings many benefits for both the organisation as for the employees. Therefore, it is interesting to investigate which aspects are related to OCB. This study examined whether a possible relation between personality and organisational citizenship behaviour was mediated by leader-member exchange (LMX). 73 participants, all employees above 18 years old and with a supervisor, completed a subset version of the HEXACO-60 Self-report Scale, the LMX-7 questionnaire and the OCBC-10 survey to measure levels of Honesty-Humility, Emotionality, Agreeableness, LMX and OCB. As all variables had an altruistic character, it was expected that all three personality domains would be positively related to LMX and OCB, except for Emotionality. In addition, it was predicted that LMX would mediate the relation between Honesty-Humility and Agreeableness with OCB. No significant results were found between the HEXACO domains and LMX and OCB, despite some earlier findings of literature. A significant effect was found for the control variable age, which meant that OCB levels got higher when age increased. But again, no significant effect was found for the HEXACO domains when the youngest group was left out. A possible explanation for these results may lie in the fact that current young employees have a high career mobility, which makes them switch jobs more often and possibly affects their levels of LMX and OCB. In future studies, it would be interesting to investigate whether there is a relation between high career mobility and LMX and OCB.