Personality Predictors of Academic Organizational Citizenship Behaviors

Allison E. Kiefner Jonathan S. Gore

Eastern Kentucky University

Method & Results 270 participants from EKU completed an online questionnaire assessing their personality (John, 1999) and level of academic organizational citizenship behavior (adapted from Organ, 1994). Personality factors accounted for 20% of the overall OCB score. Agreeableness, conscient-iousness, and neuroticism were all found to be significant influences on academic OCBs. The table shows the regression analysis results predicting Academic OCBs. Students possessing higher levels of agreeableness, which can be described as how well a person gets along with others (Organ, 1994), demonstrated higher levels of organizational citizenship behavior. The same was also shown for students with higher levels of conscient-iousness, defined as being a neat, reliable, and self disciplined person (Organ, 1994). Neuroticism was also found to have been a significant predictor of academic OCBs as people with higher levels of neuroticism displayed lower levels of OCBs.

Implications Just as workplace and general OCBs are used frequently to assess employees’ capabilities and potential, academic OCBs could be used to assess the potential of students as tutors or other employees in the academic field.

Introduction Organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) are behaviors that are helpful for an organization, are performed through the altruistic good will of an individual, and that are carried out without suggestion by a job description or coercion from an authority figure (DiPaola, 2005). Previous research has found that job attitudes have an effect on OCBs (Organ, 1994). This same line of research has found a connection between OCBs and personality. Consequently, the Big Five personality traits have been studied as predictors of OCBs. The setting of the majority of research on the effect of personality on OCBs has been in the workplace, evaluating a range of topics such as organizational climate, leadership, and job design (Schnake, 2005). In the present study, an OCB evaluation test for the workplace was modified into an academic OCB test by altering the context and wording of the questions. It was hypothesized that The Big Five personality traits, especially agreeableness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism, would predict academic OCBs.

Abstract The Big Five personality traits tend to predict organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs), but research has yet to examine academic OCBs. In the present study, 270 undergraduates com-pleted online assessments of their personality and OCBs. Results showed that agreeableness and conscientiousness were positive predictors of OCBs; neuroticism was a negative predictor.

Personality Factor

β

Extraversion -0.01

Agreeableness 0.24*

Conscientiousness 0.29**

Neuroticism -0.13*

Openness 0.05