Organisational commitment and its relationship with organisation citizenship behaviour in a Malaysian organisation

This study sets out to test whether the relationship between Organisational Commitment and Organisational Citizenship Behaviour (OCB) found in the Western context holds true in the non-Western context of Malaysia. This study has two main objectives. The first objective is to assess organisational commitment and its consequences for the level of employees’ OCB directed at the individual and organisation. The second objective is to determine if the relationship between organisational commitment and OCB found in the Western context can be generalisable to the Malaysia context. The study uses Meyer and Allen’s (1991) multidimensional organisational commitment and two dimensions of OCB model developed by Williams and Anderson (1991). The respondents (n=315) from six organisations in Malaysia completed the questionnaire. The results indicate that employees’ willingness to engage in organisational citizenship behaviours differs depending on the level of their commitment to the organisation. The findings appear to match other studies conducted in the Western context. However, while it has been previously demonstrated that people with high affective commitment appear to be more willing to engage in extra-role behaviour, this study indicates that this notion may only be true for extra-role behaviour that is targeted at the organisation (OCBO). Normative commitment explained the other half of extra-role behaviour targeted at certain individuals in the organisation (OCBI). Moreover, the unique cultural norms and workplace socialisation experiences in Malaysia could have explained the existence of normative commitment as the sole predictor of extra-role behaviours directed at individuals which is different from the Western context. http://acquire.cqu.edu.au:8888/access/)