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Organizational ‘citizenship’
contributes to career success

Comparing himself with others at his workplace, Jim Reynolds felt that he was ready for a promotion. In his position as a software development specialist for a company that produced home entertainment products, Jim had designed two computer games that had sold well. In addition, he had successfully followed through on his supervisor's directive to prepare the technical manuals for three other programs that his company had developed.

Jim felt that this record of achievement should lead to a promotion, and he made an appointment with his supervisor to discuss the issue. The supervisor, however, had recently thought about whom he would recommend for promotions and decided not to support Jim. Feeling that his work was better than the supervisor's preferred candidates, Jim was extremely disappointed.

Jim's supervisor may be considering organizational citizenship behaviors in his thinking about promotions. These types of behaviors, highly valued by bosses, are those that contribute to the accomplishment of an organization's goals but that are not part of an employee's technical performance on assigned tasks.

Examples of organizational citizenship include helping others, informing others of events that that they know about, representing the organization through volunteer community activities, and going beyond the duties listed in one's job description if the organization is faced with difficult challenges. Research carried out by the University of South Florida's Walter Borman indicates that supervisors consider both technical efficiency and organizational citizenship when carrying out performance evaluations and making promotion decisions.

In his own thinking about his work, Jim had emphasized his technical skills and task productivity but did not consider his organizational citizenship. Jim is not alone. Many workers put so much emphasis on completing tasks assigned to them that they ignore other needs in the organization that are not mentioned in their formal job descriptions. In addition to maintaining technical expertise, do they contribute to such necessary tasks as mentoring new employees, making themselves available to share their expertise with coworkers, and making thoughtful and tactful suggestions concerning how the organization can be improved?

There are three types of organizational citizenship. The first type refers to positive interpersonal relationships in the workplace. The second type refers to organizational support. The third type deals with showing initiative.

People who increase their organizational citizenship behaviors reap benefits over and above workplace promotions. Workers who engage in good citizenship behaviors often develop new areas of expertise because they are interacting frequently with coworkers and are attending professional conferences. Through such interactions, they become more flexible.

Combined with their willingness to show initiative, they become the types of employees that executives want to keep in their organizations.

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