How to Fuel Public Employees’ Change-Oriented Organizational Citizenship Behavior: A Two-Wave Moderated Mediation Study

• Author: Dingxiang Chen,Ying Zhang,Ahmad Bayiz Ahmad,Bangcheng Liu
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0734371X211052675
• Published date: 01 March 2023
• Date: 01 March 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0734371X211052675

Review of Public Personnel Administration

2023, Vol. 43(1) 185 –208

© The Author(s) 2021

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/0734371X211052675

journals.sagepub.com/home/rop

Article

How to Fuel Public

Employees’ Change-Oriented

Organizational Citizenship

Behavior: A Two-Wave

Moderated Mediation Study

Dingxiang Chen1, Ying Zhang1, Ahmad Bayiz Ahmad1,

and Bangcheng Liu1

Abstract

Determining how to stimulate public employees’ change-oriented organizational

citizenship behavior (OCB) has become a critical issue in both theory and practice.

This article draws on the theories of job demands-resources (JD-R), leadership, and

public service motivation (PSM) to propose a moderated mediation model to explore

how empowering leadership shapes public employees’ change-oriented OCB. We

conducted a two-wave investigation of 267 public employees in a large metropolitan

city in Northern China to test this study’s hypotheses. The results show that

empowering leadership significantly predicts employees’ change-oriented OCB

by enhancing job crafting. Furthermore, PSM moderates the relationship between

empowering leadership and job crafting. These findings advance our understanding

of how to motivate employees’ change-oriented OCB from the perspective of

empowering leadership in public organizations.

Keywords

empowering leadership, job crafting, public service motivation, change-oriented

organizational citizenship behavior

1Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China

Corresponding Author:

Bangcheng Liu, School of International and Public Affairs, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Room 313,

Xinjian Building, Shanghai 200030, China.

Email: liubangcheng@sjtu.edu.cn

1052675ROPXXX10.1177/0734371X211052675Review of Public Personnel AdministrationChen et al.

research-article2021

186 Review of Public Personnel Administration 43(1)

Introduction

Faced with increasingly changeable external environments, public organizations

must identify internal problems and take the necessary action quickly to address

them to align with the environment (Homberg et al., 2019; Jin et al., 2019; Liu,

Yang, et al., 2015; Liu & Zhang, 2019; Vigoda-Gadot & Beeri, 2012). The efficiency

of public organizations depends on employees, because they can quickly identify

and effectively solve these challenges (Brockmann, 2017; Destler, 2016; Morrison,

2011). Prior research suggests that while reforms and change programs are often

initiated by officials and executives who are elected or politically appointed, the

actual changes in public organizations are executed by employees (Bayiz Ahmad

et al., 2020; Destler, 2016). Therefore, how employees view and react to change—

employees’ change-oriented organizational citizenship behavior (OCB)—is a criti-

cal factor that drives public organizations to adapt to challenges and improve

individual and organizational performance (Liu & Chen, 2019; Seppälä et al., 2012;

Vigoda-Gadot & Beeri, 2012). Determining how to stimulate employees to engage

in more change-oriented OCB has attracted increasing research interest (Campbell

& Im, 2016; Liu & Chen, 2019; Vigoda-Gadot & Beeri, 2012), but to date, the ques-

tion remains unclear and merits further investigation.

This study contributes to this continuing interest by exploring the following

research question: How to fuel public employees’ change-oriented OCB behavior in

public organizations? As an important antecedent of change-oriented OCB, leadership

has attracted scholars’ attention (e.g., Bettencourt, 2004; Choi, 2007; López-

Domínguez et al., 2013; Vigoda-Gadot & Beeri, 2012). In exploring the research ques-

tion, the article focuses on a particular type of leadership (empowering leadership) to

explore its effect on change-oriented OCB. Empowering leadership refers to a set of

behaviors amongst leaders who share more authority and power as well as give more

responsibilities to subordinates by providing greater autonomy, enhancing the mean-

ing of work, inducing subordinates to engage in decision-making, and offering devel-

opmental support through modeling (Ahearne et al., 2005; Amundsen & Martinsen,

2014a; Arnold et al., 2000; Zhang & Bartol, 2010).

In addition to exploring the direct effect of empowering leadership on employees’

change-oriented OCB, this study responds to the call by Vigoda-Gadot and Beeri

(2012) to explore the process mechanism and boundary conditions between the two.

First, empowering leaders not only share power, autonomy, and other work resources

with their employees (Ahearne et al., 2005; Zhang & Bartol, 2010), but also transfer

responsibilities, expectations, and various work demands to their employees (Auh

et al., 2014; Wong & Giessner, 2018). According to job demands-resources (JD-R)

theory, without the reasonable adjustment of job demands and job resources, individu-

als encounter negative effects because of the mismatch between job demands and job

resources (Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001). Therefore, whether individuals reasonably

craft the job demands and resources obtained from their leaders affects individual

performance. Based on this reasoning, we draw on the JD-R theory to clarify the rela-

tionship between empowering leadership and employees’ change-oriented OCB by