Organizational Inducements and Employee Citizenship Behavior: The Mediating Role of Perceived Insider Status and the Moderating Role of Collectivism

• Published date: 01 May 2015
• Author: Cynthia Lee,Chun Hui,Hui Wang
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/hrm.21620
• Date: 01 May 2015

Human Resource Management, May–June 2015, Vol. 54, No. 3. Pp. 439–456

© 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com).

DOI:10.1002/hrm.21620

Correspondence to: Chun Hui, School of Business, K. K. Leung Building, University of Hong Kong,

Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong, Phone: (852) 3917-5138, Fax: (852) 2858-5614, E-mail: chui@business.hku.hk.

ORGANIZATIONAL INDUCEMENTS

AND EMPLOYEE CITIZENSHIP

BEHAVIOR: THE MEDIATING ROLE

OF PERCEIVED INSIDER STATUS

AND THE MODERATING ROLE

OF COLLECTIVISM

CHUN HUI, CYNTHIA LEE, AND HUI WANG

The organizational inducement model proposed in this study seeks to

examine the mediating role of perceived insider status (PIS) and the moder-

ating role of vertical collectivism on the relationship between organization-

al inducements and employees’ organizational citizenship behavior (OCB).

Among a sample of Chinese employees, the authors fi nd that the organiza-

tional inducements of perceived supervisor support and participation led to

higher levels of PIS, which in turn enhanced OCB. Furthermore, vertical col-

lectivism moderated the relationship between PIS and OCB, such that their

relationship grew stronger when collectivism was high. These fi ndings have

notable implications for theory and practice. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Keywords: organizational citizenship behavior, employee participation,

internal HRM

The primary returns from contractual

employment are wages and benefits,

yet employees frequently desire

much more than these tangible out-

comes. For example, a desirable

intangible return is the perception that the

employee is an important member of the

organization; employees often need to feel

that they are recognized as important to and

socially active with other employees in their

organizations (Pearce & Randel, 2004). This

desire for “insider” membership has long

been recognized in management research.

Being an accepted member of an in-group can

be instrumental to understanding employ-

ment relations (Dansereau, Graen, & Haga,

1975; Pearce & Randel, 2004), and social rela-

tionships with others in an organization (e.g.,

guanxi) can be important for facilitating career

development (Wei, Liu, Chen, & Wu, 2010).

440 HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT, MAY–JUNE 2015

Human Resource Management DOI: 10.1002/hrm

Even as the

original definition

of OCB continues

to be scrutinized

and revised, its

importance to the

effective functioning

of organizations

remains clear.

We operationalize such group member-

ship as perceived insider status (PIS). Stamper

and Masterson (2002) define PIS as the extent

to which an employee perceives him- or her-

self as an insider in a particular organization.

Thus, for this study, it describes an employee’s

perception of his or her relationship with the

employer, in terms of whether that employee

enjoys the special status of belonging to an

in-group. By cultivating self-perceived insid-

ers, organizations likely gain labor efficien-

cies (Kalleberg & Schmidt, 1997) and the

benefits of increased organizational citizen-

ship behavior (OCB; Stamper & Masterson,

2002)—that is, “individual behavior that

is discretionary, not directly or

explicitly recognized by the for-

mal reward system, and that in

the aggregate promotes the effec-

tive functioning of the organiza-

tion” (Organ, 1988, p. 4). Even

as the original definition of OCB

continues to be scrutinized and

revised (Organ, 1997), its impor-

tance to the effective functioning

of organizations remains clear (cf.

Organ, Podsakoff, & MacKenzie,

2006).

As promising as PIS is for

understanding employment rela-

tions and employee OCB, in rela-

tion to the alleged importance of

being an insider, examining what

moderates the PIS–OCB relationship also can

help researchers apply this construct more

effectively to appropriate contexts. That is,

people are naturally gregarious, and group

membership is critical for social functioning,

but the importance of group membership also

likely varies across cultures and individuals.

In this context, PIS refers to how an individ-

ual worker relates to other people. In indi-

vidualistic cultures, he or she may be more

motivated to satisfy self-interests and per-

sonal goals, whereas in collectivistic cultures,

a worker could be more motivated to satisfy

group interests and group goals (Hofstede,

1980a). Being an insider implies the adop-

tion of group goals and interests, more con-

sistent with a collectivistic orientation. Thus,

whether PIS is specific to employees with

more collectivistic cultural values is an impor-

tant theoretical, and practical, issue.

To examine the role of PIS in the employ-

ment relations, we have developed a model

with both antecedents and outcomes of PIS,

in accordance with the inducement model

proposed by March and Simon (1958). They

argue that employers offer inducements in

exchange for employee contributions. The

more substantial or meaningful the induce-

ment, the more likely the employee is to con-

tribute to the organization. The three extant

studies of PIS also cite some forms of induce-

ments and contributions. First, Stamper

and Masterson (2002) show that perceived

organizational support (POS; Eisenberger,

Huntington, Hutchison, & Sowa, 1986) con-

tributes to PIS and that PIS relates positively

to OCB. Second, Chen and Aryee (2007) find

a positive link between delegation and PIS.

They also note that PIS mediates the relation-

ships between delegation and task perfor-

mance and between affective commitment

and innovative behavior. Third, Lapalme,

Stamper, Simard, and Tremblay (2009) inves-

tigate Canadian agency workers’ percep-

tions of insider status, which contribute to

higher levels of affective commitment and

interpersonal facilitation. Furthermore, per-

ceived supervisor support (PSS) and the cli-

ent firms’ permanent workers contributed to

these agency workers’ PIS. Although they did

not directly test this claim, the three stud-

ies imply that inducements such as POS and

delegation promote PIS, which then should

enhance employee contributions, including

OCB.

We examine the moderating effects of

individual employees’ collectivistic cultural

values on our PIS inducement model in a

Chinese context. China is a collectivist cul-

ture, and collectivism “is characterized by a

tight social framework in which people dis-

tinguish between in-groups and out-groups,

they expect their in-group to look after them,

and in exchange for that they feel they owe

absolute loyalty to it” (Hofstede, 1980b, p.

45). People with collectivistic values tend

to be more responsive to membership in an

in-group with special status. For example,

Yang, Zhang, and Tsui (2010) demonstrate