UNDERSTANDING THE COMPLEX RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ORGANIZATIONAL PSYCHOLOGICAL OWNERSHIP AND ORGANISATIONAL CITIZENSHIP BEHAVIOURS DURING COVID19 CRISIS

Abstract

"The Covid-19 crisis has forced many employees to telework (TLW). TLW can eventually generate a feeling of professional isolation (PI) for some workers and the higher the TLW, the higher the feeling of PI (Golden, 2008). PI is known to have negative impacts on organisational and teleworker outcomes such as job satisfaction (e.g., Bentley et al., 2016) or the adoption of organisational citizenship behaviours (OCBs) (Mulki and Jaramillo, 2011). OCBs are largely influenced by the organisational psychological ownership (OPO) (Zhang et al., 2021) which also influences organisational identification (ORI) (Van Dyne & Pierce, 2004). Yet, the relationship between ORI and OPO seems to be quite complex, considering for instance that OPO predicts the intention to leave the organisation while ORI does not (Knapp et al., 2014). Thus, this relationship deserves special attention for its implication in the OPO/OCBs relationship. Furthermore, the binding dimension of TLW is likely to have had complex consequences and may imply a feeling of PI, the moderating role of which in the OPO/OCBs relationship could be interesting to study. The study population consisted of 185 participants, divided into 77.3% women and 22.7% men. The questionnaire included a measure of OPO (4 items), ORI (5), OCBs (6) and PI (7). Results showed that ORI is a mediator of the OPO and OCBs relationship (?=.1136; p=.0199; LLCI*=.0182 and ULCI**=.2089) and ORI explains 11.3% of the variance. The analysis reveals a full mediation since OPO does not predict OCBs anymore when ORI is integrated (p < .084). They also showed that PI moderates the relationship between OPO and OCBs (?=.0911; p=.0314; LLCI*=.0082 and ULCI**=.1739) and that explains 2.1% of the variance. First of all, this study reveals the relationship between OPO and OCBs is quite complex since it is both mediated by ORI and also moderated by PI. The results may seem contradictory as they show that a high level of OPO combined with a high level of PI leads to a high level of OCBs; while we could have imagined the opposite with high levels of PI. The discussion will focus on two eventual explanations: seeking more relational closeness through OCBs and compensating the fear of being perceived as not working enough (Taskin & Edwards, 2007)."