The role of hope and pride in organizational citizenship behavior and job performance

The positive psychology movement has swept across several domains of inquiry producing rich insights and applications. The notion of building on individuals’ strengths and promoting adaptive social behaviors has recently extended its reach into applied social psychology. One of the most studied topics in this subfield is organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). OCB occurs when an employee goes above and beyond the call of duty to help a coworker, without an extrinsic reward. Given OCB’s positive association with individual and organizational performance, there is intense interest in increasing these behaviors. General positive affect, above and beyond job satisfaction, is the most significant and robust predictor of citizenship behavior, and is also a major predictor of job performance. However, in light of mounting evidence on the discreteness of positive emotions – specifically on the emotions of hope and pride – there is reason to believe that not all positive emotions will equally motivate citizenship behavior or work performance. The present research tested the hypotheses that: (1) a laboratory induction of hope and pride would differentially increase intentions to engage in organizational volunteering (OCBs) compared to each other and to a control condition; and (2) hope and pride would differentially increase task performance (a proxy for job performance) compared to one another and to a control. Results indicate that hope and pride both significantly enhanced OCBs compared to the control condition, and that hope produced greater OCBs than pride. Although the latter difference was not statistically significant, this was likely due to insufficient statistical power. Hope and pride had no influence on performance. The difficulty of the task likely generated a degree of performance anxiety that reduced any positive emotion effects. Multiple regression analyses also revealed that joy was the most significant positive predictor, and pride the most significant negative predictor of OCBs; whereas pride was the most significant positive predictor, and joy the most significant negative predictor of performance. The distinct patterns of findings for hope, pride, and joy illuminated by the present study, support discrete emotion theories of positive emotions and may inform OCB-enhancement programs. Research limitations and future directions are considered.M.A.Includes bibliographical referencesby James Lyman Floma