Elevating Organizational Citizenship Behavior among Local Government Employees: The Mediating Role of Job Satisfaction

Local Government being the third-tier in Malaysian government has been identified as one of the government agencies mandated to drive the economic growth and development of a particular district and its residents. For years, local governments have been plagued with public complaints as the issues of inefficiency of service quality and service delivery has yet to meet the expectation of the public. Thus, the objectives of this study were to explore the extent to which the quality of leader-member exchange (LMX) affected the subordinates’ organizational citizenship behaviors’ (OCB) and job satisfaction as well as the role of job satisfaction in mediating this relationship. Data from a sample of 212 employees of local government through a structured questionnaire using disproportioned stratified sampling procedure were used to examine the hypothesized model. Result proved that, after controlling for selected demographic variables, the quality of LMX has a positive impact towards the subordinates exhibiting citizenship behavior and their level of job satisfaction. Furthermore, the finding confirmed that job satisfaction partially mediated the relationship between LMX and citizenship behavior. In conclusion, to fulfill the mandated objectives and to instill public confidence towards efficiency of the various services provided by the local government, fostering quality dyadic relationship and improving satisfaction among the workforce should be given priority as these elements have proved to be significant in elevating the citizenship behavior among the local governments’ employees