Roles and organisational citizenship behaviour of UK and Thai university lecturers : a comparative study

This study investigates how individuals from different cultures differ in their roles and Organisational Citizenship Behaviour (OCB). The study is located in the area of higher education. Lecturers from one UK university and four Thai universities were chosen to be the sample. The primary purpose of the research was to address the distinction between in-role and extra-role behaviour in the context of OCB and as recommended by Morrison (1994) to focus on in-role behaviour and extra-role behaviour as seen from both the supervisor's and employee's perspectives. The second purpose of this research was to investigate how individuals from different cultures may differ in their roles and OCB. Results from this study are consistent with Morrison's critique that there are different views of behaviours between supervisors and employees. That is, supervisors included more job behaviours as part of their employees' work than employees did. However, the results also show that subordinates perform extra-role behaviours as part of their work more often than supervisors see. Results from the comparisons between the UK and Thai samples show that there are some similarities and differences in 5 key areas of work which are teaching, research, management and administration, pastoral care and extracurricular activities. Although both countries have very different cultural characteristics, the results show that lecturers from both countries engage in some similar extra-role behaviours. The findings also showed that a number of respondents confronted role ambiguity. Moreover, this research reveals that the respondents' perception of boundaries between in-role and extra-role behaviour is 'fuzzy'. Illustrations of the behaviours and activities that lie in the fuzzy area are provided and new category of behaviour, semi-extra role, is introduced. Implications for the concept of aCB are discussed