Leiden University Student Repository

Salemink, Eva (2021)

The perception of and motives to engage in online ambassadorship, civic virtue, and organizational loyalty: The differences between online and offline organizational citizenship behavior

Master thesis | Psychology (MSc)

Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) refers to employees' individual actions and behaviors outside their formal job description, which are not formally requested or directly rewarded but can be beneficial to themselves and the greater organizational functioning and efficiency. Due to technological developments, organizations and their employees are increasingly participating on social media, where employees can express their support for their organization. This online behavior can be viewed as online ambassadorship behavior (OA). The current study (N = 196) uses a survey to investigate the differences in employees' general engagement, perception, and the motives to engage in online ambassadorship in comparison to two affiliative OCB's, namely civic virtue (CV) and organizational loyalty (OL). As expected, engagement in OA was lower than in CV and OL and perceived as socially riskier and more visible. Unexpectedly, there were no significant relationships between self-enhancement...Show moreOrganizational citizenship behavior (OCB) refers to employees' individual actions and behaviors outside their formal job description, which are not formally requested or directly rewarded but can be beneficial to themselves and the greater organizational functioning and efficiency. Due to technological developments, organizations and their employees are increasingly participating on social media, where employees can express their support for their organization. This online behavior can be viewed as online ambassadorship behavior (OA). The current study (N = 196) uses a survey to investigate the differences in employees' general engagement, perception, and the motives to engage in online ambassadorship in comparison to two affiliative OCB's, namely civic virtue (CV) and organizational loyalty (OL). As expected, engagement in OA was lower than in CV and OL and perceived as socially riskier and more visible. Unexpectedly, there were no significant relationships between self-enhancement and organizational identification regarding OA engagement, which indicated that self-enhancement and organizational identification are not motives for employee’s engagement. In sum, this study provided evidence that employees’ perceived perception influences engagement in OA.Show less

Author

Salemink, Eva

Faculty

Faculty of Social & Behavioural Sciences

Specialisation

Economic and Consumer Psychology

Supervisors

Wirtz, C.
Scheepers, D.

ECTS Credits

20

Language

en