Change-oriented organizational citizenship behavior: An interactive product of openness to change values, work unit identification and sense of power

Due to the increased frequency of organizational changes, predicting employees’ voluntary involvement in the development of organizational practices and individual work is of particular importance in organizational psychology. This study focused upon change-oriented organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB) as an expression of openness to change values, and also upon psychological factors which can moderate the value-behaviour relationship. We propose that personal values, group identification and a sense of power interact in predicting change-oriented OCB of employees. One hundred and eighty-four employees rated their values, their identification with the work unit and their sense of power. In line with our predictions, the results showed that openness to change values and work unit identification interacted positively in predicting supervisor-rated change-oriented OCB in workers with a high sense of power, but not in workers with a low sense of power. This finding suggests that workers who have a high sense of power and are highly identified with the work unit tend to pursue their openness to change values in a way that contributes to the organization. The authors further conclude that an interactive approach, rather than one of direct effect, is advantageous when studying values as antecedents to change-oriented OCB.