PSYC 644 Week 8 Persuasive Essay Example

Persuasive Essay: Organizations Should Encourage Organizational Citizenship Behavior but Never Make It a Hidden Requirement

Introduction

On the medical-surgical unit of a composite community hospital, nurses who stay late to help the next shift are praised in staff meetings, and those who leave on time are not. Within a year, staying late had become the norm, and new nurses learned that leaving at the end of a scheduled shift was quietly held against them. Helping colleagues is good. Yet something had changed when help became an expectation. This essay argues that organizations should encourage organizational citizenship behavior but should never make it a hidden requirement, because doing so harms employees and empties citizenship of the voluntary character that makes it valuable.

What Organizational Citizenship Behavior Is

Organ (1988) defined organizational citizenship behavior as discretionary behavior that is not directly or explicitly recognized by the formal reward system and that, in aggregate, promotes the effective functioning of the organization. Examples include helping a coworker with a heavy workload, volunteering for an unpopular task and speaking positively about the organization. Johnson (2019) presents citizenship as one way employees contribute to an ethical organization, reflecting commitment to the common good rather than narrow self-interest. The key word in Organ's definition is discretionary. Citizenship is what employees choose to give beyond what they owe.

The Benefits Are Real

Any argument about the limits of citizenship must begin by acknowledging its value. Podsakoff et al. (2009) conducted a meta-analysis of the consequences of citizenship behavior at individual and organizational levels. Employees who engaged in more citizenship received higher performance ratings and were less likely to intend to leave, to actually leave or to be absent. At the unit level, citizenship was associated with higher productivity, efficiency and customer satisfaction and with lower costs and turnover. Organizations have good reason to want more of it. On the hospital unit, nurses who helped one another during admissions surges kept patients from waiting for pain medication and caught errors before they reached the bedside. Citizenship is not a luxury in such settings; it is part of how good care happens. Nothing in this essay disputes that.

When Citizenship Becomes an Expectation

The problem arises when organizations, seeing these benefits, begin to treat citizenship as part of the job. Bolino and Turnley (2005) examined one form of citizenship, individual initiative, and found that employees who engaged in high levels of it reported more role overload, more job stress and more conflict between work and family. Going beyond the job, done repeatedly, has costs for the people doing it.

Bolino et al. (2010) took the analysis further by studying citizenship pressure, the feeling that one must engage in citizenship behavior, and found that it was associated with more citizenship but also with higher job stress, greater work-family and work-leisure conflict and stronger intentions to quit. Pressure produced the behavior organizations wanted while damaging the employees who provided it. The hospital unit illustrates the pattern. Nurses stayed late, but burnout rose and two experienced nurses left within the year, citing the unspoken expectation. The unit gained hours in the short term and lost people in the long term, exactly the outcome Podsakoff et al. (2009) would predict citizenship should prevent.

Compelled Citizenship Loses Its Moral Character

There is also a moral argument. Citizenship is admirable because it is freely given. When it is required, even implicitly, it becomes unpaid labor extracted through social pressure. Paul tells the Corinthians that giving should flow from a settled decision of the heart, free of reluctance and pressure, because God delights in a cheerful giver (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, 2 Corinthians 9:7). Paul was writing about generosity to the church, but the principle applies by analogy: generosity coerced is no longer generosity. An organization that pressures employees to give extra time is not cultivating virtue; it is shifting costs onto its most conscientious people while preserving the appearance of a caring culture. Johnson (2019) argues that organizations have ethical obligations to employees, not only claims on them, and a culture that quietly harvests unpaid hours fails that obligation. Scripture's pattern of work and rest points the same way: the command to rest in Exodus 20:8-10 extended even to servants, a reminder that people are not resources to be used without limit.

Answering the Strongest Objection

Some will argue that rewarding citizenship is simply good management. If helping behavior improves performance, why not count it in evaluations and promotions? This objection has force. Recognizing contributions is fair, and ignoring them would be unjust to employees who give more. The answer lies in the difference between recognition and requirement. Thanking a nurse who stayed late during an emergency honors a gift. Penalizing nurses who leave on time turns the gift into an obligation. When citizenship becomes a condition of good standing, it is no longer discretionary, and the research shows that pressure, not citizenship itself, produces the harms. A second objection holds that employees who object to the norm can simply refuse. That answer ignores power. New nurses on the unit could not refuse without risking their schedules, their evaluations and their standing with colleagues, which is exactly why the pressure was effective and why leaders, not individual employees, must remove it.

Conclusion

Organizations should want citizenship behavior, and the evidence shows why. But they should protect its voluntary character. Leaders can do so through three practices: staff work so that the formal job is achievable within paid hours, recognize citizenship without penalizing those who do not offer it and watch for signs of citizenship pressure, such as unspoken norms about staying late. Citizenship freely given strengthens organizations; citizenship extracted wears out the people who make organizations work.

References

Bolino, M. C., & Turnley, W. H. (2005). The personal costs of citizenship behavior: The relationship between individual initiative and role overload, job stress, and work-family conflict. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90(4), 740-748. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.90.4.740

Bolino, M. C., Turnley, W. H., Gilstrap, J. B., & Suazo, M. M. (2010). Citizenship under pressure: What's a "good soldier" to do? Journal of Organizational Behavior, 31(6), 835-855. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.635

English Standard Version Bible. (2016). Crossway. (Original work published 2001)

Johnson, C. E. (2019). Organizational ethics: A practical approach (4th ed.). SAGE.

Organ, D. W. (1988). Organizational citizenship behavior: The good soldier syndrome. Lexington Books.

Podsakoff, N. P., Whiting, S. W., Podsakoff, P. M., & Blume, B. D. (2009). Individual- and organizational-level consequences of organizational citizenship behaviors: A meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 94(1), 122-141. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0013079