Gender as a Moderator of the Relationship between Organizational Citizenship Behaviors and Team Effectiveness in China

The purpose of this study was to examine the relations between three domains of OCBs and team effectiveness, and to test for the moderating effects of gender on the relationship between OCBs and team effectiveness. A cross-sectional survey of 218 employees from 26 Chinese manufacturing companies showed that self, group, and organization domain OCBs were directly related to job satisfaction, group and organization domain OCBs were directly related to team performance. The results indicated that gender moderated the relationship between organization domain OCBs and job satisfaction, and this relationship was stronger for males than females. Implications for practice and directions for future research are discussed.


Introduction
As working under changing circumstances becomes an essential feature of organizations (Lee, Dedrick, & Smith, 1991), organizations will necessarily become more dependent on individuals who are willing to contribute to successful change, regardless of formal job requirements.The nature, causes, and consequences of prosocial job satisfaction have been investigated frequently.Specifically, behaviors that exceed delineated role expectations but are important and even crucial for an organization's survival are defined as "organizational citizenship behavior" (OCB) which has been receiving a great deal of attention from organizational behavior researchers (Podsakoff, Mackenzie, Paine, & Bachrach, 2000;Katz & Kahn, 1996;Organ & Ryan, 1995;Organ, 1997;George & Battenhausen, 1990) since Organ (1988) proposed that organizational citizenship behavior is related to individual and organization performance.Researches also show that these citizenship behaviors have a positive impact on increasing organization performance (Geroge & bettenhausen, 1990;Karambayya, 1990;MacKenzie, Podsakoff, & Fetter, 1991;Podsakof, Ahearne, & MacKenzie, 1997;Podsakoff & MacKenzie, 1994;Walz & Niehoff, 2000;Werner, 1994).OCB has been regarded as an important concept in that it is thought to contribute to effective functioning of the organization, and consequently, its competitiveness (Krllowicz & Lowery, 1996).
Although researchers have extensively studied OCB in the U.S. context, OCB measurement has received relatively limited attention in other contexts (Pascal, 2009), so understanding whether behavioral theories initiated in the United States are generalized to non-U.S.populations is critical to the effective management of global ventures (Hofstede, 1980).It is exciting to notice that the growth of OCB in a non-U.S.context is on the increase (e.g., O 'Connell, Doverspike, & Hattrup, 2001;Menguc, 2000;Bierhoff et al., 2000;Turnipseed & Murkison, 2000).Especially, most of them have applied the construct of OCB to Eastern cultures (e.g., Farh, Earley, & Lin, 1997;Farh, Podsakoff, & Organ, 1990;Yoon & Suh, 2003;Yen & Niehoff, 2004;Farh, Zhong & Organ, 2004;Lo, Ramayah, & Kueh, 2006).Yet of these studies, only Farh, Zhong & Organ (2004) first examined forms of OCB in the People's Republic of China (PRC).So it is important, then, to clarify whether employee behaviors that influence firm performance in U.S. have the same impact in other cultures.
The present study examines the relationships of OCBs and team effectiveness will be moderated by gender in the context of China.This replication was needed so that previous findings could be generalized beyond the United States.First, we examine the extent to which different domain OCBs are associated with team effectiveness.Second, we test for the moderating effects of gender on the relationship between different domain OCBs and team effectiveness.

OCBs in China
Most research on OCB has focused on individual antecedents.Research on OCB has benefited greatly from Organ's conceptualization of OCB was defined as "individual behavior that is discretionary, not directly or explicitly recognized by the formal reward system, and that in the aggregate promotes the effective function of the organization" (Organ, 1988); for example, helping coworkers, and keeping up with matters that affect the organization.According to Organ, OCBs have a variety of forms, including altruism, courtesy, sportsmanship, civic virtue, and conscientiousness.Podsakoff et al. (1990) first operationalized Organ's (1988) five dimensions.And in a thorough review of the OCB literature and other related constructs, Podsakoff et al. (2000) grouped the nearly 30 forms of potentially different behaviors into seven themes according to the type of behavior: helping behaviors, sportsmanship, organizational loyalty, organizational compliance, individual initiative, civic virtue, and self development.Farh et al. (1997) developed a version of the OCB measure for the Chinese culture and translated it into the Mandarin language.The Chinese version included the dimensions of altruism, conscientiousness, and civic virtue, but replaced sportsmanship and courtesy with two dimensions more closely related to the Chinese culture.Interpersonal harmony was one of the new dimensions and was described as the avoidance of pursuing personal power and gain in the organization.The second new dimension was termed protecting company resources, which was defined as the avoidance of negative behaviors that abuse company policies and resources for personal use.
Another approach to classifying the construct domain focused on the target of the OCB (McNeely & Meglino, 1994;Skarlicki & Latham, 1996;Smech & Drach-Zahavy, 2000).Williams and Anderson (1991) designated two broad categories of OCB: OCBI, or behaviors that immediately benefit particular individuals; OCBO, or behaviors that benefit the organization as a whole.Using an inductive approach, Farh, Zhong, and Organ (2004) propose a concentric model to classify OCB in China suggest that it may be more fruitful to classify OCB based on foci or contexts of action, and divided them into four domains based on the focus or context of action: self, group, organization, and society.The self domain includes contributions that in principle could be rendered anonymously, privately, and purely as a matter of one's own volition, such as self-training, taking initiative, and keeping the workplace clean.The group domain includes those contributions that cannot be meaningfully or practically divorced from a context of interaction with peers, such as: Interpersonal harmony and helping coworkers.OCB with an organizational focus includes those contributions that must engage some organizationally relevant attribute, such as protecting and saving company resources, voice and group activity participation.The society focus subsumes those contributions that can be enacted only across the boundary of the organization or in its external environment with outside stakeholders, such as social welfare participation and protecting company image.

Team Effectiveness
OCB as the specific behavior of a team member can be understood as team process variables has a dynamic impact on the team effectiveness.Sundstrom, DeMeuse and Futrell (1990) thought that the effectiveness of team including team performance and feasibility.Performance is measure by the acceptability of the work team level when internal or external organizations receiving the products, services and information making by team; the feasibility task is illustrated by the team members' satisfaction and the impact on the whole work that make by the team.As early as Organ's (1988) research, he thought that OCB can effectively improve overall organizational effectiveness.The first empirical study about the relationship between organizational citizenship behavior and team effectiveness is Karambayya (1990).She concluded that high performance team in a higher employee satisfaction, show more OCB.Williams and Anderson (1991) provided support for the job satisfaction-OCB relationship, and a recent meta-analysis, by LePine, Erez, and Johnson (2002), stated a corrected correlation between job satisfaction and OCB of .24(e.g.Organ & Ryan, 1995;Podsakoff, Mackenzie & Bommer, 1996).OCB can influence team performance (Podsakoff et al., 1997;Walz and Niehoff, 2000) because they help people work together.
OCB contributes to team effectiveness through its impact on the context in which the task is performed (Podsakoff & MacKenzie, 1997).These behaviors are important and desirable for an organization to the extent they achieve results such as more effective communication that allows best practices to be shared among employees or allows more coordination each other.While constructive change-oriented communication, or voice, is related to contextual performance, it does not relate directly to task performance, though it should contribute in the aggregate to team effectiveness (LePine & Van Dyne, 2001).Podsakoff and MacKenzie (1997) argue that the presence of OCB in an organization can increase effectiveness through mechanisms such as increased managerial and coworker productivity, more effective use of scarce resources, or increased organizational flexibility.
In an attempt to summarize the evidence supporting the relationship between OCB and organizational effectiveness, Podsakoff and MacKenzie (1997) reasoned that this behavioral dimension of performance should increase group, department and organization performance "by 'lubricating' the social machinery of the organization, reducing friction, and/or increasing efficiency (p.135)."Empirical evidence shows that OCB is related to outcomes such as increased sales unit effectiveness in insurance companies (Podsakoff & MacKenzie, 1994), increase profits in restaurants (Koys, 2001), work group performance in paper mills (Podsakoff et al., 1997), and organizational effectiveness in restaurants (Walz & Niehoff, 1996), organizational effectiveness in banks (Yen & Niehoff, 2004).Thus, existing research indicates that OCB does positively affect organizationally desirable outcomes which in turn must have positive effect on organization effectiveness.
Accordingly, in this study we defined OCB as discretionary behavior directed at self, at the group, and at the organization as a whole (Organ, 1988).Following this recommendation, OCB is measured with items from several dimensions and is treated as a latent construct in this study.Thus, we hypothesize the following: Hypothesis 1: OCBs: (a)Self domain OCBs, (b)Group domain OCBs, and (c)Organization domain OCBs will be positively related to job satisfaction.
Hypothesis 2: OCBs: (a)Self domain OCBs, (b)Group domain OCBs, and (c)Organization domain OCBs will be positively related to team performance.

Gender as a moderator
Employee gender differences regarding attitude, behavior, and outcomes attracted considerable research attention during the last decade.A strong consensus has emerged that few, if any, gender differences exist concerning various employee job-related perception (Moncrief et al., 2000;Piercy, Cravens, & Lane, 2001;Siguaw & Huneycutt, 1995).Gender influences the ways in which members of each gender are expected to behave and the manners in which their behavior is interpreted (Cooper & Lewis, 1995;Williams & Best, 1982).Treated as a personal characteristic, gender may influence an employee's perceptions of the workplace and their attitudinal reactions to others within an organization (Mathieu & Zajac, 1990).Furthermore, gender may affect whether individuals connect with coworkers who offer various kinds of information, social support, and opportunities (Scandura & Lankau, 1997).
Most existing research compares amounts of constructs expressed by female and male employees (Babin & Boles, 1998).For example, Johlke et al. (2002) found the female salespersons experience lower levels than male salespersons.Few organizational studies have examined how gender might alter the relationship between constructs (Babin & Boles, 1998;Organ & Ryan, 1995).Although the moderating effects of gender on specific relationships have not been discussed directly, gender likely acts as a moderator in the link between OCBs and team effectiveness, and understanding the moderating effect of gender upon OCBs and team effectiveness relations is of critical concern for theory, research and practice.
Males deeply involved in OCBs may feel more obliged to engage their organization than females who are equally involved, as males may internalize the conviction that they should be loyal and assist their organization in achieving success.From an organizational perspective, males are generally stereotyped as being competent, assertive, independent, and achievement oriented.From an interpersonal perspective, females are generally stereotyped as warm, sociable, interdependent, and relationship oriented (Langford & MacKinnon, 2000).Therefore, males highly involved in OCB may engage in more team effectiveness than females who are highly involved, indicating that gender stereotyping moderates relationships between OCBs and team effectiveness.
The following hypotheses are derived without giving the direction of the moderating effects from the exploratory perspective, since the proposed hypotheses are based on relatively few investigations due to their limited availability.
Hypothesis 3: The relationships between OCBs: (a)Self domain OCBs, (b)Group domain OCBs, and (c)Organization domain OCBs and job satisfaction will be moderated by gender.
Hypothesis 4: The relationships between OCBs: (a)Self domain OCBs, (b)Group domain OCBs, and (c)Organization domain OCBs and team Performance will be moderated by gender.

Sample
This research is an empirical study under team standard, and we choose 39 Chinese companies 379 members as a sample to do the questionnaire investigation which was distributed to members by e-mail during March 2009, and 283 (74.7%) surveys were returned.After deleting incomplete responses, data for this study were obtained from 218 members of 42 work teams in 26 companies in China, thereinto, state-owned enterprises (48.95%), private-owned enterprises (21.3%), foreign-invested enterprises (6.9%), sino-foreign joint ventures (4.4%), and others(e.g.town or village cooperatives) (8.5%).The work teams are comprised of more than 2 workers, with an average of 5.2 workers per team.Of the respondents, 62.2% were men, and 37.8% were women.The majority (56.9%) age of the members were less than 30 years, 30.9% were between 30 and 40 years, 8.5% were between 40 and 50 years, and just 3.7% were more than 50 years.Turning to organization size, most (31.9%) were more than 1000 members, 17.0% were between 500 and 1000 members, 18.6% were between 100 and 500 members, 17.6% were between 50 and 100 members, and 14.9% were less than 50 members.

Measures
Unless otherwise noted, all items were on a 7-point Likert type response scale ranging from 1(strongly disagree) to 7(strongly agree).

Control variables.
Past research has demonstrated that gender can influence Chinese employee behaviors and attitudes (Hui & Tan, 1996), and so we included it as a control in our analysis: age (four ordered categories).We also included team size and organization size as controls to measure the number of employees.Since the distribution of the measure was skewed a logarithmic transformation was applied (Hair et al., 1998).Finally, past research has also demonstrated that type of enterprise (five ordered categories) can influence behaviors and attitudes of workers (Farh, Zhong & Organ, 2004).
OCBs.For the variables of organizational citizenship behavior, this study draws Farh, Zhong, and Organ's (2004) research results on Chinese, and then we choose self domain OCBs (e.g.self-training, taking initiative) with 4 items scale, group domain OCBs (e.g.interpersonal harmony, helping coworkers) with 4 items scale, and organization domain OCBs (e.g.protecting and saving company resources, voice and group activity participation) with 5 items scale to measure and not accept the social domain (e.g.social welfare participation, promoting company image).This is because if only to remember the social welfare activities of the individual, do not know the name of their organization, and organizations to participate in public welfare activities unrelated to performance, and promoting company image is one performance of loyalty.
Team effectiveness.For measuring the variables of team effectiveness, we choose job satisfaction and team performance.
Job satisfaction is the reaction to assessment of the employee's work and to the satisfaction level of internal and external demands when doing the work.We will measure employee job satisfaction with 5 items scale that included the following facets: the importance and prospect of the work, consensus to desired work, discretion, the satisfaction, and task capacity following Quinn & Staines (1990).
Team performance is the subjective assessment of team by team employees.We will measure team performance with 4 items scale that included the following facets: the degree of goal's achievement, the degree of team's evaluation, the height of performance, and the quality of team's tasks compared with other teams following Hendersion & Lee (1992).
Gender.We coded male as 0and female as1 in the analysis of the data.
To assure equivalence of the measures in the Chinese and English versions, all the scales used in this study were translated into Chinese and then translated back into English.The researchers also examined the questionnaires to ensure that the items were interpretable in Chinese.

Analysis
The data were analyzed in several phases.First, an exploratory principal component analysis with varimax rotation was performed on all multiple scale items to determine item retention.Items with loadings greater than or equal to .60 on the target construct were retained as long as the items did not produce a cross-loading of .35 or greater.
Descriptive statistics (measures of central tendency and of dispersion, and simple correlations) were calculated to describe the set of scores generated by each of the study variables and the extent of relationships between variables.
Regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses.To test the direct effect hypotheses the dependent variables (team effectiveness) were regressed onto the control variables, independent variables (domains of OCBs) and gender.
Hierarchical moderated regression was used to test the moderation hypotheses (Cohen & Cohen, 1983).Interaction terms often create multicollinearity problems because of their correlations with main effects.We thus computed the interaction term by centring OCBs and gender before multiplying them with each other.In the moderated hierarchical regression analyses, the control variables were entered, followed by domains of OCBs and gender, and finally the interaction term.

Results
The principal component analysis revealed that one of the job satisfactions, one of the team performances, and one of the domains of OCBs loaded on a separate factor.These items were removed before the final scales were computed by averaging the remaining items.All scales demonstrate the expected five-factor structure (eigenvalues>1.0),explained 61.072 per cent of the variance, and acceptable reliability estimates, ranging from .710 to .859(see the Appendix, which also includes the wording of each item).
Descriptive statistics and correlation are reported in Table 1.At the univariate level, the three domains of OCBs are moderately correlated with each other: self domain of OCBs is .18(p<.05) correlated with group domain of OCBs and .31(p<.01) with organization domain of OCBs, group domain of OCBs is .23 (p<.01) correlated with organization domain of OCBs.The correlations of the OCBs with the job satisfaction range from .15 (p<.05) to .26(p<.01) and with team performance range from .24 (p<.01) to .39 (p<.01).
Results from the regression models are presented in Table 2.The second step (model 2) of the regression models in Table 2 is used to test the direct relationships.Firstly, analyses show that self domain of OCBs ( =.186, p<.05), group domain ( =.173, p<.05) and organization domain ( =.159, p<.05) are directly related to job satisfaction significantly, and increased R 2 by .103(F=3.013,p<.01).Thus, Hypotheses 1a, 1b, and 1c were supported.Hypothesis 1 was supported.Secondly, analyses show that group domain OCBs ( =.198, p<.01) and organization domain ( =.342, p<.01) are directly related to team performance significantly, and increased R 2 by .218(F=7.524,p<.01).There is, however, no direct relationship between self domain and team performance when gender is included in the team performance model 2 ( =.114, p>.05).Thus, Hypotheses 2b and 2c were supported, while 2a was not.Hypothesis 2 was partial supported.
The third step (model 3) of the regressions in Table 2 is used to test the moderation hypotheses.The regressions show that gender only moderates the relationships between organization domain OCBs ( =-.494, p<.05) and job satisfaction significantly, and increased R 2 by .031(F=2.825,p<.01), providing no support for Hypotheses 3a and 3b; and also no support for Hypotheses 4a, 4b, and 4c.To probe the form of the significant interaction, median split sample analyses (e.g., Reilly, 1994) and plots of standardized beta coefficients were performed.As portrayed by Figure 1, the interaction, the positive relationship between organization domain OCBs and job satisfaction was stronger with male than female.Thus, the shape of the interaction is as predicted, providing support for Hypotheses 3c.

Discussion
In many different societal cultures OCB is recognized as important for organizational performance.This might be particularly true in PRC.Previously, OCB has been viewed as a consequence of attitudinal and dispositional variables (Organ & Ryan, 1995).This study took another direction by examining a possible outcome of OCB.The primary objective of this study was to explore the relationships between different domain OCBs and team effectiveness in PRC.Among the key findings, OCBs were directly related to team effectiveness, and the relationship was positively.These findings are not entirely novel, since prior research has indicated similar relationships (e.g., George & Bettenhausen, 1990;Karamayya, 1990;MacKenzie et al., 1991MacKenzie et al., , 1993;;Podsakoff et al., 1997;Podsakoff & MacKenzie, 1994;Turnipseed & Murkison, 2000;Werner, 1994;Yen & Niehoff, 2004).Accordingly, this study contributes to this research by providing additional empirical support and credit to the opinion that OCBs may enhance team effectiveness.
In this study the team effectiveness has two aspects: job satisfaction and team performance.And OCBs also have three domains: self, group, and organization.From these analyses, the organization domain OCBs has a positive effect on job satisfaction and team performance.Here we would locate OCB dimensions, such as protecting and saving company resources, voice, and group activity participation.These activities do not relate to specific people, yet they contribute to general organizational effectiveness (Farh, Zhong, & Organ, 2004).When employees show more organization domain OCBs, the team effectiveness will be heavier, and the team will obtain more performance and favorable comment, these favorable comments are due to employees, so employees will be satisfied with their job.The group domain OCBs is positively related to job satisfaction and team performance, that means that employees help each other by giving time to crew members who have work-related or nonwork-related (only be considered in China) matters (Farh, Zhong & Organ, 2004), sharing their expertise with each other, and touching base with each other before taking actions that might affect other crew members are more productive (Podsakoff & MacKenzie, 1997), and the productive of crew members can improve the team performance more and more.Interpersonal harmony also is an important behavior to improve team performance, but not proposed in the Western literature.Farh et al. (1997) found it to be one of the two emic OCB dimensions in Taiwan.The Chinese have a long been known for their concern for harmony and unity (solidarity) in social relationships (Yang, 1995), so this culture let Chinese people think harmony very important.Interpersonal harmony behavior can make the environment very comfortable, employees don't spend much time on thinking and doing with the trivial things, and will feel satisfaction.In this situation, employees will complete work more quickly and nicely, and will contribute to the team performance.The self domain OCBs is only positively related to job satisfaction, that means if employees show more self-training and taking initiative, they will do their job positively, and enhance their selves through self-training, make out more good ideas to improve their work efficiency, these will let them be satisfied with their work.In the prior research self-training and taking initiative can also enhance the team performance, but findings of the present study provided no support for this aspect.Maybe the reason is duo to the sample of the questionnaire investigation.There are so many respondents (56.9%) who are less than 30 years older, and may have just graduated from universities.Because of no working experience, they could not enhance the team performance in spite of willing to show many self domain OCBs.
Perhaps the most practically important and novel theoretical contribution of this study is the examination of gender as a moderator of the relationship between OCBs and team effectiveness.Post hoc analyses of possible interactions between gender and OCBs were significant for organization domain OCB-job satisfaction but not for others.First, a positive appraisal reaction in the form of organization domain OCBs was directly related to job satisfaction.Second, there were positive relationships between organization domain OCBs and job satisfaction for employees, and a stronger relationship (steeper slope) for male employees than female.This finding may indicate that relatively male employees are necessary for OCBs to positively influence job satisfaction.

Implications for Practice
The findings reported may have some interesting implications for managers.First, OCBs are important for enhancing team effectiveness, making spontaneous behaviors an area that managers cannot ignore.How to encourage employees to show more OCBs?Managers should first re-examine their corporate culture of OCBs (Niranjana & Pattanayak, 2005), because a corporate culture encouraging employees to enhance the well-being of their co-workers and the organization (Niranjana & Pattanayak, 2005) will likely lead to willingness to effectiveness.Managers also can encourage the employees to do more OCBs through better the leader behaviors.Despite the fact that employees can not follow the leader's behaviors absolutely if the manager can set as an example to do more OCBs, the employees will still learn from the manager and do more OCBs.And also, managers can use some reward items to encourage employees to show more OCBs.
Additionally, we focused on gender as a key contextual variable that changed the relationship between OCBs and job satisfaction.Since males are more likely and willing to challenge the status quo (Krefting & Powers, 1998;LePine & Van Dyne, 1998;Van Dyne et al., 1995), managers consulting male employees by listening to their constructive suggestions can strengthen OCBs (e.g., voice), and hence enhance employee job satisfaction.Accordingly, organizations must establish official mechanisms to confront employee dissatisfaction when is arises (Lin, 2008).Such mechanisms could formalize a consultation channel-especially useful for males-providing males with an opportunity to freely express their dissatisfaction and provide recommendations for organizational improvement and advances.
On the human resource side, several steps are possible such as selecting job candidate which is based on their level of organizational citizenship behavior, improve policies and procedures concerning performance evaluation in such a way to include certain dimensions of citizenship behavior, and hire employees with high OCB by determining whether applicant have performed beyond minimum standard in their previous working experience or during schooling (Shaiful et al., 2009).

Limitations and Future Research
The contributions of this research should be viewed in light of several limitations.First, the data were collected via self-report measures causing concern about possible mono-method bias and percept-percept inflated measures (Crampton & Wagner, 1994), and although the Harman's test suggested that common method variance was not a substantial problem, we recognize the desirability of future research using alternative approaches.Future research efforts need not only consider using longitudinal data, but might also focus on multi-source data.Second, it is obviously a limitation that the data were obtained exclusively from employees of manufacturing industry in PRC, since relationships may differ in other industries and countries.Most research on OCBs is conducted in the US, and it is questionable that the findings from this research can generalize to other countries (Fletcher & Perry, 2001).Especially, Culture and environment can affect the translation of the research instruments, the conceptual constructs and the relationships of the variables.Thus, research in other industries and countries is warranted before any firm conclusions can be drawn.Finally, this study is based on cross-sectional data and thus, causality cannot be firmly established.
With these limitations in mind, the current results suggest several avenues of future research worthy of pursuit.First, we should also continue to examine additional factors that may moderate the relationship between OCBs and team effectiveness.Since the ultimate goal of OCBs is increased performance, any examination of variables that may moderate the relationship between different domain OCBs and task performance, should be of interest to both practitioners and academics.For instance, organizational culture, leader-member exchange, fair treatment, type of job, specialization, accountability and other demographic factors that could potentially interact with OCBs to performance.An additional future research should broaden organizational effectiveness variables of the present study from perceived job satisfaction and team performance to objective aspects of effectiveness variables such as attendance, labor cost percentage, overall turnover rates, profit margin, and financial performance.In particular, in terms of research-based organization (not-for-profit) how to design performance variables by quantitative measures which should be more attention in the future.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.The moderating effect of gender on the relationship between organization domain OCBs and job satisfaction