Individual Differences in Group Interaction Behaviour: Cultural Differences in the Exhibition of Organizational Citizenship Behaviours

Discrimination in employment still exists in Canada despite legislative attempts to minimize the disparity in treatment of minorities in the workplace. This dissertation examines the possibility of whether deep-level characteristics, such as differences in behaviour, are culturally influenced. Organizational citizenship behaviours (OCB) in the workplace have been a popular area of study for nearly twenty years in the industrial/organizational psychology literature. Research has demonstrated that OCBs can explain variance in job performance over and above that of task performance. While much of the OCB research has focused on the antecedents of OCBs (particularly individual attributes), a handful of cross-cultural and intercultural studies have been conducted with respect to OCBs; however, the type of studies and the findings from these studies have varied widely. Cross-cultural studies have evaluated OCBs in a single non-Western culture, collectivism and individualism as within-culture individual differences and their effects on OCBs, demographic dissimilarity in teams and OCBs, the role of perceptions and the exhibition of OCBs, and the presence and structure of OCB in different countries. From these studies, one can draw few conclusions about the status of national culture as an antecedent of OCB. The main objectives of this study were to investigate whether OCBs are culturally determined (using Vygotsky's sociocultural theory as an underlying basis for this hypothesis and using Hofstede's cultural framework), and whether individual acculturation and gender orientation moderate this relationship. Findings reveal overall that these three variables explain little of the variance in OCBs. None of the moderation hypotheses were supported for individual-level OCBs (OCB-I) or for team-oriented OCBs (OCB-T). Power distance was the only one of Hofstede's cultural dimensions that had relationships (both negative) with OCB-I and OCB-T. Gender orientation and acculturation played more prominent roles as independent variables instead of moderators, though the coefficients were weak. The study also revealed that individual levels of acculturation to Canadian culture may be more of an influencing factor on organizational citizenship behaviours than individual scores on national dimensions. The overall findings show that cultural differences do not have much influence on the exhibition of OCBs within work teams; however, further research must be done to assess the underlying mechanisms of discrimination in the workplace.

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