Employee engagement and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB)
Employee engagement is an organization approach aimed at ensuring employees commitment to their organization’s goals and values, and motivates them to take part in the success of the organization. Organizations expect employees to offer more of their potential and capability. According to Rich, Lepine & Crawford (2010), employee’s motivation leads to high levels of job performance. On the other hand, employee engagement is relatively related to organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). Employee engagement to their workplace determines their commitment to the organization, hence promoting OCB (Bhatnagar & Biswas, 2010). Total engagement of employees to their duties increases the occurrence of behaviors that influence efficiency and effectiveness of the organization. These are the behaviors referred to as OCB (Spitzmuller, Van Dyne & Ilies, 2008, p. 107).
The need to investigate the relationship between the two concepts
Skilled employees in an organization are the key assets in a knowledge-based economy. Most organization finds it unacceptable losing such employees (Albrecht, 2010). The relationship between employee engagement and organization citizen behavior (OCB) has a lot of theoretical and practical significance among Nigerian employees. Firstly, the investigation can explore the existing theory on employee engagement and relate it to the present cultural context of the Nigerian organizations. Secondly, understanding the relationship between employee engagement and OCB would assist Nigerian organizations in evaluating their employees in terms of their engagement to their workplace and make the necessary remedies in order to increase competition.
Employee engagement and OCB exploitation Nigerian organizations
Nigeria is one of the richest countries in Africa because of numerous oil and gas ores found in the country. Nigeria has made it possible for its employees to understand the value of their workplaces by providing certain incentives such as employee motivation. The country however, has not fully exploited the relationship between employee engagement and OC because there are reported cases of Nigerian citizens willing to leave their organizations and work in foreign countries (Osayawe & Clement, 2011). This calls for a need to conduct an investigation to evaluate this relationship in Nigerian organizations and come up with a report that firm managers can utilize to streamline their business operations.
References
Albrecht, S. L. (2010). Handbook of employee engagement: Perspectives, issues, research and
practice. Cheltenham, Glos, UK: Edward Elgar.
Bhatnagar, J. & Biswas, S. (2010). “Predictors and Outcomes of Employee Engagement:
Implications of the Resource-Based View Perspective,” The Indian Journal of Industrial Relations, 46(2), 273-288.
Osayawe, B. E. & Clement, R. A. (2011). "Psycho-social factors influencing practice of total
quality management in some Nigerian organizations", Journal of Managerial Psychology, 20 (5), pp.355 - 379
Spitzmuller, M., Van Dyne, L., & Ilies, R. (2008). Organizational citizenship behavior:
A review and extension of its nomological network. In C. L. Cooper & J.
Barling (Eds.), Handbook of organizational behavior. Thousand
Oaks, CA: Sage. Rich, B. L., Lepine, J. A. & Crawford, E. R. (2010). “Job Engagement: Antecedents and Effects
on Job Performance,” Academy of Management Journal, 53(3), 617-635. Retrieved from: http://dx.doi.org/10.5465/AMJ.2010.51468988
