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Effects of organizational citizenship behaviour on group performance

Results from an agent-based simulation model
Enrico Sevi
University of LAquila, LAquila, Italy
Abstract
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB) on organizational effectiveness. Specically, it investigates the impact of helping behaviour on a group where members withhold the effort on job. Design/methodology/approach Results are drawn from an agent-based simulation model of a workgroup that has to accomplish some tasks for a specic duration. Findings When there are group members withholding effort, OCB decreases organizational effectiveness; on the contrary, when individuals provide much effort in the job, OCB enhances group performance. High performance is reached by the group who are able to learn when OCB is appropriate and tting. Research limitations/implications Limitations of this paper are strictly linked to the absence of empirical analysis. The simulation model provides a logical and consistent theory that needs an empirical validation. Practical implications This paper helps workers and supervisors since it warns them on the OCB gap and suggests that in the place of a blind OCB, the groups need to share a smart OCB to cultivate altruism with people who work hard, and to exclude the others. Originality/value In the study of OCBs determinants and consequences, the academy has almost exclusively assembled on positive factors. This paper shows the OCB dark side and it asserts that citizenship effects on organization performance are not predetermined as a conceptual assumption. Effectiveness is assured by a dynamic and selective OCB only toward good workers. Keywords Group work, Group behaviour, Organizational effectiveness, Organizational design, Performance levels, Simulation Paper type Research paper

Effects of OCB on group performance 25

Introduction For over 20 years, the organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB) has occupied an important space in the organization theory literature. From Barnards (1938) willingness to cooperate, the academy has moved toward Katz and Kahns (1966) spontaneous behaviours, until Organ (1988), p. 4 exposes the denition shared by most literature: individual behaviour that is discretionary, not directly or explicitly recognized by the formal reward system, and that in the aggregate, promotes the effective functioning of the organization. In the study of OCBs determinants and consequences, the academy has almost exclusively assembled on positive factors. Indeed, the widely accepted denition (Organ, 1988, p. 4) has a formal defect when the behaviour effects that in the aggregate promotes the effective functioning of the organization are included in the denition itself, without

Journal of Modelling in Management Vol. 5 No. 1, 2010 pp. 25-37 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 1746-5664 DOI 10.1108/17465661011026149

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the verication of empirical research (Van Dyne et al., 1995; Podsakoff et al., 2000). Consequently, the studies following Organs denition suffered from an inclination only toward the positive aspects. Only in the last years did some authors shown that this behaviour can have both negative antecedents (Vigoda-Gadot, 2006, 2007) and negative effects (Bolino et al., 2004). This paper attempts to settle this debate focusing on the analysis of OCB consequences on organizational effectiveness. Specically, it investigates OCBs effects on groups where a drop in effort occurs. An agent-based simulation model is used, demonstrating that if there are group members withholding effort, the helping behaviour decreases organizational effectiveness. On the contrary, when individuals provide much effort in the job, helping behaviour enhances group performance. It suggests that OCBs positive effects are not to be predetermined as a conceptual assumption. The second relevant nding asserts that more suitable results are performed by the group who are able to learn when citizenship behaviour is appropriate and tting. The agent-based simulation model conrms that instead of a blind OCB, groups need to share a smart helping behaviour to cultivate altruism with people who work hard, while excluding the rest who do not. The next section discusses theoretical framework, showing the literature state of the art and proposing the research hypotheses. The methodological paragraph describes mechanisms and parameters of simulation model, while the results section analyzes the results from simulation model and submits the theoretical hypotheses to computer-model validation. Finally, the last paragraph discusses the advances on literature and offers suggestions to managerial practice. OCB and withholding effort an overview Despite OCBs prominence in organization theory literature, there are many grey areas that need investigation, especially from the side of empirical research. In fact, in the last years, the academy has been persuaded by Organs, 1988, p. 4 denition that identied the organizational citizenship as a behaviour that in the aggregate promotes the effective functioning of the organization. This theoretical framework confuses the phenomenal denition through its effects and description and it causes the consolidation of a mainstream focusing only on the OCBs positive effects. Referring to Podsakoff et al. (2000), it is possible to identify several different forms of OCB characterized by a signicant theoretical overlap. A big part of these concepts centres on helping behaviour, that can be dened as voluntarily helping others with, or preventing the occurrence of, work-related problems (Podsakoff et al., 2000, p. 516). Indeed, helping behaviour includes concepts such as helping and cooperating with others (Borman and Motowidlo, 1997), interpersonal helping (Graham, 1991), helping co-workers (George and Brief, 1992), altruism (Smith et al., 1983; Organ, 1988), interpersonal helping (Graham, 1991) and sportsmanship (Organ, 1988). Although less frequently, other researchers focalize on concepts such as promoting (George and Brief, 1992; Moorman and Blakely, 1995) and defending the organization (Borman and Motowidlo, 1997). Many scholars analyze the helping behaviour in combination with other concepts that can be considered as specic forms of OCBs: individual initiative (Moorman and Blakely, 1995), civic virtue (Organ, 1988), organizational compliance (Smith et al., 1983), and self-development (Moorman and Blakely, 1995). The focal point of the paper is to analyze behaviour involving helping others with work-related problems as a form of citizenship behaviour that is recognized by

most researchers. Concepts such as organizational loyalty, individual initiative, or organizational compliance are not investigated. The several attributes on OCBs consequences can be grouped into two issues: the effects on managerial evaluations of employees and the effects on organizational performance (Podsakoff et al., 2000). This paper pays attention only on the second group of outcomes in order to understand how OCB affects group performance. This paper attempts to settle this debate with the following research question: RQ1. What is OCBs impact on organizational effectiveness? A few empirical studies dealing with OCB effects support the hypothesis that this behaviour enhances organizational effectiveness (Karambayya, 1990; Podsakoff et al., 1997, 2000; Walz and Niehoff, 1996). However, some countertrend results demonstrate otherwise, as an example, the negative relation between OCBs and the amount of sales in an insurance agency units (Podsakoff and Mackenzie, 1994), or the nding that helping behaviour can reduce the engagement in job prescriptions, by producing a general reduction of performance (Bolino et al., 2004). Similarly, Dunlop and Lee (2004) discovered that workplace deviance affects business unit performance much more than citizenship behaviour, while Ng and Van Dyne (2005) nd that the group average level of helping behaviour is not related to group performance in a straightforward manner. Another study focuses on citizenship tendency to preserve the standing scenario. Choi (2007) afrms that because OCB is inclined to maintain social relationships, it could reduce voice and make suggestions in order to improve existing methods, therefore a lack of innovation and a performance decrease could occur. The Chois (2007) work highlights the importance of a change-oriented OCB that improves the effectiveness of social network, instead of traditional OCB forms that maintain the current relationships. In summary, since the effects of OCB on performance are positive in some samples and negative in others, there may be other variables that inuence the impact of OCB on organizational effectiveness. This paper proposes the withholding effort as a moderator variable of OCB consequences on group performance. Therefore, it investigates and attempts to understand whether helping out members who withhold efforts on the job, produces a performance decrease or increase. Most literature on withholding effort focuses on the antecedents and identies three groups of causes (Kidwell and Bennett, 1993): shirking behaviour (Alchian and Demsetz, 1972; Jones, 1984), social loang (George, 1992; Williams and Karau, 1991) and free riding (Albanese and Van Fleet, 1985; Jones, 1984). This work avoids the withholding effort antecedents and only analyzes the effect caused by withholding effort in a group sharing OCB. More specically, the central concern is on the work team, where members have different tendencies to reduce their efforts. This studys H1 asserts that OCB effectiveness depends on group members characteristics: H1. OCB consequences on group effectiveness depend on the amount of effort the members provide on the job. H1 consists of two sub-hypotheses: H1a. Helping behaviour with members providing less effort on the job decreases group effectiveness. H1b. Helping behaviour with members providing much effort on the job increases group effectiveness.

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The H2 asserts that in an organization where the members have different dispositions for the effort, the OCB is effective if it excludes underperforming members and it includes only the others. Every individual has to be able to judge the colleagues and choose members who exert much effort: H2. In groups composed of individuals who provide less effort, the best performance is achieved with the members who stop the collaboration with underperforming members and continue the cooperation with the rest of them, putting into practice a dynamic and selective OCB. Thus, a blind OCB may decrease performance. On the other hand, effectiveness increases when: . individuals extend a helping behaviour with only the colleagues who provide much effort on the job; and . when citizenship behaviour is withheld from underperforming members. Method: the agent-based simulation model This paper refers to an agent-based model realized on the LSD platform (www.business. aau.dk/lsd) and it simulates the activity of a workgroup that has to accomplish some tasks for a specic duration. Group members are introduced in an operational environment that denes the volume and the kind of job: this environment manages the modules that the group faces, thus it associates to each module some task. Next virtual experiments centre on a work team facing modules composed by three tasks that need three working steps. Each simulation lasts 900 steps, which represent 900 working days, where 450 modules are created by the environment. The tasks can be carried out in different ways according to the different types of interdependence: parallel, sequential and reciprocal. This work focus on the analysis of reciprocal interdependence that is the highest level of interdependence and it is tting with the citizenship behaviour. In fact, organization design literature shows an OCB groups particular aptitude to coordinate high-interdependence tasks (March and Simon, 1958; Mintzberg; 1979, Saaverda et al., 1993; Thompson, 1967; Van der Vegt et al., 2000, 2005; Van De Ven et al., 1976). Several researches suggest that high-level interdependence tasks increases the weight given to OCB in employee evaluations (Bachrach et al., 2006) and it produces higher level of helping behaviour (Pearce and Gregersen, 1991; Van der Vegt et al., 2005), help-seeking behaviour (Anderson and Williams, 1996) and expectations of help (Lam et al., 1999). Thus, organization design literature suggests that helping behaviour is crucial for groups facing reciprocal tasks, while it is redundant and too onerous when sequential and parallel tasks occur. Accordingly, this work analyzes groups which have to work tasks of reciprocal interdependence, while parallel and sequential scenarios are set aside. Dealing with the simulation model, reciprocal interdependence implies that the execution of a task depends on the execution of the other tasks included in the same module. Figure 1 shows the structure of modules composed by tasks connected by reciprocal interdependence. For example, tasks a, b and c are reciprocally interdependent. Dealing with the agents behaviour, in every simulation step, each agent provides two options: to nd a new task to devote to it, or, if it has already chosen a task to carry out, to work to complete it. For example, in Figure 1, agents 1 and 2 work on the same module X, while agent 3 is involved in on task f of module Y. Next virtual experiments

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Module X Agent 1 Looks for/works on Task a Task b Task c Looks for/works on Agent 2 Reciprocal interdependence Module Y Reciprocal interdependence

Effects of OCB on group performance 29

Agent 3 Looks for/works on Task d Task e Task f

Figure 1. The structure of the model

are executed on three agents groups. Even if agents could stand out from each other in terms of many characteristics, this work manipulates only the agents attitude to withhold effort. Other agents and environment parameters are kept constant. Thus, the model simulates agents providing a job with a different effort that is inversely dependent on the probability that they will defect work everyday. Agents never work when probability is 1, whereas they work all times when probability is 0. Then, the authors designed groups with different tendencies in withholding effort. Because groups may vary in the number of members that defect their job, and in the tendency in which each one does it, many combinations may take place corresponding to different layouts of engagement distribution among agents. To provide an easy awareness of group layouts, the authors used a three-number string code, symbolizing the three group members probability of withholding effort. As an example, conguration 0j0j0 describes group where three agents have 0 probability of withholding effort, while the 0.2j0j0 instance means that the rst agent has a 20 per cent probability of being absent in the workplace everyday, while the others are always present. Value 1 represents the agent providing minimum effort on the job and never doing prescribed employment. For instance, layout 1j0j0 symbolizes the group with an agent always deserting the job and two always working. This situation is the same when the group is composed by only two members providing maximum effort on the job. Finally, it seems useful to clarify that the simulation of 0.2j0j0 group grants identical results of 0j0.2j0 and 0j0j0.2 simulations, therefore the positions of agents do not matter, and possible combinations as well as group congurations decrease signicantly. The performance is measured according to the level of effectiveness, which is dened by the ratio between the completed modules and the number of executable modules. This index ranges between 0 or lowest effectiveness, and 1, when the group completes the highest number of modules. Performances of different layouts are compared among three different groups. The rst group is where members behave in a citizenship

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manner (OCB Group). The second group is more individualistic, with agents who do not help each other (task-oriented coordination (TOC) Group). Finally, the third group has members that, based on their experiences, learn and choose a suitable behaviour (L Group). Inside each group, every agent behaves in the same manner: in OCB group, all the members help others; in TOC, nobody behaves with organizational citizenship; nally, in L Group, everybody learns how to behave. OCB group The OCB group is designed with members who help each other in order to accomplish the tasks: each agent asks the colleagues for help and offers the aid when others ask help to him. Agents looking for a task to accomplish, give priority to choose the ones of modules that a colleague is working on. TOC group In TOC group, agents instead of helping each other, they behave independently, by simply coordinating on the tasks to be faced. Even though each agent needs cooperation, he does not ask for help and is not willing to provide colleagues with help. Agents looking for a task to accomplish, give priority to choose tasks of modules in progress, regardless the fact that at that time they are under working by a colleague. OCB and TOC groups are widely different. In the former, there is coordination among agents, while in the latter, they neglect one anothers activities and do not adapt to colleagues actions. L group L group members are modelled to behave in a dynamic manner: by observing the effort level of others, they are able to evaluate at every turn, if citizenship behaviour is suitable or not. Agents have to assess colleagues tendency to withhold effort and to choose workers to be provided with helping behaviour. Agents are designed based on the following learning mechanism:
Behave in a citizenship way with every agent. As work goes on, if you realize that someone has an excessive tendency of withholding effort that damages your performance, do not provide him with helping behaviour anymore.

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Agents are characterized by a specic tolerance threshold that represents the number of defection events they are willing to tolerate in their colleagues. At every simulation step, each agent compares others defection events with its own tolerance threshold. If the number of defections of a colleague exceeds this threshold, the agent comes to a negative evaluation and the citizenship behaviour with that colleague, is suspended. On the contrary, if the number of withholding events stands below the threshold, evaluation is positive and the agent maintains the helping behaviour with that colleague. Each agent may have different tolerance thresholds; therefore, a defection events curriculum could be assessed in a positive manner by some colleagues, and in a negative one by others. Moreover, each agent can observe only defection actions of members that directly damage their own work activities. Therefore, it is able to perceive only withholding behaviour of colleagues with whom they are working with. Since individual tolerance thresholds may be different and withholding behaviours are visible only to some members, in a certain simulation step, each agent may evaluate his colleagues efforts in a different manner; therefore, each may share a helping behaviour with different colleagues.

Results Results are obtained by observing the performance of groups with different withholding effort layouts. In the rst part the authors compare the group which shares OCB (OCB Group) with the group where this behaviour is absent (TOC Group). In the next part, the performance of a group with members that evaluate colleagues efforts and choose members to be provided with helping behaviour (L Group) is analyzed. OCB and TOC groups: effects on performance Table I illustrates that as effort decreases, a loss in effectiveness occurs in a greater than proportional way. For example, in 0.2j0.2j0.2 layout, where three agents defect with 20 per cent probability, the whole group results in 0.68 effectiveness, therefore a 20 per cent decrease of resources causes a 32 per cent loss of effectiveness. Table I shows that this effect is common with other layouts. When tasks are connected reciprocally, and group members share a helping behaviour, a resource reduction generates a greater than proportional decreasing performance. Thus, groups behaving in a citizenship manner are quite sensible to withholding actions. Idleness of one member damages colleagues activities directly, therefore it produces a greater than proportional loss in effectiveness. Another important result arises from the performance of groups with only one agent that withholds effort. In Table I, when withholder tendency is 0.8 (0.8j0j0 layout) and it changes over 1 (1j0j0 layout), instead of a performance decrease, a consistent increase occurs. A countertrend effect is observed: resource reduction improves group performance. This result suggests that it is worse to have a colleague that provides little effort on the job than a colleague who never worked at all. The idle worker contribution does not repay the colleagues damage he or she generates; therefore, it is better to reject the withholder whole engagement and face the job with a smaller group. These results question the assumption that OCB promotes the organization effectiveness when group members have some tendency to withhold effort. Table II is a comparison of the effectiveness of group sharing citizenship behaviour (OCB) and group where members do not coordinate each other and put their effort on the tasks individually (TOC). In the rst layout (0j0j0), maximum performance could be reached only by the group sharing citizenship behaviour, while TOC group obtains 0.79 effectiveness. Nevertheless, as group withholding tendency increases, members that do not help each other (TOC groups) react better than those who share citizenship behaviour (OCB groups). When only a single member having 50 per cent withholding tendency occurs (0.5j0j0 layout), it is better to avoid citizenship behaviour.

Effects of OCB on group performance 31

Layout 1 withholder 0j0j0j 0.2j0j0 0.5j0j0 0.8j0j0 1j0j0

OCB group 1 0.82 0.61 0.45 0.51

Layout 2 withholders 0.2j0.2j0 0.5j0.5j0 0.8j0.8j0 1j1j0

OCB group 0.74 0.49 0.27 0.25

Layout 3 withholders 0.2j0.2j0.2 0.5j0.5j0.5 0.8j0.8j0.8 1j 1j 1

OCB Group 0.68 0.39 0.15 0 Table I. OCB group performance in different withholding effort layouts

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Simulation results conrm H1 suggestions: H1. Effects of OCB on group effectiveness depend on the amount of effort the member provides on the job. More specically, it emerges that when members have a low tendency to withhold effort (that is in 0j0j0, 0.2j0j0, 0.2j0.2j0 e 0.2j0.2j0.2 layouts), OCB group does better than the TOC group. As other layouts occur, groups with simple TOC turn out to be more effective. These ndings conrm both sub-hypothesis: H1a. Helping behaviour with members providing less effort on the job decreases group effectiveness. H1b. Helping behaviour with members providing much effort on the job increases group effectiveness. Figure 2 shows these ndings and shows the effective combinations among level of effort and citizenship behaviour. L groups: effects on performance L group is composed by members who are able to observe others effort levels and to evaluate at every turn, whether citizenship behaviour is suitable or not. Table III shows the effectiveness of simulation model of a group that learns suitable behaviour (L), comparing the performance of group sharing OCB and group using a TOC. Several L groups with different tolerance thresholds are tested, where the same threshold for each OCB group is assumed. For example, in Table III threshold equal to 1 (T1) denotes

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Layout 1 withholder Table II. OCB and TOC groups performances in different withholding effort layouts 0j0j0j 0.2j0j0 0.5j0j0 0.8j0j0 1j0j0

Effectiveness OCB TOC 1.00 0.82 0.61 0.45 0.51 0.79 0.73 0.65 0.55 0.51

Layout 2 withholder 0.2j0.2j0 0.5j0.5j0 0.8j0.8j0 1j1j0

Effectiveness OCB TOC 0.74 0.49 0.27 0.25 0.68 0.52 0.35 0.25

Layout 3 withholder 0.2j0.2j0.2 0.5j0.5j0.5 0.8j0.8j0.8 1j1j1

Effectiveness OCB TOC 0.68 0.39 0.15 0.00 0.62 0.39 0.15 0.00

Organizational citizenship behaviour

Present

Ineffective

Effective

Absent

Effective

Ineffective

Figure 2. Effective combinations among levels of effort and OCB

Low Level of effort

High

Layouts 0j0j0j 0.2j0j0 0.5j0j0 0.8j0j0 1j0j0 0.2j0.2j0 0.5j0.5j0 0.8j0.8j0 1j1j0 0.2j0.2j0.2 0.5j0.5j0.5 0.8j0.8j0.8 1j1j1

OCB 1.00 0.82 0.61 0.45 0.51 0.74 0.49 0.27 0.25 0.68 0.39 0.15 0.00

TOC 0.79 0.73 0.65 0.55 0.51 0.68 0.52 0.35 0.25 0.62 0.39 0.15 0.00

T1 1.00 0.72 0.64 0.56 0.51 0.68 0.51 0.34 0.25 0.62 0.38 0.15 0.00

L group in different acceptance thresholds T5 T10 T20 T30 T40 T50 1.00 0.75 0.64 0.56 0.51 0.69 0.52 0.33 0.25 0.64 0.39 0.15 0.00 1.00 0.77 0.64 0.55 0.51 0.70 0.52 0.33 0.25 0.66 0.39 0.15 0.00 1.00 0.81 0.63 0.54 0.51 0.73 0.51 0.32 0.25 0.68 0.39 0.15 0.00 1.00 0.82 0.63 0.53 0.51 0.74 0.50 0.31 0.25 0.68 0.39 0.15 0.00 1.00 0.82 0.62 0.52 0.51 0.74 0.49 0.30 0.25 0.68 0.39 0.15 0.00 1.00 0.82 0.62 0.51 0.51 0.74 0.49 0.29 0.25 0.68 0.39 0.15 0.00

T60 1.00 0.82 0.61 0.50 0.51 0.74 0.49 0.28 0.25 0.68 0.39 0.15 0.00

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Table III. OCB, TOC and L groups: performances in different withholding effort layouts

that a single defection event is enough to be evaluated as negative and to be excluded from citizenship behaviour. Instead, T20 indicates that group members need to observe in their colleagues 20 withholding behaviours, before reaching a negative assessment. Results in Table III conrm that groups with learning members obtain both the advantages of OCB groups, when agents provide much effort on the job, and TOC groups, when withholding tendency increases. In each layout, the authors evaluate differences among the groups (OCB, TOC and L, from one to 60 thresholds) and the highest efcacy reached in that layout. In some layouts, the best performance is achieved by OCB group (for example, 0j0j0), in others by TOC (0.5j0j0), nally in others by L group (as T1 and T5 in 0.8j0j0). These differences are never higher than 0; in each layout, the group with difference equal to 0 is the one obtaining the best performance, while the other groups have differences lower than 0. Since the more effective performance is achieved by the group that comes closer to the best performance in all the layouts, what is needed is the sum of the differences in each group performance. Finally, by comparing the sums, the group with the higher sum achieves the best performance as a whole. Results demonstrate that the best effectiveness is reached by L group with 20 tolerance threshold (T20). Without including all the calculations, the authors give an account to show that L.T20 has a sum of differences equal to 2 0.10, while OCB products a 2 0.26 sum and TOC a 2 0.43 sum. Moreover, it is worth noting that every L group, in every threshold, results in a whole performance higher than that of OCB and TOC groups. Figure 3 shows that L.T20 effectiveness curve follows, from time to time, OCB and TOC curves, depending on which group guarantees the best performance in the layouts. When level of effort is high, L.T20 group produces a performance close to OCB group; as effort decreases, L.T20 group follows the TOC effectiveness. These results conrm the H2: H2. In groups composed of individuals who provide less effort, the best effectiveness is achieved with members who stop the collaboration with withholding effort members, and who continue the cooperation with the rest of them, putting into practice a dynamic and selective OCB.

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Discussion The main objective of this study was to improve the understanding of OCB effects on group performance. Even if results are preliminary and tentative, the virtual experiments offer many suggestions to the empirical research. The rst important nding demonstrated that groups behaving in an organizational citizenship manner are quite sensible to withholding actions. Individual idleness directly damages other members activities and therefore it produces a greater than proportional effectiveness loss. The second result reveals that the consequences of OCB on group effectiveness are mediated by the amount of effort the members provide on the job. Dealing with the combined effects of OCB and withholding effort, simulations show that OCB leads to performance improvement only if the level of effort is high. On the contrary, as effort decreases, the OCB produces a loss in effectiveness. This result contributes to the existing literature demonstrating that the effects of OCB on organization performance are not predetermined as a conceptual assumption, but that they depend on group members features, and sometimes they may produce a performance decrease instead of an increase. Furthermore, it offers a possible reason of failures in collaborative network (Parung and Bititci, 2006) and a plausible explanation to empirical research that lacks condence in the positive relation between OCB and group performance (Bolino et al., 2004; Choi, 2007; Dunlop and Lee, 2004; Ng and Van Dyne, 2005; Podsakoff and Mackenzie, 1994). The third relevant nding is that the best performance is reached by the group who is able to judge the colleagues and to reserve help only toward those members providing more effort. It suggested that instead of an egalitarian OCB, effectiveness is assured by a dynamic and selective OCB. This result improves the existing literature in several aspects. First, it overcomes the Chois warning showing that instead of a traditional OCB, which maintains the group existing relationships, a change-oriented OCB is more effective because it allows the social network to adapt to members features. Furthermore, it is coherent with Williams and Andersons (1991) work, and it underlines the importance of distinguishing the OCB from the organization, and from the members. Second, this work offers suggestions also to OCB antecedents. Indeed, it showed that OCB is effective when it is based on interpersonal relationships, while it could weaken the performance when it is produced by a general group cohesion. Third, since best performance emerges when each member adapts his or her behaviour to those of colleagues, the assumption that workers facing high-interdependence tasks have to be coordinated with a mutual adjustment mechanism, was conrmed (March and Simon, 1958; Mintzberg, 1979; Saaverda et al., 1993; Thompson, 1967; Van der Vegt et al., 2000,
1.0 Effectiveness 0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2 OCB TOC L.T20

Figure 3. OCB, TOC and L groups: performance in different withholding effort layouts

0.0 0.0.0 2.0.0 5.0.0 8.0.0 1.0.0 2.2.0 5.5.0 8.8.0 1.1.0 2.2.2 5.5.5 8.8.8 1.1.1

Layouts

2005; Van De Ven et al., 1976). Moreover, it emerges that a top-down implementation of OCB does not ensure a good performance. On the contrary, managers have to prefer a bottom-up strategy, where the employees themselves select the colleagues to help. This work can help practical managers too, since it warns them on the OCB gap and suggests that in the place of a blind OCB, the groups need to share a smart helping behaviour to cultivate altruism with people who work hard, and to exclude the others. Therefore, managers and organizational designers are required to stimulate a dynamic and selective OCB. It implies that, when people face high-interdependence tasks, supervisors have to encourage mutual adjustment and participation in decision making, while they have to reduce the hierarchical coordination. Limitations of this paper are strictly linked to the absence of empirical evidences. Bybuilding a simulation model, the authors provide internal and logical coherent hypotheses that are looking for eld analyzes in order to receive empirical validation. Other limitations lie on the model simplicity, thus more sophisticated models are needed to understand the effects of other variables on OCB effectiveness. For example, agents that, by observing their and others behaviour, could change their attitude to withhold effort are needed. Similarly, because group members may use communication to inuence other perceptions, communication strategies should be added in the model. By modelling a more complex behaviour, the researchers are challenged to model more sophisticated perception mechanisms, dening how agents perceive others behaviours and how they identify the withholder members. It is a common problem of behavioural pattern identication (Bazan et al., 2007; Bazan, 2006) that could be conveniently solved by classication algorithms (Bazan et al., 2007; Bazan, 2006; Bazan and Skowron, 2005; Nguyen et al., 2004). Nowadays there are many approaches for classiers constructing. In future researches, it could be worth comparing different classication algorithms to identify the learning rules that guarantee the most effective identication of withholders members and, consequently, that lead to the best group performance. Then, by validating these learning rules with empirical evidences, they could be conveniently modied and adapted in real life organizations to work as coordination mechanisms and routines.
References Albanese, R. and Van Fleet, D.D. (1985), Rational behavior in groups: the free-riding tendency, Academy of Management Review, Vol. 10, pp. 244-55. Alchian, A.A. and Demsetz, H. (1972), Production, information costs, and economic organization, American Economic Review, Vol. 62, pp. 777-95. Anderson, S.E. and Williams, L.J. (1996), Individual, job, and interpersonal predictors of helping behavior in organizations, Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 81, pp. 282-96. Bachrach, D.G., Powell, B.C., Bendoly, E. and Richey, R.G. (2006), Organizational citizenship behavior and performance evaluations: exploring the impact of task interdependence, Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 91, pp. 193-201. Barnard, C.I. (1938), The Functions of the Executive, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. Bazan, J.G. (2006), Behavioral pattern identication through rough set modelling, Fundamenta Informaticae, Vol. 72, pp. 37-50. Bazan, J.G. and Skowron, A. (2005), Classiers based on approximate reasoning schemes, in Dunin-Keplicz, B., Jankowski, A., Skowron, A. and Szczuka, M. (Eds), Monitoring, Security, and Rescue Tasks in Multiagent Systems MSRAS, Advances in Soft Computing, Springer, Heidelberg, pp. 191-202.

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Corresponding author Enrico Sevi can be contacted at: e.sevi@ec.univaq.it

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