Should faith and hope be included in the employees' agenda?: linking P-O fit and citizenship behavior

Abstract

Purpose - Anomia (from the Greek, an-: absence, and -nomos: law) describes pessimistic feelings such as social detachment and little faith in human relations. This study seeks to examine an explanation of how and why person-organization fit (POF) - operationalized as value congruence - may influence organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) directed at the organization (OCB-O) and individuals (OCB-I). The thesis is that unfavorable POF will elicit employees' anomic feelings, which in turn will prompt them to reciprocate with decreased OCB. Design/methodology/approach - Data were collected from 84 of the 198 (42.4 percent) employees of a provincial Spanish Social Security agency. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test mediation. Findings - The results support that POF predicts anomic feelings that, in turn, fully mediate the link between POF and OCB-O, but not with OCB-I. Research limitations/implications - The employees surveyed have job conditions inherent to the peculiarities of the public sector that may limit the ability to extrapolate the findings to the private sector. Practical implications - The findings offer a better understanding of the way POF is able to affect OCB, and suggest that actions designed to promote POF may be useful in managing anomic processes in the workplace. Originality/value - Anomia as a mediator in the relationship between POF, as value congruence, and OCB has not been empirically studied.