Organizational Behaviour Comportement Organisationnel

al., 1995). However, the distinction between in-role and extra-role becomes problematic whenconsidering how employees perceive the scope of their own role in the organization (Morrison,1994; Organ, 1997). Specifically, Morrison (1994) conducted a study of personal role definitionsby employees and found that 18 of 20 so called “extra-role” OCB-type behaviors were rated as“in-role” by 50% or more of the sample. In addition, not a single one of these ratings evidenced asignificant positive correlation with similar ratings by supervisors.These results show that employees’ subjective role perceptions do not correspond well tosome formal and objective set of expectations for behavior. Extrapolating to the current model, ifthe way employees perceive behaviors as in-role or extra-role is highly variable, then theorganizational role most employees enact is probably not that of a “hired hand” (Dansereau,Graen, & Haga, 1975), who only performs the duties specified in a formal contract. A more likelyrole is that of a “valued member” (Lind & Tyler, 1988), or citizen, of the organization, andbehaviors in the enacted role are likely to include both formal duties and OCB. This conclusionsupports the argument above that the role is a flexible category, and that role enactment byemployees involves a selection from among a broad menu of possible behaviors. Thus, one couldspeak of an organizational citizen role as a fuzzy category (Lakoff, 1987), which includes formalrole behaviors that are core to the category, as well as discretionary role behaviors, which areperipheral. There is unlikely to be much ambiguity about the appropriateness of core rolebehaviors, such as carrying out work tasks, because everyone knows that an organizational citizenshould perform them and because they are part of formal task interdependencies in theorganizational structure (Thompson, 1967). In support of this contention, Meyer (1994) foundthat formal role clarity was not affected by social influence.Hence, I focus in this study on behaviors that are peripheral in the organizational citizenrole category, such as OCB, because their performance is discretionary (Organ, 1988). Thisdiscretion suggests that the choice of behaviors to include in role enactment by an individual maybe affected by the similar discretionary choices made by others. Evidence suggests that socialinfluence affects employee perceptions of OCB-related role definition (Morrison, 1994), butwhether social influence is also associated with performance of OCB role behavior is not clear.Demonstrating such influence would appear to be an important task because the link betweenperception and behavior is imperfect and because organizations and co-workers are more directlyaffected by actual behavior than by perceptions (Johns & Saks, 2001). Social influence duringrole enactment may affect choices about the discretionary because a social role serves not only asa guide for behaviors but also as a mutually understood label through which others make sense ofthe behavior performed by an actor (Callero, 1994; DiMaggio, 1992). In this sense, enactment ofan organizational member role involves a mutual consultation among occupants of the sameposition (i.e., employees) about which behaviors are understandable and acceptable for the theirsocial situation.To summarize, the theory proposes that employees enact the discretionary facets of a roleas organizational citizen by performing a set of OCB that can be chosen from a menu of possiblebehaviors. Because ambiguity exists about which of these behaviors are appropriate to perform ina given organization, role enactment is likely to be influenced by social information receivedthrough consultation with co-workers who enact the same role (i.e., peers). Consequently, oneshould observe similarity of observed behavior between peers. Below, I hypothesize about thetypes of relationships in which such social influence between co-workers might occur fordifferent kinds of OCB. Because the subject of investigation is social influence, I focus not on thespecific array of behavior enacted by an individual but on the extent of similarity between thebehaviors performed by pairs of actors (Erickson, 1988). This dyadic approach is consistent withthe study of social influence in organizational behavior (Ibarra & Andrews, 1993; Johanson,2000; Meyer, 1994).54