A Two-pronged Relationship of Skip-level Participation and Employees' Organizational Citizenship Behavior toward Other Individuals: The Moderating Role of Leader-leader Exchange

Abstract

This study investigates the influence of skip-level participation on employees’ organizational citizenship behavior toward other individuals (OCBI) through its effects on job satisfaction via a two-pronged parallel pathway that involves organization-based self-esteem (OBSE) and emotional exhaustion. Drawing on the conservation of resources (COR) theory (Hobfoll, 1989), this study hypothesizes that skip-level participation shows a positive relationship with OCBI via OBSE and job satisfaction but a negative relationship with OCBI via emotional exhaustion and job satisfaction, which suggests that skip-level participation may have conflicting effects (i.e., both positive and negative) on OCBI. This study further hypothesizes that the relationship between the skip-level leader and the direct leader, or leader-leader exchange (LLX), moderates these two pathways. The results of this empirical study, in which a two-wave survey was administered to 116 office employee and direct leader dyads in higher education institutes in Hong Kong, reveal that skip-level participation has a positive relationship with OCBI via OBSE and job satisfaction. However, contrary to expectation, skip-level participation showed a positive (rather than negative) relationship with OCBI via emotional exhaustion and job satisfaction, which suggests that skip-level participation indeed exerts a two-pronged positive influence on OCBI. LLX moderates the OBSE pathway such that this positive indirect relationship is stronger with a high level of LLX and weaker with a low level of LLX. However, LLX does not moderate the emotional exhaustion pathway, which suggests a strong role of skip-level participation in reducing emotional exhaustion, and this reduced level of emotional exhaustion in turn promotes OCBI.

Date of Award	3 Sept 2019
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	City University of Hong Kong
Supervisor	Catherine K LAM (Supervisor) & Muammer OZER (Supervisor)