Abstract

In today’s highly competitive environment, organisations are constantly looking for new ways to maximise employees’ work efforts. Effective functioning of an organisation depends largely on the employees’ efforts that extend beyond formal role requirements.

An organisation’s success increasingly depends on the knowledge, skills and abilities of employees, particularly when the employees help establish a set of core competencies that distinguish an organisation from its competitors. In order to enhance our understanding of what makes employees willing to go extra miles for their organisation, this study examines the phenomenon of organisational citizenship behaviour, specifically the relationship between organisational commitment, organisational justice, leadership style and organisational citizenship behaviour.

While investigating this relationship, the mediating effects of organisational politics on the relationship between organisational commitment, organisational justice, leadership style and organisational citizenship behaviour were also empirically tested. In this study, a sample of 458 bank managers was drawn from seven headquarters of commercial banks in Malaysia. Participation in this research was voluntary.

Data were gathered by means of a survey questionnaire. Hypothesis tests showed that the relationship between organisational commitment and perceived organisational politics is weak and not statistically significant. On the other hand, organisational justice and transformational leadership style have a negative and a positive influence, respectively on perceived organisational politics. Transactional leadership style and laissez faire do not have a significant influence on perceived organisational politics.

Lastly, the relationship between perceived organisational politics and organisational citizenship behaviour is negative and statistically significant. In sum, of the six hypotheses, four were supported by the survey data. Key implications of the survey findings for both theory and practice are discussed, research limitations are acknowledged, and directions for future research are suggested.