ABSTRACT 
 
 
 
 
Title of Document: CREATING ORGANIZATIONAL CITIZENS: 
A QUASI-EXPERIMENTAL AND 
QUALITATIVE EXAMINATION OF 
SUPERVISOR- AND PEER-BASED 
INTERVENTIONS 
  
 Michael R. Parke, Doctor of Philosophy, 2016 
  
Directed By: Associate Professor, Subra Tangirala, 
Management & Organization Department 
 
 
Research suggests that supervisors and peers can help employees make sense of what 
is important or expected from them at work and, thereby, shape their behaviors. In 
this dissertation, I examine how employees’ organizational citizenship behaviors 
(OCB), such as helping and voice, are differentially affected by these two sources of 
influence over time. In particular, I compare the relative and joint effectiveness of 
two field interventions to enhance OCB: (a) a role clarification intervention in which 
supervisors are trained to set expectations for OCB for their employees and encourage 
them to engage in OCB and (b) a norm establishment intervention in which peers are 
trained to set expectations for each other and encourage each other to perform OCB. I 
utilize a mixed methods approach involving a quasi-field experiment to test for 
changes in OCB and qualitative data to explore the theoretical mechanisms over the 
course of three months in a large food processing plant. I find that role clarification 
  
interventions alone have immediate positive effects on OCB, whereas norm 
establishment interventions alone take a longer period of time to increase OCB. In 
addition, in the condition where both interventions were combined, norm 
establishment interventions weaken the effects of role clarification earlier on; 
however, at later stages in time, this pattern reverses as norm establishment enhances 
the effects of role clarification on OCB. Through these findings, I highlight how (a) 
organizations seeking quick increases in citizenship might be better off focusing on 
supervisors as sources of influence; (b) organizations need to persist with peer-
focused interventions to see positive gains; and (c) despite initial hurdles with peer-
focused interventions, over time, they can lead to the highest increases in OCB when 
combined with supervisor-focused interventions. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
CREATING ORGANIZATIONAL CITIZENS: A QUASI-EXPERIMENTAL AND 
QUALITATIVE EXAMINATION OF SUPERVISOR- AND PEER-BASED 
INTERVENTIONS 
 
 
 
By 
 
 
Michael Robert Parke 
 
 
 
 
 
Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the  
University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment 
of the requirements for the degree of 
Doctor of Philosophy 
2016 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Advisory Committee: 
Professor Subra Tangirala, Chair 
Professor Kathryn M. Bartol 
Professor Rellie Derfler-Rozin 
Professor Paul J. Hanges 
Professor Myeong-Gu Seo 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
© Copyright by 
Michael Robert Parke 
2016 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  ii 
 
Dedication 
To my family and my wife for their lifelong support and love. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  iii 
 
  
Table of Contents 
 
 
Dedication ..................................................................................................................... ii 
Table of Contents ......................................................................................................... iii 
List of Tables ............................................................................................................... iv 
List of Figures ............................................................................................................... v 
Chapter 1: Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 
Chapter 2: Theory & Hypotheses ................................................................................. 7 
Chapter 3: Overview of Studies .................................................................................. 18 
Chapter 4: Study 1 Methods, Results, & Discussion .................................................. 21 
Chapter 5: Study 2 Methods & Findings .................................................................... 38 
Chapter 6: General Discussion.................................................................................... 64 
Appendices .................................................................................................................. 71 
Tables .......................................................................................................................... 73 
Figures......................................................................................................................... 79 
Bibliography ............................................................................................................... 81 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  iv 
 
List of Tables 
 
Table 1: Means, Standard Deviations, and Correlations among Study 1 Variables…81 
 
Table 2: Analysis of Effects of Interventions on OCB Change Using Random 
Coefficient Modeling (Study 1)……………………………………………………...82 
 
Table 3: Coding OCB and Theoretical Mechanisms………………………………...83 
 
Table 4: Manipulation Checks for Ongoing Interventions…………………………..85 
  v 
 
List of Figures 
Figure 1: Interactive Effects of Role Clarification and Norm Establishment on 
Change in OCB 1 Month into the Intervention (T1)…………………………………87 
 
Figure 2: Interactive Effects of Role Clarification and Norm Establishment on 
Change in OCB 3 Months into the Intervention (T2)………………………………..88 
 
 
 
  1 
 
Chapter 1: Introduction 
A large body of evidence suggests that organizational citizenship behavior 
(OCB) – “performance that supports the social and psychological environment in 
which task performance takes place” (Organ, 1997: 95) – is a vital component of 
organizational functioning. When employees engage in OCB, such as such as helping 
and speaking up with constructive suggestions, their teams operate more effectively, 
and they provide valuable support to the organization in accomplishing its goals 
(Organ, Podsakoff, & Mackenzie, 2006; Podsakoff, Whiting, Podsakoff, & Blume, 
2009). Given OCB’s critical role for workplace functioning, scholars have 
acknowledged that employees often view OCB as an important and expected part of 
their jobs (Ilgen & Hollenbeck, 1991; Lam, Hui, & Law, 1999; Morrison, 1994; 
Organ, 1997). Equally important, many studies find that when employees view OCB 
as expected at work, they are much more likely to perform these positive behaviors 
(Jiao, Richards, & Hackett, 2013; McAllister, Kamdar, Morrison, & Turban, 2007; 
Morrison, 1994; Tepper & Taylor, 2003). 
Despite these findings, research examining expectations as an antecedent to 
OCB has largely failed to investigate whom the expectations come from and whether 
that matters. Multiple theoretical perspectives suggest that supervisors and peers 
represent two fundamental sources of influence in organizational settings that help 
employees understand what is important or expected at work and, consequently, 
shape their behaviors (Cialdini & Trost, 1998; Ilgen & Hollenbeck, 1991; Katz & 
Kahn, 1978a). In the context of OCB, however, we know little regarding whether 
supervisor or peer sources of expectations at work differentially motivate OCB 
  2 
 
behavior and their sustenance over time (Lemoine, Parsons, & Kansara, 2015). For 
example, must supervisors drive and manage employees’ expectations of citizenship 
to elicit these behaviors or can fellow group members’ expectations of one another 
motivate performance of OCB (Ehrhart & Naumann, 2004; Yaffe & Kark, 2011)? 
When are supervisors or peers more effective in changing OCB from focal employees 
(Chiaburu & Harrison, 2008)? And would supervisor- and peer-based expectations 
substitute or complement each other in facilitating OCB? Because we lack answers to 
such important questions, we cannot provide guidance to organizations and managers 
on how best to instill and manage expectations of citizenship at work to promote 
these behaviors (Bolino & Turnley, 2003). Without such knowledge then, 
organizations are likely underutilizing or undermining their capacity to create and 
cultivate a workforce of organizational citizens. 
In this dissertation, I aim to address these theoretical and practical issues by 
examining how expectations from supervisor and peers differentially influence 
employee OCB over time. Specifically, I examine the unique and interactive 
effectiveness of two field interventions designed to tap these two sources of 
expectations to enhance employee OCB: (a) a role clarification intervention in which 
supervisors promote expectations for and encourage employees to perform OCB and 
(b) a norm establishment intervention in which team members are trained to promote 
expectations for and encourage each other to perform OCB.  
Integrating time with organizational roles and norms research (Bettenhausen 
& Murnighan, 1985; Chatman & Flynn, 2001; Ehrhart & Naumann, 2004; George & 
Jones, 2000; Katz & Kahn, 1978a; Kozlowski & Klein, 2000; Mitchell & James, 
  3 
 
2001), I propose that supervisor-based role clarification interventions are relatively 
more effective than peer-based norm establishment interventions earlier on in time. 
That is, I suggest that role clarification interventions have positive effects on OCB 
shortly after they are introduced, whereas norm establishment increase OCB only 
after a longer period of time has elapsed. As for joint effectiveness, I build theory for 
how norm establishment interventions weaken the positive effects of role clarification 
earlier on in time (competing effect). However, later on, I propose peer-based norm 
interventions complement the supervisor-driven role interventions to generate the 
highest levels of OCB from employees (complementary effect). To examine the 
proposed theory, I employ the embedded design of the mixed methods approach 
(Creswell & Plano Clark, 2011), using a quasi-experiment to test for behavioral 
changes and qualitative data to explore underlying theoretical mechanisms. 
This dissertation makes several contributions to existing knowledge on OCB, 
the role of time in management theories, and social influence. First, in studying the 
relation between expectations and OCB, past research has largely overlooked sources 
of expectations (McAllister et al., 2007; Morrison, 1994; Tepper & Taylor, 2003), or 
alternatively, it has studied supervisor or peer influence on OCB independently 
(Chen, Takeuchi, & Shum, 2013; Yaffe & Kark, 2011). This is problematic because 
(a) it prevents an understanding of when each source is more effective in motivating 
OCB and because (b) we cannot understand the effect of one source on OCB without 
understanding the effect of the other (Chiaburu & Harrison, 2008). To that end, I 
provide theory for why supervisor-based role interventions work faster in changing 
OCB than peer-based norm interventions. In addition, although common wisdom 
  4 
 
might suggest that greater expectations from supervisors and peers would create 
stronger motivation in focal employees to enact OCB, I propose that these effects 
depend on time. Specifically, while norm establishment interventions complement 
role clarification interventions in later stages of time to enhance employee 
performance of OCB, earlier on in time, these peer-based interventions weaken the 
effects driven by supervisor interventions. Thus, this dissertation helps explain why 
supervisor and peer expectations for OCB interactively produce different effects 
depending on time.  
Second, I demonstrate how time plays a critical role regarding the effects of 
role clarification and norm establishment interventions on employee OCB (George & 
Jones, 2000; Mitchell & James, 2001; Shipp & Cole, 2015). As George and Jones 
(2000: 670) write: “Although theories in organizational behavior, more often than 
not, specify relationships among constructs in causal terms…differences in rates of 
change are often left unspecified.” In this context, I show how speed and rates of 
change matter in terms of different sources of expectations influencing performance 
of OCB. Also, by incorporating time as a component of theory building (Mitchell & 
James, 2001), I show how time (e.g., earlier on versus later on) can serve as another 
critical condition that helps explicate when relations between constructs, in this case 
expectations and OCB, are stronger versus weaker. Finally, I contribute to new lines 
of OCB inquiry investigating how individuals’ OCB changes over time by identifying 
supervisor and peer expectations as key antecedents of these changes (Lemoine et al., 
2015). 
  5 
 
Third, this dissertation contributes to research on employee social influence. 
Although multiple streams of research have identified that employees derive 
expectations or responsibility for work behaviors primarily from either their managers 
or their peers (Barker, 1993; Ehrhart & Naumann, 2004; Ilgen & Hollenbeck, 1991; 
Ilies, Nahrgang, & Morgeson, 2007; Katz & Kahn, 1978a), most studies separately 
investigate these processes. This prevents an understanding to how manager or peer 
influences may behave together in influencing employee behavior. By integrating 
these approaches, I provide theory for how these two primary sources of expectations 
impact employee behavior.  
Finally, I provide an empirical contribution of helping increase the causal 
inference of the relation between expectations and OCB. Although research 
consistently claims that employees viewing OCB as expected part of work will 
increase their OCB (Morrison, 1994; Organ et al., 2006), most, if not all, studies 
investigating this relationship have been cross-sectional (e.g., Jiao et al., 2013). This 
is a concern given that employees may naturally perform citizenship behaviors due to 
their personality traits (Organ et al., 2006) and then to make their beliefs consistent 
with their behaviors, adopt these behaviors into their perceptions of expectations at 
work. Thus, to provide greater confidence in expectations as an antecedent to OCB, I 
employ a quasi-experiment in a real organization to test the proposed relationships. 
This also addresses another empirical gap in which research has often failed to 
examine the effects of different possible organizational interventions to increase OCB 
(Bolino & Turnley, 2003).  
  6 
 
I begin with a brief overview of OCB, role clarification interventions, and 
norm establishment interventions. Next, I propose how role clarification and norm 
establishment interventions independently impact employee OCB over time. Then, I 
develop theory for their interactive effects, and similarly, how the effects play out 
over time. Following this, I present the methods, results, and a general discussion. 
 
  7 
 
 
Chapter 2: Theory & Hypotheses 
OCB and Expectations for OCB 
OCB is defined as “performance that supports the social and psychological 
environment in which task performance takes place” (Organ, 1997: 95). It was 
originally conceptualized as voluntary or discretionary behavior (Smith, Organ, & 
Near, 1983). However, many scholars note the discretionary aspect of OCB is often a 
continuum where employees vary in the extent to which they view these behaviors as 
discretionary (Ilgen & Hollenbeck, 1991; McAllister et al., 2007; Morrison, 1994). 
Because of this, many researchers have removed discretionary as a defining feature of 
OCB and instead focus the conceptualization on the key behaviors (e.g., helping, 
generalized compliance, initiative, voice) that support the social and psychological 
environment where tasks are completed (Organ, 1997; Podsakoff et al., 2009).  
Taking this further, studies have shown that defining OCB as in-role, or as an 
expected set of behaviors at work (Katz & Kahn, 1978a), tends to be one of the 
strongest predictors of employees’ performance of these behaviors (Kim, Van Dyne, 
Kamdar, & Johnson, 2013; McAllister et al., 2007; Morrison & Phelps, 1999; Tepper 
& Taylor, 2003; Van Dyne, Kamdar, & Joireman, 2008). Given this, knowledge 
regarding the processes of why or how employees incorporate OCB as a part of their 
roles is paramount to understanding how organizations can enhance employees’ 
performance of them (Morrison, 1994; Tepper, Lockhart, & Hoobler, 2001). In this 
context, I focus on employee expectations for OCB as a key predictor of citizenship 
  8 
 
behaviors and build theory for how different organizational interventions uniquely 
impact performance of citizenship. 
I define expectations for OCB as a belief that one is responsible for or must 
justify his or her (lack of) OCB to others. The concept of expectations is used in 
multiple theoretical paradigms including role theory (Ilgen & Hollenbeck, 1991; Katz 
& Kahn, 1978a; Morrison, 1994) and group norms research (Cialdini & Trost, 1998; 
Ehrhart & Naumann, 2004). As alluded to above, there are two primary sources of 
expectations in work settings: supervisors (or direct leaders or bosses) and peers (or 
members in a focal employee’s work group or team).  
I suggest that organizations use two fundamental types of interventions – 
intentional and systematic processes implemented to achieve desired outcomes – 
when trying to increase expectations for OCB (Bolino & Turnley, 2003; Organ et al., 
2006). The first relies on supervisors, in which they aim to increase expectations for 
OCB in a dyadic fashion through role formation processes (Katz & Kahn, 1978a). 
That is, supervisors help individual employees clarify their roles and discuss with 
them what is (and is not) expected from them at work (Morrison, 1994). The second 
approach involves peers where the managers aim to establish peer norms for OCB in 
their groups and teams (Bolino & Turnley, 2003). Peer expectations for OCB are 
often discussed in terms of established peer norms for OCB (Ehrhart & Naumann, 
2004). Norms are informal rules that govern group members’ behaviors (Feldman, 
1984) and include both descriptive (what behavior occurs regularly) and injunctive 
(what behaviors should occur) (Miller & Prentice, 2016; Morris, Hong, Chiu, & Liu, 
2015). Thus, when groups have accepted norms for OCB, peers will promote and 
  9 
 
enforce these expectations to one another (Grant & Patil, 2012). Below, I describe 
these two approaches in more detail. 
Supervisors as Role Clarifiers  
Drawing from role theory (Katz & Kahn, 1978a), I use the terminology OCB 
role clarification interventions to describe actions by supervisors that target individual 
members to clarify or increase the extent to which OCB is incorporated into their 
individual roles (Bolino & Turnley, 2003; Schaubroeck, Ganster, Sime, & Ditman, 
1993). In role clarification, OCB expectations are conveyed and driven by supervisors 
to group members (i.e., one source to multiple recipients). Such actions by 
supervisors involved in OCB role clarification include discussing, promoting, and 
encouraging individual employees to perform OCB (Bolino & Turnley, 2003; 
Morrison, 1994). For example, role clarification interventions might include 
supervisors providing written role descriptions to employees or ongoing dyadic 
communication between leaders and employees. In addition, supervisors reinforce 
these OCB roles by offering various rewards (e.g., more formal rewards such as 
bonuses and promotions or less formal rewards such as gratitude and recognition) or 
punishment (e.g., negative feedback or corrective action) when employees engage or 
do not engage in OCB, respectively (Katz & Kahn, 1978a). Moreover, organizations 
rely on supervisors to handle challenges or lack of compliance with OCB role 
expectations in role clarification interventions. For example, if an employee is 
refusing to help others in his or her group, then a supervisor would speak with the 
employee to correct the lack of helping. All of these actions by supervisors in role 
  10 
 
clarification interventions aim to help employees clearly understand that OCB is an 
expected part of their work and individual roles.  
Peers as Norm Establishers 
For the second approach, I draw on norms research (Cialdini & Trost, 1998) 
to use the label of OCB norm establishment interventions to describe team-based 
processes to increase peer norms (descriptive and injunctive) regarding OCB (Barker, 
1993; Bolino & Turnley, 2003; Ehrhart & Naumann, 2004; Grant & Patil, 2012). 
Norm establishment is differentiated from role clarification interventions in that the 
source of expectation primarily comes from multiple peer members in the group (i.e., 
multiple sources to multiple recipients) as opposed to solely from the supervisor. The 
focus of OCB norm establishment is for team members to discuss, promote, and 
encourage one another to perform OCB (Ehrhart & Naumann, 2004). Examples 
include group meetings to discuss expectations for OCB or ongoing peer-to-peer 
communication to hold each other accountable for OCB. In addition, peers reinforce 
these OCB norms by providing rewards (e.g., social recognition, acceptance, and 
exchange) or punishment (e.g., negative feedback, rejection) to group members who 
perform or do not perform OCB, respectively (Cialdini & Trost, 1998). Furthermore, 
in OCB norm establishment interventions, organizations rely on group members (in 
addition to supervisors) to deal with any challenges or resistance to OCB norms 
(Barker, 1993; Bettenhausen & Murnighan, 1991). For example, if an employee fails 
to show initiative when noticing an error in production, a team member may speak up 
or train the employee on the correct way to respond when identifying an error (Lepine 
& Van Dyne, 2001). Altogether, the intention of norm establishment interventions is 
  11 
 
to create strong group norms for OCB so that group members not only take 
responsibility and ownership over OCB, but also that they hold one another 
accountable to perform these behaviors (i.e., enforce OCB norms). 
As seen from above descriptions, both role clarification and norm 
establishment interventions will likely create stronger expectations for OCB among 
focal employees and subsequently increase their performance of these behaviors. 
Given this, the important question for organizational research is to understand when 
each approach is more effective in increasing and maintaining OCB in organizations. 
To answer this question, I draw on the role of time (George & Jones, 2000; Mitchell 
& James, 2001; Shipp & Cole, 2015). 
The Relative Effects of Role Clarification and Norm Establishment over Time 
I propose that OCB role clarification interventions will result in higher levels 
of individual OCB more quickly than OCB norm establishment interventions. I 
propose this for two reasons. First, because norm establishment interventions involve 
communication from multiple peer sources to focal employees about OCB 
expectations (Ehrhart & Naumann, 2004), initially, these expectations will likely have 
greater variance in what peers communicate as appropriate standards of behavior. For 
example, some members may communicate high expectations of OCB, whereas 
others communicate low to no expectations. Research highlights that when groups try 
to create new norms or change existing norms, members often begin with different 
perceptions of what is appropriate behavior and how much of it should be enacted 
(Bettenhausen & Murnighan, 1991; Ehrhart & Naumann, 2004; Grant & Patil, 2012). 
Early on, this variance will likely prevent increases in citizenship behaviors since 
  12 
 
common and agreed up on standards do not exist among group members (e.g., 
Bommer, Miles, & Grover, 2003). In addition, research shows that it takes time for 
group members to resolve variance in expectations and norms in order adopt agreed 
upon expectations that are communicated and enforced (Barker, 1993; Bettenhausen 
& Murnighan, 1991).  
In contrast, I propose that OCB role clarification interventions will not suffer 
from this issue of more noise and variance in OCB standards early on, and therefore, 
they will lead to positive changes in OCB among employees. In OCB role 
clarification interventions, expectations come from the supervisor, which represents 
one (as opposed to multiple) highly legitimate (as opposed to less legitimate) source 
of power (Katz & Kahn, 1978a). Because of this, role clarification interventions 
should more quickly establish agreement and clarity between a supervisor and his or 
her individual employees regarding OCB expectations. 
Second, I expect role clarification to have more immediate effects on 
employees’ OCB earlier than norm establishment interventions because supervisors 
will have more skill and experience (relative to peers) in communicating and 
enforcing expectations at work than peer group members. Supervisors are typically 
those employees who have moved up the ranks in the organization and therefore have 
some experience managing employees. This may include experience or skills with 
communicating expectations, providing feedback, and rewarding or punishing 
employees for good and bad performance, respectively. Given this, supervisors (as 
opposed to peers) are likely more effective in communicating, encouraging, and 
enforcing OCB expectations. For example, in addition to supervisors having 
  13 
 
legitimate power in organizations (Katz & Kahn, 1978a), they already have a role to 
perform this function for other work behaviors (e.g., task performance). Thus, early 
on in time, individual employees will likely be more receptive and accountable to 
influence from supervisors than from peers who have less experience, legitimacy, and 
skills in promoting and holding others accountable to standards.  
In addition, the normative process of expectation setting and enforcement in 
organizations tends to come in a top-down fashion (i.e., from supervisors to 
employees) as opposed to horizontal flow (peer-to-peer) (Barker, 1993; Katz & Kahn, 
1978b). Thus, it may take a while for peers in the norm establishment conditions to 
accept a new role of promoting OCB expectations, monitoring their peers, and 
enforcing these behaviors. Similarly, it will likely also take time for group members 
to accept and receive this influence from peers since it deviates from the norm of 
supervisors as the typical source of expectations. Given this, if employees fail to meet 
OCB expectations (e.g., do not help out), then supervisors in role clarification 
interventions are more likely (a) to address the situation and (b) to cause change in 
behavior from the employee than peers in norm establishment interventions. In other 
words, in norm establishment interventions earlier on, group members might be less 
likely to hold one another accountable to citizenship. Thus, without possible sanctions 
from group members for not engaging in OCB, it should be easier for individual 
members to pass OCB responsibility onto others in the early stages of norm 
establishment interventions (Darley & Latané, 1968; Schwartz & Clausen, 1970).  
Given the reasons outlined above, role clarification interventions should more quickly 
increase employee expectations and OCB than norm establishment interventions. 
  14 
 
Hypothesis 1: OCB role clarification interventions have a positive effect on 
OCB change earlier than OCB norm establishment interventions. 
 Thus far I have discussed the relative effects of OCB role clarification 
interventions compared to OCB norm establishment interventions in changing 
employee OCB. However, most employees work in organizations where expectations 
regarding citizenship can be driven by both supervisors and peers (Katz & Kahn, 
1978a). Therefore, the question is how would both of these interventions operate in 
tandem to influence OCB? For example, would peer expectations in norm 
establishment interventions help reinforce and complement supervisor expectations, 
or could they perhaps detract from and interfere with the strong expectations that 
supervisors provide? To answer these questions, I once again incorporate the role of 
time.  
The Interactive Effects of Role Clarification and Norm Establishment on OCB 
Early on, I propose that norm establishment interventions will weaken the 
positive effects of OCB role clarification interventions on employee OCB for two 
reasons. The first is what I refer to as learning interference. In models of team 
development, individual members progress sequentially through different stages of 
learning their own individual roles and their team member roles (Kozlowski, Gully, 
Nason, & Smith, 1999). Theory suggests that team members must first learn what is 
expected of them (individual role) before they can understanding how to 
communicate and promote expectations of others (team member role) (Kozlowski et 
al., 1999). For example, Kozlowski et al.’s (1999) theory on knowledge compilation 
in teams outlines how knowledge about one’s role is required before people can 
  15 
 
develop competencies to communicate and work across dyadic interdependencies. In 
the context of OCB then, individual employees may first need to learn what is 
expected of them in terms of their own helping, initiative, and voice behaviors before 
they can promote and hold other team members accountable to these citizenship 
standards. Thus, an OCB norm establishment intervention, which promotes team 
members to communicate expectations and hold each other accountable for OCB, 
may in fact interfere with these employees’ ability to learn what is expected of them 
individually, which occurs in role clarification. As a result, early on in time, if 
organizations simultaneously try to establish and enforce peer OCB norms in addition 
to trying to increase the extent to which individuals incorporate OCB into their roles, 
the norm establishment interventions may interfere and weaken the effects of role 
clarification on OCB change. 
The second reason relates to how, at first, peers may dilute the clear 
expectations that supervisors establish. For example, supervisors likely set clear 
expectations for each individual member regarding their OCB in role clarification 
interventions because the expectations come from one skilled source of influence. 
Adding on top of this a norm establishment intervention in which, at initial stages, 
peers are less experienced and skilled to promote and hold team members accountable 
for OCB (Gersick & Hackman, 1990), will likely weaken supervisor’s clear 
expectations. Stated differently, instead of having one primary, clear, and consistent 
source of OCB expectations from their supervisor in role clarification interventions, 
members that also receive a norm establishment intervention will face communication 
about OCB from peers that may not be as clear and consistent because their peers are 
  16 
 
still developing these competencies. Due to this additional noise or inconsistency of 
expectations from peers, a norm establishment intervention will likely weaken the 
strong effects role clarification interventions have on OCB change early on in time. 
This claim is backed by some empirical findings that show variance in OCB 
perceptions within teams (e.g., variance in how much members perceive one another 
to perform citizenship) actually reduces their own individual OCB (Bommer et al., 
2003; Naumann & Ehrhart, 2011; Raver, Ehrhart, & Chadwick, 2012). For these 
reasons, I propose the following interaction hypothesis. 
Hypothesis 2: Early on, the positive effect of OCB role clarification 
interventions on OCB change is weaker in the presence of OCB norm 
establishment interventions. 
At later stages in time, I propose that OCB norm establishment should 
strengthen the positive effects of OCB role clarification on OCB. Research indicates 
that shared group norms take time to form or change (Barker, 1993; Ehrhart & 
Naumann, 2004; Gersick & Hackman, 1990; Kozlowski et al., 1999). In the case of 
groups receiving a norm establishment intervention, as members interact in a group 
and develop a common understanding of expectations along with the skills and 
experience to hold one another accountable, they should develop stronger group 
norms for how members should perform citizenship as time goes on (Bommer et al., 
2003; Ehrhart & Naumann, 2004). Thus at later stages in time, employees likely have 
both supervisors and peers reinforcing the same high expectations. Furthermore, at 
later stages in time, group members will better understand their team member roles in 
which they can and should hold one another accountable for OCB standards (Barker, 
  17 
 
1993; Kozlowski et al., 1999). This enhanced understanding coupled with greater 
comfort and ability in holding peers accountable should make it more likely that 
employees actually hold one another accountable to OCB at later stages. In this 
context, research shows that peer influence can be a strong form of control on 
individual behavior when groups have established peer norms (Barker, 1993; 
Bettenhausen & Murnighan, 1991). Thus, combining the strong influence of 
supervisors in role clarification intervention with the strong peer norms in norm 
establishment interventions enables a complementary effect where both supervisors 
and peers promote OCB, reward those who engage in these behaviors, and punish 
members who fail to perform OCB. These combined effects at later stages in time 
should lead to high clarity and strength of expectations for OCB and thus generate 
high accountability for employees to engage in citizenship behaviors. 
Hypothesis 3: Later on, the positive effect of OCB role clarification 
interventions on OCB change is stronger in the presence of OCB norm 
establishment interventions. 
 
  18 
 
Chapter 3: Overview of Studies 
To test and further expand the proposed theory, I employed the embedded 
design from mixed methods research (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2011). This approach 
begins with conducting a field experiment, which is highly useful for increasing 
inferences of internal and external validity (Shadish, Cook, & Campbell, 2002). In 
Study 1, I used a quasi-experiment (Shadish et al., 2002) to test for the effects of role 
clarification and norm establishment interventions on changes in employee OCB over 
time. The second aspect of the embedded design involves using qualitative data to 
explore the theoretical processes of the results found in the initial field experiment, 
which combines the strengths of field experiment with the richness and flexibility of 
qualitative methodology (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2011; Fine & Elsbach, 2000; 
Kaplan, 2016; Locke & Golden-Biddle, 2002). This mixed methods approach also 
allows for triangulation of results (Jick, 1979), and it is recommended for 
intermediate theory development where some theoretical bases exist but new 
theoretical processes are being studied (Edmondson & McManus, 2007). For 
example, Edmondson and McManus (2007) recommend such an approach when 
proposing relationships between established constructs (in this case OCB) and new 
constructs (OCB role clarification and OCB norm establishments). Furthermore, 
scholars suggest using a qualitative study after a field experiment in order to (a) 
“understand in more depth how the mechanisms worked in a theoretical model”; (b) 
“to determine if the processes in conducting the trial had treatment fidelity”; and (c) 
“to help explain quantitative outcomes” that were found in the initial experiment 
(Creswell & Plano Clark, 2011: 192). In other words, a qualitative follow-up study 
  19 
 
greatly helps in understanding and interpreting the processes and results of 
experiments conducted in the field due the noisy nature of field contexts (as opposed 
to a more controlled lab experiment) (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2011). Finally, other 
scholars have recommended a mixed methods approach when trying to understand 
the role of time in theoretical models as it can help provide a more complete picture 
of how processes unfold over time (George & Jones, 2000). Thus, in Study 2, I 
conducted semi-structured interviews (Charmaz, 2006) at the culmination of the 
interventions to facilitate these goals. 
Research Setting 
This research took place in a large food processing plant in the Northeastern 
United States called Food Co1. Food Co. specializes in making healthy, ready-to-eat 
food items, such as salads, sandwiches, wraps, and fruit cups, that are sold at grocery 
and convenience stores. The studies in this research dealt with employees that worked 
primarily in the production area of the plant (as opposed to front office employees). 
There were three reasons why I focused on production employees. First, the 
management team of Food Co. was most interested in improving company practices 
that would encourage production employees to engage in higher levels of OCB. In 
line with existing evidence, they felt production employees needed to greatly improve 
their OCB if their company was to improve their performance (Podsakoff et al., 
2009). Managers felt OCB was one of the most important aspects of employees’ 
contributions to the organization. Second, the separate departments and the physical 
layout of the plant nicely enabled the needed separation among production employees 
to form natural experimental groupings for the quasi-experimental design. Third, 
                                                 
1 I use pseudonyms for the company name and all names of employees. 
  20 
 
production employees was a highly homogenous group, which enabled creating 
experimental conditions in which employees did not significantly differ on key 
attributes.  
Production employees work in the “fridge” – a temperature controlled 
warehouse at approximately 35-37 degrees Fahrenheit where all food products are 
stored, manufactured, and shipped. Production is separated into eight different 
departments: 4 different Production Rooms, Maintenance, Warehouse, Sanitation, and 
Quality Assurance (QA). All products are made in the different production rooms in 
assembly line fashion; Maintenance is responsible for maintaining the quality of the 
production equipment and building; Warehouse employees assemble containers 
(“totes”) of different products to ship as well as receive and organize raw materials 
used for producing products; Sanitation employees are responsible for keeping all 
areas of the plant clean and meeting sanitation and hygienic standards (e.g., no litter 
on the floors inside or outside the building); and QA employees ensure that all 
products meet quality standards. All employees were paid hourly wages. Besides 
maintenance and QA positions, labor was unskilled; that is, the education and training 
required for the position was approximately equal. Departments subdivide into 
smaller groups that were separated by either the area of the plant where they worked 
(e.g., people who worked on production line 1 versus line 2) or by the shift they 
worked (e.g., first versus second shift). Each department had exactly one manager, 1-
3 assistant managers depending on size, and one supervisor (called a “lead”) for each 
subgroup within the department. 
 
  21 
 
Chapter 4: Study 1 Methods, Results, & Discussion 
Procedure  
 Treatment assignment. I implemented a 2 (no role clarification vs. role 
clarification) × 2 (no norm establishment vs. norm establishment) quasi-experiment in 
which natural groupings of employees were assigned to one of the four experimental 
conditions (Shadish et al., 2002). I used three criteria to group employees prior to 
randomly assigning treatment conditions in order to eliminate plausible threats to 
internal validity (Shadish et al., 2002). First, I tried to maintain balanced cells among 
experimental conditions with similar sample size. For example, two of the production 
rooms had substantially more employees than other departments. Second, I ensured 
that employees who worked together would all be in the same experimental 
condition. Given that departments were largely isolated and employees worked 
primarily with other employees in their same department, this criterion was relatively 
easy to meet. This criteria helped prevent any treatment diffusion, which is when 
treatment from one condition spills over to other experimental conditions (Shadish et 
al., 2002). After creating clusters based on these criteria, I randomly assigned these 
clusters to the four treatment conditions. This resulted in four relatively equal 
experimental conditions: the control group (no role clarification and no norm 
establishment), the role clarification condition, the norm establishment condition; and 
the role clarification and norm establishment condition.  
 Homogeneity of experimental groupings. This field experiment is a quasi-
experiment because individuals (the level of analysis of the outcome variable) were 
not randomly assigned to treatment conditions (Shadish et al., 2002). Given this, I 
  22 
 
checked for whether groups across experimental conditions differed on key 
parameters, which such analysis is sometimes referred to as (Rosenbaum & Rubin, 
1983; Shadish et al., 2002). These included demographic variables such as gender and 
cultural background (did demographic composition of groups significantly differ 
across conditions?), hours worked (did groups differ in the amount of time they 
worked across conditions?), and job tenure (did groups have different levels of 
experience across conditions?). Furthermore, I also tested for differences in wage 
amounts across conditions. For production employees, hourly wage was a strong 
indicator of level of skill, education, or expertise needed for the position. Of these 
variables, only job tenure significantly differed across conditions and was included as 
a control variable (see measures section). This technique is often referred to as 
propensity score matching (Rosenbaum & Rubin, 1983). Overall, this analysis helps 
provide evidence that the experimental conditions are relatively homogenous on 
several key parameters. 
Interventions 
Pre-intervention work. I performed pre-experiment work to help improve the 
quality of the interventions (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2011). The development of the 
interventions occurred over the course of three months. To begin, I met with 
production managers and conducted around 60 interviews with supervisors and 
employees to learn more about (a) the impediments to OCB currently faced by the 
organization, (b) what OCB are important for the organization, and (c) feasible ways 
to intervene to increase OCB. Interviews and meetings revealed two major inhibitors 
of OCB, which aligned with the theoretical arguments regarding expectations for 
  23 
 
OCB. That is, employees lacked clear and consistent standards for OCB (e.g., 
different supervisors had different expectations for OCB) or there was a general lack 
of perceived expectations for OCB (e.g., “It does not matter if I help out as long as I 
do my job”).  
In addition, this process led to identifying seven citizenship behaviors in 
which managers believed were most relevant and important to their organization, 
which aligned with theoretical dimensions of OCB. These included helping (assisting 
others with their work), generalized compliance (“general adherence to the spirit as 
well as the letter of the rules or norms that define a cooperative system”; Organ et al., 
2006: 19), context-specific compliance (compliance directed toward specific 
organizational goals such as santiation), initiative (anticipating problems and taking 
necessary actions to address them), safety (compliance with safety procedures and 
active participation in trying to improve safety at work; Neal & Griffin, 2006), voice 
(speaking up with constructive suggestions in order to change or improve the status 
quo), and courtesy (being considerate to others to avoid interpersonal confrontations) 
(Dekas, Bauer, Welle, Kurkoski, & Sullivan, 2013; Hofmann, Morgeson, & Gerras, 
2003; LePine, Erez, & Johnson, 2002; Organ et al., 2006; Podsakoff et al., 2009; 
Podsakoff, Mackenzie, Paine, & Bachrach, 2000; Van Dyne, Cummings, & Parks, 
1995). Each of these behaviors not only maps onto the conceptualization of OCB, 
which is a broad concept comprised of the many behaviors that support “the social 
and psychological environment” (Organ, 1997: 95), but they also have been identified 
as specific citizenship dimensions in past research (Podsakoff et al., 2000). These 
  24 
 
seven OCB were then written in manager’s own words, institutionalized, and referred 
to as “The Food Co. 7.” 
Intervention implementation. I utilized company personnel (as opposed to 
external parties) to launch and train participants as they are were in the best position 
to do so. Managers rolled out interventions to supervisors and employees during a 
kick-off meeting that explained what Food Co. was trying to do and why, introduced 
them to The Food Co. 7, and started the experimental conditions. These meetings first 
occurred with supervisors only, and then both managers and supervisors conducted 
the kick-of meetings for employees. The meetings lasted about one hour. All sessions 
were exactly the same except the last 15-20 minutes, in which managers introduced 
and began the separate experimental conditions. For employees in the control group, 
their meeting lasted about half the time. Managers of the control group explained the 
research that was being conducted and informed employees that after the research is 
finished, their departments will have the opportunity to go through the training and 
changes (Grant & Wall, 2008). I attended all but two of 30 meetings as an observer, 
which occurred on one day for the supervisors (8 total sessions), and two weeks later, 
occurred on two consecutive days for all employees (22 sessions). 
Role clarification intervention. The role clarification intervention involved 
three components that were designed and chosen because of their alignment with 
theoretical role formation processes (Katz & Kahn, 1978a), their feasibility to 
implement given various organizational constraints, and their ability to utilize the 
organization’s existing practices and routines. First, in the last 15-20 minutes of the 
kick-off meeting, employees completed a worksheet in which they wrote why each of 
  25 
 
The Food Co. 7 principles are important to them and how they will implement it in 
their work. This exercise was designed to make employees active participants in 
clarifying their roles as opposed to passive recipients of role instructions from their 
managers. The goal was to elicit employee participation and help employees develop 
an understanding to why OCB is an important part of their work.  
The second part of the intervention involved the ongoing role clarification that 
occurred as employees worked. Employees received a small badge with The Food Co. 
7, which employees kept with them at all times when they worked. The purpose of 
the badge was to reinforce and make salient employee’s OCB roles while working. 
Also, supervisors used these badges to help instill OCB expectations with employees 
and reinforce the OCB roles (e.g., interviews revealed that supervisors asked 
employees if they could remember the behaviors on their badges).  
Finally, the last component of the role clarification intervention involved 
training supervisors on how to interact and reinforce OCB expectations. That is, 
supervisors were encouraged to hold employees accountable to The Food Co. 7 
principles on a daily basis. For example, supervisors were encouraged to use the Food 
Co. 7 badges that employees wore to remind employees individually about the 
importance of performing OCB. In addition, supervisors were coached that if they 
saw employees not following through on the OCB standards, then they should have a 
conversation with him or her about what the employee did wrong and how he or she 
could better perform OCB. Throughout the training for supervisors, the message of 
communicating directly with individual employees was repeatedly emphasized as the 
  26 
 
best way to help employees take greater responsibility over OCB (i.e., The Food Co. 
7). 
OCB norm establishment intervention. Parallel to the role clarification 
intervention, the norm establishment intervention involved three parts. These were 
chosen for the same criteria as the role clarification components: (a) their match with 
theoretical processes of norm establishment (Bettenhausen & Murnighan, 1985, 1991; 
Ehrhart & Naumann, 2004), (b) their feasibility of implementation, and (c) their 
alignment with existing organizational practices and routines. First, in the last 15-20 
minutes of the kick-off meeting, employees began the formation of peer norms by 
discussing examples of every behavior of The Food Co. 7 within their respective 
teams. In addition, employees shared with their team members why each behavior is 
important and how they will implement it in their work. This exercise was designed 
to make employees active participants in the establishment of norms in their groups 
and help them develop an understanding to why OCB is an important part of their 
work. 
The second part of the intervention involved the ongoing norm establishment 
that occurred as employees worked. Teams in the norm establishment condition had 
“engagement meetings,” in which teams and their supervisors got together for about 
15 minutes to go over The Food Co. 7 as a team. During these meetings, supervisors 
and their team members followed a structured protocol in which they (a) reviewed the 
standards of OCB, (b) provided feedback to one another regarding how the group was 
doing on The Food Co. 7, and (c) suggested some areas the team could improve. In 
addition, to increase and reinforce OCB injunctive peer norms, the protocol had 
  27 
 
supervisors to encourage group members that they need to help hold each other 
accountable to these behaviors during work. Therefore, these meetings served to 
promote, establish, and reinforce both descriptive and injunctive peer norms for OCB. 
For groups in the norm establishment condition, managers agreed that groups would 
have 3-5 engagement meetings per week (employees only worked 5 days per week). 
This flexibility was provided to managers given the variance in production 
workloads. 
Finally, the last part to the norm establishment intervention involved the 
specific supervisor training. Supervisors were trained to promote, encourage, and 
coach group members in promoting and enforcing peer expectations for OCB among 
each other. That is, supervisors were trained to empower group members to set OCB 
expectations among one another and to hold each other accountable to these 
expectations. For example, supervisors were trained that if employees came to them 
about someone not following the Food Co. 7, that they should coach and encourage 
them to speak up to their fellow coworkers about their behaviors. Throughout this 
training, the message of supporting and enabling team members to promote and 
enforce OCB expectations among their peers was repeatedly emphasized as the best 
way to help employees take greater responsibility over OCB (i.e., The Food Co. 7). 
Both interventions and control conditions. The both interventions condition 
received both the role clarification and norm establishment intervention. For example, 
in their kickoff meeting, employees in this condition filled out the role worksheet and 
talked about the Food Co. 7 in their team. As for the follow up, supervisors promoted 
and enforced expectations one-on-one as well as teams held engagement meetings to 
  28 
 
go over the Food Co. 7. The control condition did not receive either of the two 
interventions. 
Measures 
Organizational citizenship behavior. Supervisors rated OCB of each 
employee with an aggregate measure comprised of the six specific behaviors2 that 
reflect The Food Co. 7. It included a 5-item measure of helping (e.g., "Helps others 
who have heavy workloads"; P. M. Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Moorman, & Fetter, 
1990), a 4-item measure of generalized compliance (e.g., " Attendance at work is 
above the norm";  P. M. Podsakoff et al., 1990), a 6-item measure of safety behaviors 
(e.g., "Carries out his/her work in a safe manner"; Neal & Griffin, 2006), a 10-item 
measure of voice (e.g., "Makes constructive suggestions to improve the unit’s 
operation"; Liang, Farh, & Farh, 2012), a 5-item measure of initiative (e.g., "Takes 
initiative immediately even when others don't"; Frese, Fay, Hilburger, Leng, & Tag, 
1997), and a 3-item measure of sanitation compliance behaviors (e.g., “Follows 
proper hygiene procedures”) that was developed for this specific context. OCB was 
rated by employees’ direct supervisors at T0 (Cronbach’s α = .98), T1 (Cronbach’s α 
= .98), and T2 (Cronbach’s α = .99). Because each department subgroup had its own 
supervisor, each supervisor only rated employees within his or her group. In this 
research design, supervisors were a highly reliable source of behavioral ratings of 
employees. Not only did supervisors observe employees throughout the entire work 
day (i.e., they worked on the plant floor with employees), but past studies show that 
supervisors are frequently used as a reliable source to rate employee OCB (Carpenter, 
                                                 
2 Courtesy was not measured due to survey length constraints and because of its strong theoretical and 
empirical overlap with helping (Podsakoff et al., 2009). 
  29 
 
Berry, & Houston, 2014). Furthermore, supervisors were chosen to rate OCB as 
opposed to employees because in all of the intervention conditions, employees were 
specifically told to increase their level of OCB. Thus, employees’ self-ratings would 
likely be more biased (i.e., less accurate) than supervisor ratings given that employees 
would have strong social desirability to inflate their levels of OCB. 
The different citizenship behaviors measured in the study were highly 
correlated with each other (ranging from .60 to .83). This finding aligns with past 
research that has indicated that OCB often can be parsimoniously represented by one 
overarching general factor (e.g., LePine et al., 2002). A multi-level confirmatory 
factor analysis (Dyer, Hanges, & Hall, 2005) using randomly drawn parcels 
confirmed that a one-factor OCB measure fit the data well at T0 (χ2 [df=10] = 41.07, 
p < .05; RMSEA = .09; SRMRwithin = .01, SRMRbetween = .01; CFI = .98), at T1 
(χ2 [df=10] = 33.27, p < .05; RMSEA = .07; SRMRwithin = .01, SRMRbetween = 
.01; CFI = .99), and at T2 (χ2 [df=10] = 37.78, p < .05; RMSEA = .08; SRMRwithin 
= .01, SRMRbetween = .003; CFI = .99). 
Timing of OCB measurement. Approximately one month before the 
interventions, supervisors completed a baseline survey (T0) of employee OCB 
behaviors. Full data at this point included 382 employees nested in 45 work groups. 
Approximately one month after the interventions began (T1), supervisors rated 
employees on the same OCB measures. Complete data at this point in time was 230 
employees nested in 40 groups. Finally, approximately two months later (T2), 
supervisors completed the final ratings of employee OCB. The final sample at this 
point consisted of 150 employees nested within 35 groups. 
  30 
 
 In theoretical predictions that incorporate time, it is important to specify the 
rationale for determining when to measure constructs (Mitchell & James, 2001; Shipp 
& Cole, 2015). The time it takes for treatment effects to manifest varies in different 
contexts. Thus, following the recommendations of others (Mitchell & James, 2001; 
Shipp & Cole, 2015), I had extensive discussions with organizational informants to 
determine the appropriate times to measure the dependent variables in order to 
examine the proposed changes. I asked managers and supervisors about their 
experiences with and observations of changing production procedures, adding new 
equipment, and other types of practical changes in their departments. These 
discussions helped provide direct contextual knowledge about how they thought 
about time length regarding different changes implemented in their departments. 
Based on these discussions, it became clear that managers and supervisors define and 
think about the short term as one month and the long term at three months. Following 
this, I chose one month as the first time interval to capture the first post-intervention 
measure of OCB and three months to examine whether more long term changes in 
OCB occurred or were sustained in this longer time period. 
Independent variables. Role clarification and norm establishment variables 
were coded for each employee: 0 if employee did not receive the intervention and 1 if 
the employee received the intervention. 
Control variables. Because this was a quasi-experiment, the use of control 
variables is essential to rule out possible alternative explanations (Shadish et al., 
2002). As mentioned earlier, only job tenure significantly differed across 
experimental conditions. Hence, the number of days that employees worked for the 
  31 
 
company prior to the beginning of the research (first survey at T0) was used as a 
control variable. Second, to rule out possible grouping effects, task-related effects 
(e.g., different levels of interdependence), or manager driven effects from the 
departments that employees worked in, I included a set of dummy variables that 
controlled for the fixed effects for each department. Finally, to test the proposed 
hypotheses that specify changes in OCB behavior at different points in time, I 
included T0 OCB as a control for examining changes in OCB behavior at T1 and T2. 
Therefore, each employee’s baseline level of OCB that was rated before the 
interventions was controlled for in examining any changes in OCB after the 
interventions occurred (Shadish et al., 2002). In addition, when analyzing T2 OCB as 
an outcome, I included T1 OCB as controls in order to determine the change in OCB 
that occurred from T1 to T2 (i.e., changes that occurred later on). 
Manipulation Checks 
 I conducted several manipulation checks. First, as mentioned above, I 
attended training sessions to ensure the manipulations went as planned and that there 
were no variations across teams within the same condition. Second, I performed five 
separate random checks throughout the course of the intervention. Each time, I 
randomly selected managers, supervisors, and employees from different conditions 
and asked them about the processes that were occurring. Third, during the post-
experiment interviews, I asked questions regarding the ongoing interventions (see 
Appendix A). The results of these checks suggests that interventions remained 
consistent and intact throughout the course of the study, and that no systematic 
  32 
 
differences occurred across conditions. However, there were two observations to 
note. 
 First, in all three experimental conditions with interventions, the random 
checks as well as the post-experiment interviews indicated that the ongoing follow up 
became less in the later stages of the interventions. I describe this in more detail in 
Study 2, but essentially, managers, supervisors, and employees indicated that follow-
up activities (one-on-one communication in role clarification and group meetings in 
norm establishment) were needed more at the beginning stages of the interventions 
and needed less later on. 
 Second, I checked for treatment diffusion (Shadish et al., 2002) and did not 
find evidence for it except in one instance. One subgroup in the control condition 
mistakenly received part of the role clarification and norm establishment 
interventions. Due to a miscommunication, this group conducted received Food Co. 7 
badges and had a few engagement meetings between T1 and T2 to discuss the Food 
Co. 7. However, because this group did not receive the initial kick-off meeting, 
supervisors did not receive training on promoting and establishing peer norms for 
OCB, and they only conducted around 3 total meetings about the Food Co. 7 (instead 
of the 3-5 per week that all other groups in this condition conducted), then I kept this 
group designated as a group in the control condition3.  
Analytical Strategy 
 Employees in the sample were nested in groups. Due to the nesting, I 
proceeded to analyze the data using Random Coefficient Modeling (RCM) (Bliese, 
2002) in MPlus 7.0 with a maximum likelihood estimator with robust standard errors 
                                                 
3 Results do not differ whether this group was included or excluded in the analyses. 
  33 
 
(Muthén & Muthén, 2010). Groups represented Level-2 and employees represented 
Level-1. Because interventions were assigned by groups, these were modeled as 
independent variables at Level-2. Department dummy variables that characterized 
each group were controlled for at Level 2. Employee tenure and OCB measures were 
at Level 1. I grand-mean centered all Level-1 control variables to examine the 
influence of role clarification and norm establishment interventions over and above 
them (Hofmann & Gavin, 1998).  
 To test whether the three experimental conditions significantly caused change 
in OCB early on, I modeled the T1 measure of OCB (one month post intervention) as 
the outcome variable and controlled for the T0 baseline measure of OCB (pre-
intervention) (Maris, 1998). Thus, change in OCB between T0 and T1 would be 
demonstrated if an experimental condition significantly influenced T1 OCB over and 
above the effects of T0 OCB. To examine change in OCB later on, I modeled the T2 
measure of OCB (three months post intervention) as the outcome variable and 
controlled for the T0 and T1 measures of OCB. Thus, change in OCB between T1 
and T2 would be demonstrated if any experimental condition significantly influenced 
T2 OCB over and above the effects of T0 and T1 OCB. 
Study 1 Results 
Means, standard deviations, and correlations among all variables are reported 
in Table 1. Hypothesis 1 predicted that role clarification interventions would have 
positive effects on OCB earlier on than norm establishment interventions. As seen in 
Table 2, role clarification interventions significantly and positive predicted change in 
employee OCB at T1 (b = .60 [SE = .26]; p < .05; Model 2), whereas norm 
  34 
 
establishment interventions had no significant effect (b = -.04 [SE = .23]; n.s.; Model 
2). Furthermore, norm establishment interventions had a significant, positive main 
effect on OCB change at T2 (b = .34 [SE = .12]; p < .01; Model 5), but role 
clarification interventions had no significant effect (b = .11 [SE = .11]; n.s.; Model 5). 
In addition, when removing the T1 measure of OCB as a control in Model 5, both role 
clarification (b = .42 [SE = .09]; p < .001) and norm establishment (b = .27 [SE = 
.09]; p < .01) have positive and significant effects on OCB change at T2. Altogether, 
the results suggest that the positive increases in OCB that occurred in role 
clarification condition happened early on (i.e., after the first month) and remained the 
same throughout the interventions (i.e., no change between the first and third 
months). In contrast, the positive changes in the norm establishment condition 
occurred later on (i.e., between the first and third months of the interventions). Thus, 
results supported Hypothesis 1. 
For hypotheses 2 and 3, I examined differences across the conditions by 
directly examining the parameter estimates in the regression models rather than raw 
means due to the nested nature of the data. Hypothesis 2 stated that norm 
establishment interventions would moderate the effect of role clarification 
interventions on OCB such that earlier on, the positive relationship would be weaker 
in the presence of norm establishment interventions. Results indicated that role 
clarification and norm establishment interacted to significantly predict change in 
employee OCB at T1 (b = -1.12 [SE = .15]; p < .001; Model 3). The pattern of this 
interaction is shown in Figure 1. Simple effects indicate that the average level of 
change in OCB for role clarification interventions is significantly lower in the 
  35 
 
presence of norm establishment interventions than without this intervention (b = -.87 
[SE = .17]; p < .001). In addition, OCB change in the role clarification only condition 
was significantly higher than OCB change in the norm establishment only condition 
(b = .70 [SE = .13] p < .001) as well as the control condition (b = .95 [SE = .10]; p < 
.001). Furthermore, OCB change in the norm establishment compared to the control 
condition was significantly higher (b = .25 [SE = .07]; p < .001). Finally, the 
difference between OCB change in the norm establishment condition that did not 
receive the role clarification versus the cell that did receive the role clarification 
condition was not significantly different (b = -.17 [SE = .10]; n.s.). Overall, the 
results show that the norm establishment intervention weakened the positive effects 
of role clarification on OCB change early on. Thus, Hypothesis 2 was supported.  
Hypothesis 3 stated that norm establishment interventions would moderate the 
effect of role clarification interventions on OCB such that later on, the relationship 
would be stronger in the presence of norm establishment interventions. Results 
indicated that role clarification and norm establishment interacted to significantly 
predict employee OCB at T2 (b = .50 [SE=.20]; p < .01; Model 6). The pattern of this 
interaction is shown in Figure 2. Simple effects indicate that the average level of 
change in OCB from at T2 for role clarification interventions is significantly higher in 
the presence of norm establishment interventions than without this intervention (b = 
.71 [SE = .16]; p < .001). In addition, OCB change at T2 in the norm establishment 
only condition was significantly higher than the control condition (b = .22 [SE = .09); 
p < .05) as well as the role clarification only condition (b = .25 [SE = .25]; p < .01). 
Furthermore, OCB change at T2 for the role clarification only condition did not 
  36 
 
significantly differ than the OCB change in the control condition (b = -.03 [SE = .08]; 
n.s.), meaning that no change in OCB occurred between T1 and T2. Overall, the 
results show that the role clarification intervention in the presence of a norm 
establishment intervention led to the overall highest changes in OCB at T2, which 
supports Hypothesis 3.  
Robustness Checks 
 There was a large amount of attrition in data over the course of measurement 
time points. One possible alternative explanation to the findings is that the 
interventions helped to weed out employees (either voluntarily or involuntarily) who 
did not meet these OCB standards, and thus given the loss of these employees, 
supervisors may have more favorably rated the OCB of employees who remained in 
the company. To rule out this alternative hypothesis, I tested for differences in 
turnover across conditions at the two time points. There were no significant 
differences in turnover across conditions for either of these two time points. 
Second, it is possible that the interventions had differential effects on the 
specific citizenship behaviors rather than the more global measure (e.g., did 
interventions differentially influence helping versus voice behaviors across time?). To 
test for such differences, I repeated the analyses above using the single behavioral 
dimensions as outcomes. The results of the specific behaviors as outcomes mirrored 
the results of global OCB. That is, although some of the parameter estimates for the 
separate experimental conditions on changes in the specific behaviors were more or 
less strong than their estimates on global OCB, all patterns of results remained the 
same for the different time points. In other words, the results did not change when 
  37 
 
looking at single behavioral dimensions of OCB compared to global OCB. This result 
also gives evidence for the treatment of OCB as one general factor construct (LePine 
et al., 2002). 
Study 1 Discussion 
The results from the quasi-experimental study support the proposed theory. 
Results show that role clarification interventions led to increases in employee OCB 
earlier on than norm establishment interventions. In addition, although norm 
establishment interventions weakened the effects of role clarification interventions on 
OCB change earlier on, the effects of role clarification on OCB change were 
strengthened in the presence of norm establishment interventions at later stages in 
time. Despite these results, Study 1 does not provide much insight into what actually 
occurred in the interventions and how they worked over time. Thus, as to further 
expand the insights from this field experiment, I had three goals for the qualitative 
Study 2 that are based on the embedded-design of mixed methods research: (a) to 
confirm the manipulations occurred as intended (b) triangulate the quantitative 
outcomes, and (c) to understand in more depth how the mechanisms worked in the 
proposed theory (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2011; Edmondson & McManus, 2007; 
Jick, 1979). 
 
  38 
 
Chapter 5: Study 2 Methods & Findings 
Case Selection & Data 
I used random purposeful sampling (Miles & Huberman, 1994) to select cases 
for the post-experiment interview study. Using a full list of employees, supervisors, 
and assistant managers who were present during the interventions, I randomly 
selected individuals to participate in this study from each experimental condition. 
This ensured that responses would not be systematically biased or influenced in any 
particular grouping other than the experimental condition to which participants 
belonged. 
Following the recommendations of the embedded design approach (Creswell 
& Plano Clark, 2011), I conducted interviews after the quantitative portion of the 
research had finished in order to not influence the processes and outcomes of the 
ongoing field experiment. I and a trained, PhD research assistant conducted 83 semi-
structured interviews (Charmaz, 2006) over the course of two weeks (role 
clarification = 26; norm establishment = 18; both = 20; control = 19). The protocol 
for these interviews is in Appendix A. The questions in the interview for the 
experimental conditions focused on eliciting individuals’ experiences with the 
interventions (e.g., what occurred), general questions regarding any changes or 
challenges that occurred (or did not occur) after the interventions were introduced, 
and specific-follow up questions to probe at the possible theoretical mechanism that 
explains the results for the quasi-experiment. For example, to understand how 
supervisors versus peers enforced citizen expectations, I asked participants to think of 
a specific instance when someone did not follow the Food Co. 7 and how did 
  39 
 
supervisors or peers respond? Furthermore, to match the time points in the quasi-
experiment, I asked the same set of questions about the two different time points that 
fell right before the administration of the T1 and T2 surveys. For this, I relied on an 
event-tracking technique to ask about two salient time points that occurred at work 
for employees – the introduction of the interventions and the annual holiday lunch. 
This technique was used in order to address recall bias as these events were highly 
specific and memorable to participants (Miller, Cardinal, & Glick, 1997; Vuori & 
Huy, In-press). In addition, during the interviews, we employed techniques of factual 
manifestation and asking for concrete examples to also help address the biases that 
can occur from recall (Miller et al., 1997; Vuori & Huy, In-press). A separate 
interview protocol was developed for the control condition in order to enable 
comparisons across treatment and non-treatment groups (see Appendix A). They 
aimed to elicit similar processes and responses to that of the treatment groups but 
were more general about working at the company. In addition, they helped to check 
for treatment diffusion. Interviews typically lasted between 15 and 45 minutes, were 
recorded, and professionally transcribed. 
Data Analysis 
 Guided by our existing theory, I developed a coding scheme to examine the 
theoretical constructs of interest. That is, to understand how the proposed theoretical 
processes about supervisor and peer expectations influenced (or did not influence) the 
changes in OCB that were observed in the quasi-experiment, I developed a coding 
scheme to capture these processes and outcomes. This was a four step process. First, 
after recording condition-specific information (i.e., which department participants 
  40 
 
worked for) from each transcript, I stripped this information to from transcripts. This 
enabled us to code each transcript blind to the specific treatment condition that the 
participant received (except for the control condition which had different questions 
than the treatment groups). Second, I and the same research assistant who conducted 
interviews created a starting list of codes (Miles & Huberman, 1994). For example, 
we created seven codes for citizenship behaviors of interest that the company 
implemented in the Food Co. 7. In addition, we also created several codes for 
expectations that aligned with the proposed theory. Because expectations is a broad 
concept, and we discuss it in several ways in our theory, we unpacked this with 
multiple codes. Example codes for expectations included references to source of 
expectations (supervisors or peers?), clarity of expectations (did employees have a 
clear understanding of what was expected or was there confusion?), responsibility or 
accountability (did participants mention feeling responsible for certain behaviors?), 
strength of expectations (how strongly did participants feel the expectations?), 
enforcement of expectations (what did supervisors or peers do when someone 
deviated from expectations?), and any instances of resistance of expectations. Second, 
using this coding scheme, we coded a random sample of 10% of the responses (Miles 
& Huberman, 1994). After this, we met to discuss our coding, talk through and 
resolve any disagreements, and we revised our coding scheme by adding a few more 
sub-codes to add more precision (e.g., clarity of expectations was divided into very 
clear, moderately clear, not clear). Finally, we distinguished codes by time points 
such that we identified whether participants discussed experiences and events around 
early on after the intervention started (T1) or several months later around the annual 
  41 
 
holiday lunch event (T2). Fourth, I and the research assistant independently coded all 
83 transcripts using NVivo software. We compared our agreement on the citizenship 
and expectations codes (see Table 3) and resolved any disagreements to create one 
master file of codes. These codes were later matched with the condition information 
of each participant to enable summarizing of main themes found for each 
experimental condition (Edmondson, 1999). 
Study 2 Findings 
To unpack my findings, I examined the core themes found in each 
experimental condition based on the codes. Specifically, I focus on three categories of 
findings: (a) evidence that the ongoing interventions went as designed (Creswell & 
Plano Clark, 2011) (b) confirmation (or disconfirmation) of results from the quasi-
experiment in whether and when OCB changes occurred (i.e., triangulation; Jick, 
1979); and (c) exploration of theoretical mechanisms such as how or why OCB 
changes occurred during the interventions (Edmondson & McManus, 2007).  
Manipulation Checks for Ongoing Interventions 
Treatment alignment. Starting with the manipulation checks shown in Table 
4, the evidence reveals that the interventions occurred as planned for all experimental 
conditions. First, the experimental conditions were closely contained in their 
respective treatment groups (i.e., treatment diffusion did not occur). For example, 
employees in the role clarification and the both condition received Food Co. 7 
badges, but employees in the norm establishment condition did not. In addition, 
groups in the norm establishment and both conditions had ongoing, structured 
engagement meetings, whereas groups in the role clarification condition did not.  
  42 
 
Second, each condition reflected the primary source of expectations that it was 
designed to tap. For example, in the role clarification condition, supervisors and 
employees discussed how OCB expectations were mainly driven from supervisors. In 
contrast, in the norm establishment condition, I found many instances of supervisors 
encouraging employees to promote citizenship expectations and hold each other 
accountable to them. Finally, for the both condition, I found examples of both peer 
and supervisor sources of expectations involved.  
Treatment deviation. Despite this strong evidence that the treatment 
remained intact and as planned for the majority of the time the interventions occurred, 
there are two deviations to note. First, one common deviation in each of the 
experimental conditions receiving treatment was, as time went on, the strength of the 
treatment occurred less frequently (e.g., less follow up from supervisors or less 
engagement meetings). For example, an employee in the role clarification 
conditioncommented in reference to whether his supervisors did anything different in 
terms of promoting and enforcing OCB expectations later on (Employee 103): 
“[supervisors] just didn't really have to ... Like I said, [they] didn't have to do too 
much adjustment…we're operating pretty smoothly, so only when issues came up 
would they really bring it up. When we were going good, it wasn't really brought up.” 
Similar to the role condition, the theme in the norm establishment condition that 
emerged from the interviews was that engagement meetings to go over the OCB 
expectations occurred for either less time or less frequently later on during the 
interventions. For example, one manager mentioned how they used to go over each 
principle in the Food Co. 7 every day, but later on they would pick just one to discuss 
  43 
 
each day (Manager 241).” Consistent with the other two conditions, the follow up 
occurred less for the condition that received both interventions. For example, an 
employee discussed how the “meetings slowed down” (Employee 136) and an 
assistant manager reflected a similar theme (Assistant Manager 221): “[the meetings] 
started to dwindle down. Maybe this is me but when you see that people are gaining it 
and understanding it, you feel the need less to do it, you understand?.. In the 
beginning, it was every day. Towards the second period, it was a couple of times a 
week.”  This theme across all conditions is in line with the findings below in that 
there was not as much a need to meet to go over the citizenship standards and 
expectations later on since most employees were performing these behaviors 
regularly at these later stages in time. 
Second, as mentioned in Study 1, there was only one instance of treatment 
diffusion where a supervisor in the control condition reported knowing of the Food 
Co. 7. Thus, the treatment was well contained to the intervention conditions. In this 
one instance, a supervisor reported how his small group in the control condition 
received part of the role clarification and part of the norm establishment 
interventions. That is, his group members mistakenly received the Food Co. 7 badges 
that employees wore and conducted several engagement meetings over the course of 
the interventions to discuss the Food Co. 7. However, this group did not receive the 
initial kick-off meeting nor was the supervisor trained on ways to promote and 
enforce OCB expectations from himself or from peers. Besides this one group, there 
was no other evidence from employees or supervisors in the control group of 
treatment diffusion (Shadish et al., 2002). 
  44 
 
Next, I moved to exploring the effects of these different interventions on the 
processes and outcomes for OCB change. Overall, informants in all intervention 
conditions (i.e., not the control group) reported positive changes that occurred after 
their respective interventions were introduced. The differences, however, is when 
those positive changes were realized and how they were realized. Below, I discuss 
these findings. 
Evidence for Changes in OCB  
Role clarification changes in OCB. The common theme revealed in the role 
clarification intervention is that citizenship behavior from employees improved, and it 
changed almost immediately after the intervention began. Many participants reported 
positive changes when asked about the first few weeks after the interventions were 
introduced. For example, an assistant manager (101) explains how he saw his group 
react differently to garbage on the floor after the intervention was introduced; “Before 
it was like ‘that's sanitation's job.’ Now, everybody would have picked it up and 
throw it in the trash.” Another employee saw changes right away regarding group 
members helping each other more (Employee 105):  
“to me it was like everybody came together, you know, helping each other out a lot 
more...helping each other put their food in the tubes…helping clean up at the end of 
the shift... everybody pretty much just pitched in and helped get things done.” 
  
Another employee in a different group reflected how he felt group members 
were more helpful to him shortly after the intervention began. He told a story about 
how his Spanish-speaking group members would now help him more to understand 
(Employee 106):  
“I was the only non-Spanish [speaking] employee when I first got there. It was really 
hard for me to understand. After the Food Co. 7, a couple of guys took their time and 
  45 
 
taught me a couple of words. They took the time and explained to me what was 
supposed to be done, and stuff like that. Before, it wasn't like that.” 
 
 Although respondents confirmed that the positive changes in OCB occurred 
soon after the introduction of the role clarification intervention, they also discussed 
how these positive changes remained and stayed the same at later stages in time. That 
is, informants talked about how OCB did not drop or improve later on in time, but 
instead, employees’ OCB became a routine. For example, Assistant Manager 101 
talked about how later on “it was pretty consistent…everybody doing the same thing, 
going with the flow…it was very consistent. Employee 105 echoed this by saying, “It 
was still the same. Everything was still good. Everything still stayed the same.” 
Another employee (109) commented: “Around the holidays, the Food Co. 7 was still 
going strong though our workload wasn't as heavy...Everything was relatively 
smooth, everything was done on time, warehouse was nice and tidy and clean and 
everything that we were doing was on point.” Finally, one employee (205) talks about 
how his group changed early on, and it has remained the same ever since: 
“Everything's been different since then [the start of the intervention]…the change 
being there and it was still there. We are not the same group that we used to be back 
in the day. We all changed.” 
The pattern of these answers largely aligns with the results from the quasi-
experiment. Early on, the role clarification intervention had positive changes on 
employee OCB. However, after this initial increase, employees’ OCB remained at the 
same level at later stages in time. 
Norm establishment changes in OCB. Similarly, in the norm establishment 
condition, informants reported positive changes in OCB. However, early on, the 
  46 
 
answers were split. While some people felt there were positive changes, others felt 
that there were no changes right away. Starting with the former, an assistant manager 
(241) shared about beginning the intervention: “It brought a lot of stuff to light. A lot 
of things that people wouldn't normally think about on a daily basis while they're 
working…I think there was a better understanding of the way to treat people.” In 
addition, an employee (141) in another group reported some positive changes early 
on: “the cleanliness, like people were more clean and also the uniform, the way that 
they wore it…they would do things orderly, the way it needs to be done with proper 
sanitation.” Finally, one employee (208) admitted how before the introduction of the 
norm establishment intervention, he and his team members would leave maintenance 
issues for the night shift, “before, let's say a water hose is broken...[we] just leave it 
for night shift...too many people would leave it like that: ‘Night shift is gonna fix 
that.’” However, early on after the norm establishment intervention, they would no 
longer do this and started helping night shift: “Now, I see the broken hose...I or the 
other guys just shut it off, cover up the holes, put the clamp, boom, done.”  
Although some respondents felt these changes occurred initially, others felt 
nothing really changed at first. For example, Employee 134 talks about how the 
improvements in OCB occurred much later on: “It definitely took time. It was very 
slow [early on] because like I said people didn’t take it serious.” Another employee 
(233) agreed and recalled: 
“In the first month, I feel like people were still not very committed with the Food Co. 
7. For example with helping each other, some people were not very on board with 
helping each other still. They said like ‘well, why am I going to help you? I’m doing 
my job.’”  
 
  47 
 
Finally, an assistant manager (132) discusses resistance from employees in 
trying to implement the norm establishment: 
“People were concerned in the beginning…the attitudes at the beginning, like I said it 
was a little bit hard. They were saying that we ask and we ask but we never give them 
nothing...but things improved after that month...it took some time...like a month.” 
 
While informants are split about the positive changes initially, all agreed that 
later on in time, most employees’ behavior improved over time and demonstrated 
OCB. That is, regardless if they felt changes occurred initially or not, most reported 
that by the later time point, employees were exhibiting citizenship behaviors. For 
example, one supervisor (131) reported how employees’ generalized compliance and 
voice behaviors improved: “they pay more attention to the produce that we are 
running. If they find something in the mango they say, ‘Oh wait, wait, wait, stop the 
line.’ They help me to keep up the quality.” The same assistant manager (132) that 
said the beginning was challenging, talked about the improvement later on:  
“They are...more proactive, also clean, and also helping each other. That's the main 
one. They been helping each other more than they used to be before…for example, 
we had employees that they might need some days off and they help each other, ‘Oh, 
I will come in for you.’”  
 
Another supervisor (236) reported much improvement over time:  
“they’re a lot more proactive and help each other…before I even have to tell them 
that we need to change the fruit, they’re already working on it. They’re also more fair 
[with each other]. Since there’s some jobs that are more tasks, jobs that are more time 
consuming or harder, they, on their own, rotate to make it fair.”  
 
Finally, Employee 141 thought that voice behaviors by employees also 
increased later on:  
“we had some old pallet jacks…and they wouldn't work very well anymore. It was 
hard to push them or pull them…we talked about it, and [supervisors] were able to get 
new jacks that are working better. Also we gave suggestions about the way in which 
  48 
 
we set up the line. Supervisors have heard them and…implemented our ideas. Now 
we’re working better.” 
 
Overall, informants in the norm establishment condition reported that many 
positive improvements in OCB occurred mostly at later stages during the 
intervention. Interestingly, this is in contrast to the role clarification condition where 
respondents said that everything remained the same after the changes occurred early 
on. This pattern of answers in the norm establishment condition seems to directly 
align with results from our survey measures. That is, early on, the norm establishment 
did not lead to many positive changes in OCB right away, but later on, it had 
significant positive effects on employee OCB.  
Both role clarification and norm establishment changes in OCB. Although 
one employee (Employee 219) reported positive changes at first, the majority of 
informants in the condition that received both interventions said nothing changed at 
the beginning and that it took time for the changes to occur. Of all the experimental 
conditions, this condition had the greatest amount of references to how nothing really 
changed at the beginning period in time. For example, an employee (124) commented 
that how “no one can bring change within a short period of time…after conducting 
meetings several times, then [people] started improving, little by little.” Another 
employee had a similar reaction to the implementation of the intervention (Employee 
136): “some people took a longer time to catch up. People…had certain 
complications so it was necessary to have a series of meetings.” Another employee 
(237) who began working right around the introduction of the interventions 
commented on how people were not very helpful to her early on: “at the 
beginning...the supervisor paid attention to me and would help me but other people 
  49 
 
would not really help...some would actually kind of joke or laugh at me because I 
didn't know how to do the work.” A supervisor (220) even commented on how some 
of the same bad habits from before were still occurring early on:  
“It took awhile. It took awhile for it to shift in...there's still bickering over items in the 
warehouse. ‘This is my pallet jack.’ ‘This is our pallet jack.’ ‘We need these totes.’ 
‘You can't use them’…I mean, it's just stupid stuff like that.”  
 
 However, this changed later on as people reported significant improvements 
in employees’ performance of OCB. For example, the same employee (237) who 
reported people did not really help her at first, talked about how everyone would help 
everyone later on in time:  
“there was a lot change for the good. We would help each other more. For example, 
in the line we needed to put 4 tomatoes and for some reason one person only had 3 
and somebody else, without even telling them, would go and get another [tomato] or 
if there wasn't enough cheese at the line….somebody else would go get cheese so we 
would have enough. Before, people wouldn't do that.”  
 
 Similarly, Supervisor 220 talked about one employee in her group who 
changed his behaviors substantially at the later period of time: “[the interventions] 
opened up their thought process…There was actually one in particular...he always 
had a bad attitude and always would gripe over this or gripe over that, but he's really 
changed his ways…he started helping.”  Employee 217 felt his group members had 
strong improvements later on: “We were all learning new things. Everybody was 
giving a hundred percent. They were all respectful to each other.”  
Notably, this main pattern of responses from informants in the experimental 
condition that received both interventions converges with the results of the quasi-
experiment. That is, multiple sources reported how nothing really changed at first or 
  50 
 
that it took time for the positive effects to emerge. In contrast, at later stages in time, 
people reported strong improvements in OCB among employees. 
 While the findings above are important because they help to confirm the 
results of the quantitative Study 1, what is more important is to shed light on how or 
why the changes occurred. Next, I present the findings for the theoretical mechanisms 
across conditions. 
Exploration of Theoretical Mechanisms for Changes in OCB 
Role clarification: Strong supervisor expectations. The main driver behind 
the initial positive changes in the role clarification seemed to come from the strong 
expectations and responsibility employees now felt for performing citizenship. For 
example, an employee (103) discusses the changes in expectations he felt that 
occurred early on after the intervention began:  
“If I could say one thing that's changed a lot is that you're expected [to help] now, it's 
not just [if] you're a nice guy, you help others…even the guys that don't really want to 
do it, do it now. Whereas before it didn't happen. I remember a guy, he just never 
wanted to do it, he would just do all his stuff. You can't really do that anymore, that's 
the biggest change. It's not really a choice to help, you have to. If someone sees 
someone that needs help, and you're just sitting around, that's an issue now, whereas 
before it was like, well…who cares.” 
 
 Another employee (104) also discusses the changes in expectations, and why 
it helped increase citizenship:  
“Once we started following [the Food Co. 7], it actually made us better to a certain 
extent, like, this is what [supervisors] expect from us, so now we have to do it. When 
something is not expected from people, then they won't do it. But it's like, okay you 
expect us to be this way, now we have to do it or our job is at stake. So when people 
grasp onto that concept it was just jelling, it was a good experience.”  
 
Additionally, these expectations for OCB largely came from supervisors, who 
were the ones driving them in the role clarification intervention. As Employee 205 
  51 
 
recalled: “basically your supervisor and your manager was looking on ...they already 
know what the Food Co. 7 is so…they're going to force that hard so you just got to do 
it.” As Table 4 shows, these expectations were strongly promoted and reinforced by 
supervisors. Similarly, Employee 109 noted: “there was a follow through. We all 
were pulled aside, asked to recite the [Food Co.] 7. [supervisors] wanted us to know 
that's something they took seriously and how each individual felt they were 
complying with the [Food Co.] 7.” Supervisors also confirmed the follow up 
regarding the OCB expectations, such as Supervisor 101 spoke about how they used 
to hold employees accountable to the new citizenship standards,  
“If we walk by and somebody says something bad to somebody we would say, that's 
not being courteous. That was a way to say – ‘Number 7 be respectful – you got to be 
respectful’...Somebody's standing on the pallet, we be like ‘Number 4 [be safe].’ We 
used the numbers as reference points.” 
 
This constant follow up and enforcement by supervisors seemed to create 
strong expectations in employees that they should be good citizens at the workplace. 
These actions by supervisors had an immediate effect on employees’ expectations for 
OCB, which presumably increased their performance of OCB. In addition, 
supervisors’ promotion of citizenship at Food Co. had another, unexpected effect on 
employees. That is, supervisors acted as role models to employees in terms of holding 
one another accountable to citizenship behaviors. Although supervisors did not 
actively encourage and train employees to hold each other accountable (which they 
did in the other two interventions), employees seemed to have followed their 
supervisors’ lead in enforcing OCB from each other. For example, Assistant Manager 
202 accounts how they set the tone among supervisors and managers in calling out 
employees:  
  52 
 
“We played a lot of games where we call somebody out on something...they could be 
doing something they shouldn't be doing and we go up to them and say, ‘Number 
five. What's up with number 5? Why are you not being clean?’ Or, ‘Number 7. Why 
are you not respecting?’ Call them out on it. We made it a game.” 
 
He continued to say that after managers and supervisors started holding 
people accountable, that employees began to catch on and started doing so as well: 
“Fred and I, we started it, and it went through our department...among the whole 
crew.” These behaviors seemed to catch on among some employees as they also 
would hold team members accountable to the OCB expectations. For example, 
Employee 138 discusses how this occurred early on: 
“everybody participated to follow the Food Co. 7. If we see somebody, for example, 
and they're not wearing their uniform properly, we would tell them like, 'Hey, you're 
not wearing it properly. You have to go and change.' It would come from us, as well 
as from the supervisor. The supervisor is sometimes busy doing something else and 
that’s more often the time when we will say something.” 
 
This unexpected finding of peers’ role modeling their supervisors in terms of 
holding each other accountable to OCB also may have had an effect on the positive 
changes that occurred in employees OCB earlier on. While most employees 
commented that they felt the expectations and responsibility coming mostly from 
supervisors, this peer pressure that occurred at times could have also added to 
accountability group members felt in performing citizenship. Overall then, it is clear 
that the role clarification intervention increased employees expectations for 
citizenship early on, which then positively influenced their performance of OCB, and 
these changes remained throughout the later stages of the intervention. 
Norm establishment: Overcoming discomfort and resistance in peer-to-
peer expectations. After going through the transcripts, it became clear that 
employees were not very comfortable accepting their new role to monitor and call out 
  53 
 
peers regarding their citizenship behavior at the initial stages of the norm 
establishment. For example, shortly after the norm establishment was introduced, 
Employee 208 remembers an encounter with a fellow group member about how his 
colleague was cleaning a machine (which required a lot of water) but failed to be 
courteous or helpful. However, Employee 208 did not confront him:  
“One guy, he just put water everywhere in my tools…Oh man, I was going to kill this 
guy. I was so mad...I found my tools full of water...I just walked out, come back to 
clean my tool, fix the machine, that's it. What can I do? What can I say?”  
 
Another employee (239) recalled an event where he noticed someone not 
being safe, but failed to say anything: “one of the pallet lift drivers was doing 
something, and [I thought] ‘man, do I say something to him? I don't want him to think 
that I'm an asshole.’ I just wanted him to know you really shouldn't be doing that.” 
This employee expanded on his observation:  
“when [we] started it [the norm establishment intervention], it was like someone 
would mess up or someone would do something that wasn't right and other 
people...they wouldn't necessarily say it to that person...it is uncomfortable...when 
you got to call someone out...any type of confrontation is usually uncomfortable.” 
 
It appears that this lack of comfort from peers to monitor and enforce 
citizenship expectations resulted from two reasons that occurred early on. The first is 
that this new role for peers went against the previous norms and habits of the 
organization, which was that supervisors were responsible for correcting behaviors. 
For example, Supervisors 232 talks about how early on, employees would still go to 
her when their group members were not following the OCB expectations instead of 
confronting them directly:  
“some of the members weren't following the Food Co. 7...it was mostly about 
cleanliness, about washing their hands or disinfecting their hands. The other group 
  54 
 
members...would go directly to me to ask me to tell them that they were not following 
the Food Co. 7. Most of the time, they would come to me.” 
 
The second reason is that, early on, when peers tried to confront colleagues, it 
was not always well-received. In other words, some members resisted enforcement of 
citizenship expectations from peers. For example, Employee 233 talks about how 
some members tried to encourage other members to help out more, but it was not 
taken well: “We would sometimes say ‘hey, you should help,’ but in general they 
would take it wrong...For example, if somebody wasn’t being helpful or helping one 
another, if someone told him you should help, he wouldn’t take it well.” A similar 
situation occurred for Employee 235 who talks about times when he or other 
members in his group would call people out for not changing their gloves or washing 
their hands correctly, and how their peers initially resisted their commands: 
“Sometimes they would say ‘Why? You are not my boss. Why are you telling me?’” 
Finally, a supervisors (234) recalls the initial stages of the intervention on how the 
peer enforcement was occurring: 
 “there was some people that wouldn't follow the Food Co. 7 and they would tell 
them, and they would also tell me…a specific example is...dressing appropriately. 
When somebody doesn't do it correctly and [their peers] tell them, they say, 'It's not 
your problem. What do you care?' If I, as the supervisor, tell them, they do it. They 
don't even talk back or anything.” 
 
 Part of the reason employees may have resisted their peers more earlier on is 
because they were less skilled or convincing in enforcing the OCB expectations. For 
example, Supervisor 236 noted that employees would listen to him more earlier on 
when he would enforce OCB expectations more so than group members because he 
would provide better rationale: “they would listen to me more…because I would say 
  55 
 
to follow [the Food Co. 7] with examples like, ‘We should do it this way because if 
you do it this way, this might happen.’” 
The net effect of these themes seemed to be that (a) peers were less likely to 
promote and confront other peers early on about their OCB and (b) expectations for 
OCB were less strong. This seems to explain then why the norm establishment 
intervention was not effective in changing OCB at initial stages. However, over time, 
this initial lack of comfort and effectiveness in peer-to-peer OCB enforcement 
seemed to dissipate as multiple informants talk about how, later on, employees 
significantly increased their communication to peers regarding OCB. For example, 
starting with the first employee (208) who failed to call out his group member for 
failing to be courteous and helpful, Employee 208 had a much different response 
when the same incident occurred later on during the interventions: 
“the same guy. He put water everywhere again. I just went to him…I showed [him] 
my toolbox ‘Yo, this is the second time…you have to pay attention what you’re 
doing’ He said, ‘Oh, I'm sorry. Never gonna happen. I'm sorry.’ …Next time he was 
doing the same thing. You know what he did? He went for plastic bag, he covered all 
my gear, my tool box, and then he cleaned it. He learned because I talked to him” 
 
Reflecting on these changes, Supervisor 232 also notes the changes she saw in 
the employees’ peer-to-peer accountability later on:  
“before, people sometimes would go in [the production room] and maybe because of 
a mistake they forgot to put their hairnet on, and they would go all the way inside and 
nobody would say anything. If I realized, I would say something. But, at the time in 
December, I didn't really have to intervene because people were, group members 
would tell them, ‘Hey you forgot this’ or ‘You should put this on’… I do feel that 
they have also changed the way that they receive [direction]...if a group member tells 
them, they'll go and change or do it properly. They no longer need it to be the 
supervisor to tell them.” 
  
  56 
 
 Not only did employees speak up to their group members later on in time 
during the norm establishment interventions, but it also appeared that group members 
were more receptive to their influence and direction. For example, Employee 107 said  
“One of the guys was working on a dicer knife and I noticed that he wasn't wearing 
gloves...I pointed to his hand and said, ‘Make sure you get your gloves on’ and he 
said, ‘Oh, thank you.’ He put his gloves on and he was safe when he did it...I called 
him out on it and he was respectful of it. He was like, ‘Oh yeah, thank you,’ and he 
put them on.”  
Employee 235, who earlier commented on how employees initially resisted 
his influence, noted the changes later on in time: “People were more relaxed, more 
laid back. When you would tell them something, they wouldn't jump back at you.” 
 These changes in peers enforcement and receptivity of citizenship 
expectations (i.e., peer norms for OCB) seemed to result from continuous 
reinforcement from the norm establishment engagement meetings. As shown in Table 
4, these groups constantly met to discuss the OCB expectations, and supervisors 
consistently promoted that peers need to hold one another accountable to the 
standards. In all likelihood, acceptance of these peer norms (both to enforce and 
receive) took time and practice to gain the comfort and confidence to do so. The 
interviews revealed how the meetings seemed to facilitate both of these aspects. For 
example, Employee 239, who was hesitant at first to call people out, talked about his 
experience with gaining confidence: 
“we talk about it every day and it keeps it fresh in your mind…The daily meetings 
they definitely help you because it keeps it fresh and you're constantly talking about it 
so…[you’re] just actually doing it [calling people out on the Food Co. 7]. It's like, 
‘okay, well it wasn't so bad. You don't think I'm a dick either’... everything I was 
worried about is nothing...It definitely gets easier to say stuff to people.” 
 
  57 
 
Employee 134 talked about how these meetings served as a safe practice 
grounds to call one another out on issues that occurred from people not following the 
OCB expectations:  
“It was pretty much like the 15 minutes laid everything on the table that you had to 
say, anything happened the day before we talk about it today, get rid of it, and then 
move forward...It was pretty much like an open discussion. People felt comfortable.” 
 
The net result of this occurring over time is that employees began to develop 
comfort and confidence in holding each other accountable to OCB expectations. For 
example, Supervisor 232 talks about how she pursued exactly that goal for her 
employees – that is, to use the meetings to challenge more shy employees to speak up 
to promote OCB expectations: 
“There was a person that because of the way she is, she's very timid, very introverted, 
and she would never speak up in the meetings, and everybody said, ‘Hey. She never 
talks. She never talks.’...What I did was kind of challenged her like, ‘Hey. You need 
to really learn about [the Food Co. 7] and speak up because tomorrow ... You're the 
one that's going to be leading the meeting and telling us about the Food Co. 7.’ It 
worked and now she talks more. She communicates more. She lost the fear after that 
day.” 
 
 Interestingly, the reinforcement and practice of calling each other out 
increased employees’ comfort and confidence so much that, at later stages in time, 
they were even willing to call out non-peers when they were not following the OCB 
expectations. For example, an assistant manager (132) laughs when remembering 
how, later on, employees would sometimes call out their supervisors to be more 
respectful: “some supervisors are loud, they're not being disrespectful, but they're 
loud and employees can take it the wrong way…so they would tell [the supervisors] 
‘remember the Food Co. 7’” Another employee (235) got very courageous and even 
called out a member from upper management when he was on the production floor: 
  58 
 
“one time, one of the owners, he came into the room. I saw that he didn't wash his 
hands. I actually called on him and was like 'you didn't wash your hands!’” 
 Altogether, the informants’ answers from multiple sources point to the broad 
theme of how employees initially resisted enforcing and receiving expectations from 
one another, but over time, the acceptance of this grew as employees would promote 
and hold each other accountable to OCB. As a result, it is likely that the positive 
changes in OCB that occurred later on in the norm establishment condition coincide 
with these changes in peer-to-peer expectations.  
 Both role clarification and norm establishment: Overcoming confusion in 
understanding expectations and discomfort in peer-to-peer expectations. As 
shown in Table 4, informants talked about how supervisors promoted and enforced 
citizenship expectations as well as encouraged employees to do the same with their 
peers. Similar to role clarification condition, employees reported how expectations 
were coming from supervisors early on. For example, Employee 118 mentioned how 
supervisors would tell employees they need to follow the citizenship expectations: 
“The supervisors...they talked about the Food Co. 7...’hey, you gotta do this one; you 
gotta be proactive; you need to follow the Food Co. 7 at this company.’” Similarly, 
Employee 237 remarked: “during the day they [supervisors] would still talk to us and 
say like, ‘Remember those rules and help each other.’ They would reinforce it during 
the day.” 
However, unlike the role clarification condition, there seemed to be greater 
confusion or lack of understanding from employees initially. That is, the main reason 
for why it seemed employees OCB did not change at initial stages is that there 
  59 
 
seemed to be more confusion and misunderstanding among employees in the group 
receiving both interventions. For example, an assistant manager (221) spoke up  
“Here’s what I noticed. As far as the culture here and them being educated on what 
we’re trying to do, they really didn't have a grasp of it [early on]…everybody was 
confused right after the introduction, like ‘what the hell was going?’…Earlier on, 
there was not much change.”  
 
A supervisor (223) expanded on this:  
“At first, I didn't see the vast difference...it takes time to catch on with the rules and 
regulations [of the Food Co. 7]...at first, they were, ‘Oh no, this doesn't make any 
sense’... they used to forget. They were trying, but it was difficult. They used to 
forget.”  
 
From an employee’s (216) perspective, although she felt she understood the 
new expectations, she commented on how the lack of changes in behavior that 
occurred at first were because her group members were not understanding the 
citizenship expectations even when she tried to inform them:  
“At the beginning, no, because…there's a language barrier in here. A lot of 
them…because I speak real firm, they think I'm being too aggressive. I try to tell 
them and speak clear and slow so they can understand…but if they don't understand, 
they be looking at me like I'm trying to be smart to them, and I'm not.” 
 
 Thus, it seems that employees did not really have a strong understanding of 
what was being expected of them initially in terms of their OCB. Adding to this 
confusion was a similar theme that was found in the norm establishment condition; 
that is, most employees did not speak up to promote or hold each other accountable to 
OCB early on. For example, Employee 217 commented on the lack of helping and 
speaking up between group members at earlier stages:  
“There was really no communication like, ‘You go here. You do this.’…nobody was 
really talking to each other. We were really just waiting for somebody to do 
something. [For example,] if we're running out of product, they would wait and not 
saying anything.”  
 
  60 
 
Assistant Manager 221 reflected a similar observation: “back then first time 
around…if something would go wrong, things ain't coming by the right away, quality 
issues, something like that, nobody would say anything, it would just happen.” 
 Despites these initial challenges, informants talked about how, over time, 
employees began to understand the OCB expectations. For example, Employee 136 
discussed the improvement and understanding that occurred later on:  
“Everybody is aware what to do, what not to do...much improvement because people 
knew now what you do…you have to watch the line, how to treat your gloves. We 
knew what to do, what not to do, because we have the meeting frequently so people 
were getting very abreast of the [Food Co. 7].”  
 
Employee 124 talked about how at the later stages, “Nobody forgot about [the 
Food Co. 7]. Everybody remembers it and implements it their job.” Finally, Assistant 
Manager 221 commented on how people understood and took responsibility of 
citizenship later on:  
“definitely after the second time, they started really understanding what’s going on 
and what we’re looking for...mainly the [Food Co. 7] principles but those principles 
translate into everything that we're looking for as far as our deadlines, quality issues, 
our safety issues. It all ties into the stuff we saw...without us even saying 
something…they would see something and yeah, I want to say they owned it… they 
just started owning things more” 
 
These changes were attributed to the clarity and understanding that comes 
with repetition and reinforcement of expectations. For example, Employee 136 
mentioned this in how understanding gradually improves over time: “I think after the 
series of meetings, I think things picked up a little bit faster… once you do something 
and you do it gradually and do it frequently, people can pick up.” Assistant Manager 
221 reiterated this theme as well:  
“At first...they just didn’t understand what we were trying to do…it took us 
reiterating this every day: 'You guys have got to learn it; you guys have got to 
  61 
 
understand what’s going on; it’s going to help you.' That they finally got it, 
understood, and it’s just been improving.”  
 
Another supervisor (229) describes how the reinforcement of OCB 
expectations in the meetings and follow up by supervisors has helped make the 
changes in understanding over time: “it’s been constant. That’s why it has helped a 
lot...if it’s constant and if you’re listening to it and working on it all the time, [their 
behaviors] eventually will come out naturally.” Finally, Supervisor 223 reflected on 
how at later stages, employees seemed to feel more accountability from the Food Co. 
7 and supervisors: “they were forced by the policy as well as by the supervisors, from 
my force as well as from the force of [other] supervisors, we pushed people to obey 
and to be helpful with everybody.” 
 This trend in improved understanding and accountability to the OCB 
expectations helped improve these behaviors in the later stages of the interventions. 
In addition, informants also reflected similar themes found in the norm establishment 
regarding how and why employees began holding each other accountable to and 
speaking up about OCB. For example, one supervisor (223) talked about how the 
meetings helped facilitate employees holding each other accountable at later points in 
time: “from the meetings...that's why when one would forget, having the other people 
to just help them, ‘Hey, you forgot this one; you need to follow this one.’ They would 
teach one another.” Assistant Manager 221 also noticed changes in the peer-to-peer 
communication surrounding OCB and attribute it to them needing to gain comfort:  
“At first they’re shy but the more you deal with them, the more they get comfortable 
with… asking questions and...giving feedback…I guess that they just had to come out 
of their shells.” Furthermore, Employee 217 reflected a similar theme in the norm 
  62 
 
establishment condition on how group members opened up more and were more 
respectful to one another with their peer-to-peer communication, which helped with 
promoting and enforcing the OCB expectations:  
“I would say things changed…there was more communication, people just more open 
to allow people to do different things. People were more respectful towards each 
other...[for example] asking people politely ... 'Hey, can you grab this for me or do 
that for me?' People were just more open to each other.” 
 
 In the condition that received both the role clarification and norm 
establishment, it is clear that clarity of expectations and peer promotion and 
enforcement became much stronger at later stages in time. Initially, informants 
discussed some confusion regarding the expectations as well as a lack of peer 
enforcement. These trends seem to parallel the reported changes in OCB of 
employees; although there seemed to be no changes early on, this intervention helped 
to create significant improvements in employee OCB later on. 
Control Condition Findings 
 A few notable comparisons emerged from the control group. First, when 
asked about the important values and behaviors that are expected work, informants 
from the control group focused mostly on sanitation-compliance (i.e., context-specific 
compliance) and safety.  For example, Supervisor 111 said “we have to really clean 
and make sure…the food can go out clean and healthy…for the people out there” and 
Employee 214 mentioned “Safety...It is very important because you have to watch 
and pay attention.” The focus on these two citizenship behaviors is not surprising 
given that these are often discussed in onboarding and trainings that occur 
sporadically at the company. However, besides these, informants rarely discussed 
other types of citizenship behaviors that were expected (e.g., helping, initiative, 
  63 
 
courtesy, voice). Thus, this comparison helps show that the intervention conditions 
helped expand the breadth OCB expectations among employees. 
 The second major theme is how informants discussed that supervisors, and not 
group members, were the ones who held employees accountable to performance, 
sanitation, and safety standards. For example, Employee 115 commented on the chain 
of repercussions if someone is not performing to the standards they are expected to: 
“[the first time], supervisors will let it be known that you can’t be doing that…they 
see it again, then [it’s a] second warning. The third time they'll ask them to clock out, 
go home.” This reinforces that the norm of the organization is to have supervisors be 
in charge of setting and enforcing expectations. It helps to further explain why the 
two intervention conditions that encouraged peers to take over this monitoring and 
enforcement role may have had some initial problems and resistance. 
 
  64 
 
Chapter 6: General Discussion 
The goal of this dissertation was to explore how time plays a critical role in shaping 
the effects of supervisor-driven versus peer-based interventions for OCB. I made 
progress toward this aim as findings across two studies suggest that role clarification 
and norm establishment interventions uniquely and jointly impact OCB depending on 
time. This dissertation provides a number of contributions to knowledge on OCB, 
time, and social influence. 
Theoretical Contributions 
First, I contribute to research on OCB by building theory for how different 
sources of expectations uniquely and jointly influence performance of citizenship. 
Past research on OCB implicitly assumes that (a) source of expectations for these 
behaviors do not matter (Jiao et al., 2013); (b) that leader sources of expectations 
matter most (Yaffe & Kark, 2011); or (c) that peers have the strongest influence in 
eliciting these behaviors from employees (Chen et al., 2013). However, each of these 
perspectives is incomplete. To address this, my dissertation suggests two key insights. 
One is that through role clarification, supervisors are more quickly able to establish 
expectations for OCB and elicit these behaviors than peers can through norm 
establishment interventions. As the findings from the Study 2 show, employees felt 
immediate responsibility and strong expectations from supervisors early on in the role 
clarification. In contrast, employees in the norm establishment condition reported 
feeling uncomfortable or unable to hold one another accountable to OCB early on, 
thus lowering the expectations in norm establishment. Therefore, a more complete 
  65 
 
picture of the relative effects of supervisor versus peer expectations in changing OCB 
can come from considering when each of these effects are likely to occur. 
The other insight is how supervisor and peer sources of expectation can work 
in a complementary or competing fashion depending on time. That is, organizations 
should not assume that promoting OCB expectations from both supervisors and peers 
will always elicit the highest levels of these behaviors. In fact, early on, the confusion 
caused by trying to have both supervisors and peers promote and hold employees 
accountable to OCB seemed to erase the strong effects found in the supervisor-based 
role clarification intervention. The findings from Study 2 helped to show that 
employees were greatly confused from trying to understand both their own role and 
their team member role (Kozlowski et al., 1999) in relation to OCB. Later on in time, 
however, once employees better understood their own OCB expectations as well as 
had a greater understanding and comfort in enforcing peer norms for OCB, I found a 
complementary effect when both supervisor and peer expectations were utilized to 
enhance OCB. The overall implication is that considering both when in time 
expectations for OCB are trying to be established and from whom the expectations are 
coming from enables us to develop precision in predicting the effects they will have 
in employees’ performance of these critical work behaviors. These results also speak 
to theories investigating how leaders should intervene and when (Hackman & 
Wageman, 2005). For example, our findings suggest that leaders may want to focus 
on helping employees simply understand their own expectations early on and to 
facilitate team member bonds and relationships, and only later on in time, is it more 
  66 
 
appropriate to add more complicated aspects of the team environment and social roles 
of monitoring and enforcing expectations amongst one another. 
Second, this dissertation adds to theoretical progress in understanding the 
important role of time in organizational research (George & Jones, 2000; Mitchell & 
James, 2001; Shipp & Cole, 2015). Specifically, it highlights how when considering 
the relationship between expectations and OCB, scholars should take time into 
account such as considering whether expectations are in the forming or formed stages 
of development (Mitchell & James, 2001). For example, when attempting to form 
new or change existing expectations for OCB, supervisors or leaders may be more 
reliable sources in achieving this faster. However, once the new expectations for OCB 
have been established, both supervisors and peers may be effective in eliciting these 
behaviors from employees. In addition, by explicitly modeling time as variable in my 
theoretical model, I am able to examine changes in OCB, which contributes to 
emerging research examining the antecedents of OCB over time (Lemoine et al., 
2015). Specifically, I highlight how change in OCB is differentially impacted by 
supervisor and peer expectations at different points in time.  
Third, I contribute to research on knowledge on social influence (Barker, 
1993; Ehrhart & Naumann, 2004; Ilgen & Hollenbeck, 1991; Ilies et al., 2007; Katz 
& Kahn, 1978a). My findings suggest that not only do supervisors and peers have 
different effects on impacting OCB depending on time, but that these sources also 
differentially react to a new role of promoting and enforcing OCB. For example, 
Study 2 findings showed that while supervisors seemed to immediately adopt their 
new role of encouraging OCB and holding others accountable, group members took 
  67 
 
some time to develop comfort and ability to take on this role (Barker, 1993; Ehrhart 
& Naumann, 2004). This suggests that organizations need to consider the different 
approaches that may need to be taken in enabling and empowering supervisors versus 
peers in their promotion and enforcement of citizenship expectations. 
Practical Implications 
Organizations must constantly weigh the benefits and costs to different 
interventions to improve their functioning, and in this specific case, the citizenship 
among its employees. This can be challenging as a multitude of interventions and 
processes could be employed in an attempt to increase and sustain employee 
accountability and citizenship (Bolino & Turnley, 2003). This dissertation provides 
empirical guidance to managers looking to increase employee citizenship as I 
demonstrate when role clarification and norm establishment interventions, separately 
and jointly, can be effective at different points in time in changing OCB. 
Limitations and Future Research 
 Despite the strengths of this research, a number of limitations and associated 
future research directions should be noted. First, although quasi-experiments have 
improved internal validity over other methodologies (Shadish et al., 2002), they still 
lack some causal inference given that participants were not randomly assigned to 
treatment conditions. In other words, the results in this study could be confounded by 
systematic differences in the natural groups that exist in the organization. Although I 
utilized several sophisticated aspects of quasi-experiments, such as coherent pattern 
matching, a control group, pre- and post-test measures, key control variables that rule 
out individual differences and departmental grouping explanations (Rosenbaum & 
  68 
 
Rubin, 1983), and limited treatment diffusion, all of which strongly enhances causal 
claims (Shadish et al., 2002), a stronger design would be to run a true field 
experiment with random assignment.  
 Second, another limitation of Study 1 is that OCB was solely reported by 
supervisors. Because supervisors were involved with the intervention process, it is 
possible differences across intervention conditions systematically influenced 
supervisors’ perceptions of OCB as opposed to actual changes in employee behaviors. 
While this is less likely given the use of coherent pattern matching as well as the 
Study 2 findings from different sources (employee and managers) that match the 
results in Study 1, a stronger quasi-experimental design could use multiple sources 
during the experiment. 
Third, it is possible that treatment was diffused into either the control group or 
different experimental conditions. For example, I found evidence that a small group 
of employees in the control condition part of the norm establishment intervention. In 
addition, although employees primarily worked and interacted within their own 
respective departments, they did see others from different departments in the 
cafeteria. While this is a necessary tradeoff of field experiments, and in fact would 
reduce the chances of finding the proposed effects among conditions, a stronger 
design might be to run a field experiment where such treatment diffusion could not 
possibly occur (e.g., multiple sites).  
 Fourth, field experiments also increase external validity as it tests processes in 
actual workplaces. However, questions remain to whether or not the effects of the 
interventions in this dissertation on OCB would generalize to other contexts. For 
  69 
 
example, groups in this study were moderately interdependent, and thus certain OCB 
behavior such as helping may be seen as more extra-role than other companies where 
groups are highly interdependent. In addition, the baseline for OCB was relatively 
low in this context of food assembly workers. This may explain why the 
implementation of OCB standards were mostly seen in a positive light from company 
employees. For instance, compared to other contexts where OCB may already have a 
higher baseline rate, further expectations from supervisors and peers may lead to 
increased stress and strain (Barker, 1993; Bolino, Klotz, Turnley, & Harvey, 2013). 
Future studies may investigate boundary the conditions where increases in OCB 
expectations from different sources lead to more positive versus negative outcomes.  
Fifth, there are other ways of intervening to establish supervisor and peer 
expectations than the interventions chosen for this research. Different interventions 
could produce similar or different effects. Thus, future studies should investigate 
these interventions in other contexts, investigate other interventions to elicit 
supervisor and peer expectations for OCB, and also probe for possible moderators of 
the effects found in this study. 
 Sixth, although I intentionally chose to conduct Study 2 interviews after the 
Study 1 field experiment to reduce the possible biases it could cause in the ongoing 
field experiment (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2011), this choice does raise the issue of 
possible recall bias from informants. This issue was mitigated by the use of factual 
manifestations, concrete examples, and even tracking techniques in the interviews 
(Miller et al., 1997; Vuori & Huy, In-press). Furthermore, given the variance in 
responses and different patterns across conditions, this gives me more confidence in 
  70 
 
the veracity of the reports. However, future studies may choose to qualitatively 
examine theoretical processes on an ongoing basis as they unfold (Creswell & Plano 
Clark, 2011).  
 Finally, while qualitative data and analysis can provide insight into theoretical 
mechanisms, causal inference is limited in this approach (Creswell & Plano Clark, 
2011; Edmondson & McManus, 2007). Although, in this specific case, qualitative 
data was embedded to understand the results of a quasi-experiment (Creswell & Plano 
Clark, 2011), future research should further test the prediction that supervisor and 
peer expectations serve as causal mechanisms for changes in OCB. 
Conclusion 
 This dissertation highlights three pathways to changing OCB of employees: 
organizations can improve performance of OCB through the expectations of 
supervisors, peers, and both these sources, but their effects differentially occur across 
time. My hope is that the insights provided in this dissertation will help inform 
organizations on how they can manage expectations to create and sustain 
organizational citizenship from its employees. 
  71 
 
Appendices 
 
Appendix A: Portion of Post-Experiment Interview Protocols 
 
Protocol for Intervention Conditions 
1. Can you describe the training you went through in September about the Food 
Co. 7?  
2. What (if any) changes were made after the training?  
3. Within the few weeks after the training when you learned about the Food Co. 
7… 
a. What happened? What were some positive changes that occurred (if 
any)? 
b. What were some of the challenges that you faced in the beginning (if 
any)? 
c. How did you feel about Food Co. 7?  
d. What about your group members? Did their behaviors change (if at 
all)?  
e. [Employees Only] What about your supervisors? What did they do 
regarding the Food Co.7 (if anything)?  
f. Can you think of an example when someone in your group did 
something that was against or did not follow one of the Food Co.7 
principles? What happened?  
4. Later on, in December, around the time of the Holiday Lunch Event, I’m 
interested to know about your experiences then regarding the Food Co.7 and 
your group. 
a. How was the Food Co.7 initiative working at this later point in time?  
b. Were there any changes since that first month right after the training?  
c. Were there the same challenges? Any new challenges?  
d. How did your feelings about the Food Co.7 change (if at all)?  
e. What about your group members? Did anything change about them 
compared to the first month after the training? 
f. [Employees Only] What about your supervisors? What were they 
doing regarding the Food Co.7 at this later point in time? Did anything 
change compared to earlier?  
g. At this later time, can you think of an example when someone in your 
group did something that was against or did not follow the Food Co.7 
principles? What happened? 
 
Interview Protocol for Control Condition 
1. Were there any specific training that you went through between September 
and December? If so, can you describe what happened? 
  72 
 
2. Can you describe any values of the Company or the things that are important 
at work?  
3. How do you feel about these types of values? 
4. What about your group members? How do they seem to feel about these 
values? 
5. What does your company do to make sure that employees follow these values 
at work?  
6. [Employees Only] What about your leads? What do they do? 
7. Can you think of one example when someone in your group did something 
that was against these values? What happened?  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 73 
 
Tables 
TABLE 1  
Means, Standard Deviations, and Correlations among Study 1 Variables 
 
Variable M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 
1. Job Tenure 307.27 207.49 -      
2. OCB Role Clarificationa .50 .50 -.06 -     
3. OCB Norm Establishmentb .48 .50 .26*** .07 -    
4. OCB T0 3.85 .63 .08 -.12* -.08 (.98)   
5. OCB T1 3.95 .56 .21*** .14* -.04 .42*** (.98)  
6. OCB T2 4.18 .62 .26*** .01 .08 .35*** .66*** (.99) 
Note: Interventions were disaggregated to the individual level when computing the correlation table. Full data was used to calculate correlations (n 
is between 183 and 436). 
a: dummy coded 0 = did not receive role clarification; 1= received role clarification. 
b: dummy coded 0 = did not receive norm establishment; 1 = received norm establishment. 
* p < .05 
** p < .01 
*** p < .001 
  74 
 
TABLE 2 
Analysis of Effects of Interventions on OCB Change Using Random Coefficient Modeling 
 
 OCB T1 
Model 1 
OCB T1 
Model 2 
OCB T1 
Model 3 
OCB T2 
Model 4 
OCB T2  
Model 5 
OCB T2 
Model 6 
Intercept 3.92 (.05)*** 3.63 (.19)*** 3.61 (.02)*** 4.17 (.05)*** 3.92 (.10)*** 3.90 (.03)*** 
Level-1 Variables       
Job Tenure .00 (.00)* .00 (.00)* .00 (.00)* .00 (.00) .00 (.00) .00 (.00) 
OCB T0 .30 (.08)*** .31 (.09)** .31 (.09)** .19 (.06)*** .20 (.06)*** .21 (.06)*** 
OCB T1    .51 (.09)*** .49 (.09)*** .50 (.09)*** 
Level-2 Variables       
Role Clarificationa  .60 (.26)* .95 (.10)***  .11 (.11) -.03 (.08) 
Norm Establishmentb  -.04 (.23) .25 (.07)***  .34 (.12)** .22 (.09)* 
Role Clarification ×  
Norm Establishment   -1.12 (.15)***   .50 (.20)* 
Pseudo- R2 .19 .26 .30 .44 .47 .48 
Pseudo- ∆R2   .07 .04  .03 .01 
 Note: Level-2 n = 40 and Level-1 n = 230 (T1); Level-2 n = 35 and Level-1 n = 150 (T2); 6 department dummy variables 
included as controls for all models but left out of table for simplicity in reporting; Job tenure is number of days employees worked 
at company; Standard errors are provided in parentheses next to parameter estimates; pseudo- ∆R2 values indicate percentage of 
the total variance (i.e., between and within group variance) in the dependent variable accounted by the step; pseudo-R2 value 
indicates percentage of the total variance (i.e., between and within group variance) in the dependent variable accounted by all the 
variables in the model together (cf. Snijders & Bosker, 1999). 
a: dummy coded 0 = did not receive role clarification; 1= received role clarification 
b: dummy coded 0 = did not receive norm establishment; 1 = received norm establishment 
* p < .05; ** p < .01; *** p < .001 
  
  75 
 
TABLE 3 
Coding OCB and Theoretical Mechanisms  
 
Code 
T1 
Agreement 
Rate 
T2 
Agreement 
Rate 
Illustrative Example 
OCB    
Context-specific compliance 
(hygiene and sanitation) 
87% 89% “Before it's like, that's sanitation's job now everybody would have picked it up and throw it in the trash.”  
Generalized compliance 90% 87% “So some people would stay late to make sure everything got done, like me, I don't like to leave until the 
work is done.” 
Helping 92% 95% “We still have stuff going like people helping each other out. If somebody got a ten-toter, they used to be 
doing that by themselves, but now it's like, ‘you need help with your ten-toter?’ ‘I'll help you.’” 
Initiative 93% 96%  “If I had to say what one thing we were really doing the most it would definitely be proactive, because 
there's not many of us down there, and we had to adjust on the fly.” 
Courtesy toward others 97% 95% “A lot of people like I said they started respecting … there’s a more respect now than there was before in my 
opinion.”  
Safety behaviors 93% 95%  “…everybody's cautious with the totes now…because they know they can hurt somebody.” 
Voice 
 
91% 94% “Now it’s when they get together in a group, a lot more people felt more comfortable to speak up and voice 
their opinion.” 
Theoretical Mechanisms    
Employees feeling responsible 
for OCB expectations 
77% 78% “Nowadays you're accountable for the stuff you do…we're more accountable for mistakes” 
Lack of clarity in OCB 
expectations 
95% 97% “People were confused about what was going on, trying to make them understand what was going on was a 
little bit hard.” 
Moderate clarity in OCB 
expectations 
84% 81% “[there was] sort of a little more structure to follow.” 
 
Very clear OCB expectations 90% 92%  “having [the Food Co. 7] outlined is good because that way, you can just reference it and say, ‘Look, this is 
what the expectation is, this is what we need from you,’ and that's it. You can't say that somebody doesn't 
understand that.” 
Employee enforcing OCB 
expectations 
92% 91% “Whenever they saw somebody that wasn’t doing something correctly or the way they should or was not the 
Food Co. way, other employees would go to him and tell him like, ‘Hey, you're not doing this right.’” 
Employee tell supervisors of 
deviance in OCB expectations 
95% 94% “If somebody wouldn't listen, then they would go and speak with the supervisor for the supervisor to talk to 
them.” 
Employee does not enforce 
OCB expectations 
98% 99% “when [we] started it [the Food Co. 7], it was like someone would mess up or someone would do something 
that wasn't right and other people...they wouldn't necessarily say it to that person.” 
Supervisor enforces OCB 89% 89% “it's just basically my supervisor would come to us a couple of times during the week, ask us about the Food 
  76 
 
expectations Co. 7, what was the fifth one or something like that, quiz us on it and stuff.” 
Descriptive group norms for 
OCB 
79% 78% “Everybody sees everyone [helping out], even the guys that don't really want to do it, do it now” 
Resisting OCB expectations 75% 78% “there's some people like, ‘Oh, I don't know why I have to do this [follow the Food Co. 7]’…but some 
people… they’re not looking to change.” 
 
  77 
 
TABLE 4 
Manipulation Checks for Ongoing Interventions 
Condition Evidence of Treatment Alignment 
Role 
Clarification 
Employees received Food Co. 7 badges/cards 
 Employee 105: “Oh, yeah, yeah, they have the Food Co. 7 badges. [Supervisors] told us we're supposed to have it.” 
 Employee 106: “Yeah. It was mandatory that we wear the Food Co. 7 badges.” 
 Employee 140: “[supervisors] gave me the card, and they told me that I was responsible for it. We always had to have it with us at all times.” 
Supervisors regularly promoted and held individual employees accountable to OCB expectations 
 Employee 103: “it's just basically my supervisor would come to us a couple of times during the week, ask us about the Food Co. 7, what was 
the fifth one or something like that, quiz us on it and stuff.” 
 Employee 104: “Our supervisor spoke with us. He spoke with everyone one-on-one...the main thing [he said] was helping people because not 
everybody can work at the same pace and not everybody is the same worker. So, we talked about that and giving 100% and taking initiative.” 
 Employee 110: “Yeah, the supervisors, they would make sure, they would kind of quiz you, they would just pop up on you and say, "Give me 
the Food Co. 7." Because you're supposed to know them, remember them...they would just pop quiz you around that time. Made sure of 
course that you had your badge, we had the clips with string to wear around the neck, to make sure it was shown.” 
 Employee 204: “[Supervisors] would go around and make sure everybody remembered the Food Co. 7 and actually they would bring it up as 
much as they could. At times when it didn't look like people were following the Food Co. 7. They would come in and be like, ‘hey be more 
respectful or be more safe, think about your coworkers.’” 
 Supervisor 209: “Yeah. I did the one-on-ones and then I would catch guys on the floor randomly and we would talk about it. I asked them 
how they felt how they were doing with the Food Co. 7s and we would talk about the different things where they thought they were with all 
of them…We would talk about what Food Co. 7 thing they could work on, what could be their focus.” 
Norm 
Establishment 
Teams held engagement meetings regularly 
 Employee 134: “Every morning we would get into a group discussion, go over the Food Co. 7 step by step…it was pretty much every day. 
Everybody would get together [for about] 5, 10, maybe 15 minutes.” 
 Employee 135: “we had a meeting each day early in the morning between 5, 10 minutes about the Food Co. 7. [We discussed] how to help 
each other, how to wash, how to be careful, how to clean up.” 
 Supervisor 131: “[we] start in the morning with the meeting, explain to people what the Food Co. 7 means. Every day, we choose a different 
person to talk about the Food Co. 7.” 
Supervisors encouraged team members to promote and hold each other accountable to OCB expectations 
 Employee 233: “he [supervisor] took it very seriously and he would push everybody to help each other with the Food Co 7.” 
 Employee 239: “My supervisor would tell us 'It's just everyone's responsibility. It's not just my responsibility, it's not just his responsibility, 
it's everyone as a whole has to adhere to the Food Co. 7 and has to let the person next to you know if they're doing something wrong. You got 
to let them know.’” 
 Supervisor 232: [in response to what happens when someone does not follow OCB expectations]: “If by any chance they come and tell me, I 
say 'Hey, you should tell them.' 'You also have to. As a colleague you have to tell them. I don't have to be the only one to tell them.” 
 Supervisor 234: “Yes, I motivated them to talk about the Food Co. 7. As an example, I would tell them to talk to each other if anybody was 
missing something, 'Hey, you're missing this or you're a missing glove.' 
  78 
 
Both Role 
Clarification & 
Norm 
Establishment 
Employees received Food Co. 7 badges/cards 
 Employee 136: “Yeah...I'm still wearing the badge.” 
 Employee 216: “Everybody had to wear their card...you had to have your card with your ID.” 
 Employee 217: “[supervisors] were bringing each different line [work group], explaining the Food Co. 7, giving us all the card.” 
 Supervisor 120: “After the meetings and sometimes in break time, when I talk to them about the Food Co. 7 card...Like, 'can I see your Food 
Co. 7 card?' And I used to ask, 'what does that one mean?'” 
Supervisors promoted and held individual employees accountable to OCB expectations 
 Employee 116: “[Supervisors] just tried to make sure that we understood them. We have to learn these Food Co. 7 and apply them to us, as a 
group. They tried to, not enforce, that's too hard…but try to get you to apply them to work.” 
 Employee 219: “in the morning, or sometime when we're dressing and we just come in, our supervisors would say 'Good morning' and 
'Remember your Food Co. 7?'...They would ask, 'How you guys doing?' Great? I hope you guys remember your Food Co. 7.'” 
 Employee 237: “even during the day, they [supervisors] would have a meeting and afterwards during the day they would still talk to us and 
say like, 'Remember [the Food Co. 7] rules and help each other.' They would reinforce it during the day.” 
Teams held engagement meetings regularly 
 Employee 216: I remember the meetings...they [supervisors] talked about safety, respecting one another, helping one another, if you see 
something that's out of place, call a supervisor….we had [meetings] twice, sometimes three times a week.” 
 Employee 217: “[Meetings] was constantly. It was every other couple days. Sometimes back to back days. They just wanted to explain...the 
Food Co. 7 and for each one, they'd just ask. Instead of telling us what the Food Co. 7 were, they was asking us 'what were they?' and each of 
us had to get up telling one.” 
 Employee 219: “They would ask questions about the Food Co.7. They would say first…’everybody keep their card’ and...ask questions like 
'what is number one, number two, number three?' [What about] teamwork, and how best you can acquire that?' They talked about respect, and 
how you can do that, to respect your teammate.” 
Supervisors encouraged team members to promote and hold each other accountable to OCB expectations 
 Employee 216: “When we had our meetings, we'd sit there and he'd [the supervisor] say, ‘Who can give me a good example for a safety 
rule?’ I said, ‘The hose on the floor, you shouldn't run inside and where it's wet, watch the fallen pallets’ and stuff like that. He'll say, ‘Okay, 
good.’ We had to give him an examples because a lot of people were shy about speaking out.” 
 Supervisor 229: “I saw, for example, if somebody was not doing something that the Food Co. 7 said, others would go to me and tell me, 'This 
person is not doing this’…but I would also motivate them to tell them, “You can tell them yourself as well. I don’t have to be the only one.’” 
 Assistant Manager 221: “We let them know that...we’re not forcing you to talk, we just tried to instill the fact that we’re just trying to change 
the culture and get things better...we always try to get them to understand that ‘it’s not me or [manager name's] room, it’s all of ours. If you 
see something wrong, let us know because at the end of the day it’s our job, everybody’s job.” 
Control Received job-specific training, but did not receive training or information on the Food Co. 7 
 Employee 112: “They showed us how to clean properly, and the slicers, and the incline. That’s pretty much it.” 
 Employee 119: “What do you mean by the [Food Co. 7]? I've never heard it.” 
 Supervisor 211: “we had multiple trainings…a little bit of everything. Safety, P.P.E…that is protective clothing that you wear…We had 
courses on management. Things like that.” 
 
 
  79 
 
Figures 
FIGURE 1 
Interactive Effects of Role Clarification and Norm Establishment on Change in OCB 1 Month into the Intervention (T1) 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  80 
 
 
FIGURE 2 
Interactive Effects of Role Clarification and Norm Establishment on Change in OCB 3 Months into the Intervention (T2) 
 
  
  81 
 
Bibliography 
Barker, J. R. 1993. Tightening the iron cage: Concertive control in self-managing 
teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 38(3): 408–437. 
Bettenhausen, K. L., & Murnighan, J. K. 1985. The emergence of norms in 
competitive decision-making groups. Administrative Science Quarterly, 30(3): 
350–372. 
Bettenhausen, K. L., & Murnighan, J. K. 1991. The development of an intragroup 
norm and the effects of interpersonal and structural challenges. Administrative 
Science Quarterly, 36(1): 20–35. 
Bliese, P. D. 2002. Using multilevel random coefficient modeling in organizational 
research. In F. Drasgow & N. W. Schmitt (Eds.), Advances in measurement and 
data analysis: 401–445. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Baas. 
Bolino, M. C., Klotz, A. C., Turnley, W. H., & Harvey, J. 2013. Exploring the dark 
side of organizational citizenship behavior. Journal of Organizational 
Behavior, 34(4): 542–559. 
Bolino, M. C., & Turnley, W. H. 2003. Going the extra mile: Cultivating and 
managing employee citizenship behavior. Academy of Management Executive, 
17(3): 60–71. 
Bommer, W. H., Miles, E. W., & Grover, S. L. 2003. Does one good turn deserve 
another? Coworker influences on employee citizenship. Journal of 
Organizational Behavior, 24(2): 181–196. 
Carpenter, N. C., Berry, C. M., & Houston, L. 2014. A meta-analytic comparison of 
self-reported and other-reported organizational citizenship behavior. Journal of 
Organizational Behavior, 35(4): 547–574. 
Charmaz, K. 2006. Constructing grounded theory: A practical guide through 
qualitative analysis. London, UK: Sage. 
Chatman, J. A., & Flynn, F. J. 2001. The influence of demographic heterogeneity on 
the emergence and consequences of cooperative norms in work teams. Academy 
of Management Journal, 44(5): 956–974. 
Chen, Z., Takeuchi, R., & Shum, C. 2013. A social information processing 
perspective of coworker influence on a focal employee. Organization Science, 
24(6): 1618–1639. 
Chiaburu, D. S., & Harrison, D. A. 2008. Do peers make the place? Conceptual 
synthesis and meta-analysis of coworker effects on perceptions, attitudes, OCBs, 
and performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93(5): 1082–1103. 
Cialdini, R. B., & Trost, M. R. 1998. Social influence: Social norms, conformity and 
compliance. In D. T. Gilbert, S. T. Fiske, & L. Gardner (Eds.), Handbook of 
social psychology: 151–192. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. 
Creswell, J. W., & Plano Clark, V. L. 2011. Designing and conducting mixed 
  82 
 
methods research (Second.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. 
Darley, J. M., & Latané, B. 1968. Bystander intervention in emergencies: Diffusion 
of responsibility. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 8(4): 377–383. 
Dekas, K. H., Bauer, T. N., Welle, B., Kurkoski, J., & Sullivan, S. 2013. 
Organizational citizenship behavior, version 2.0: A review and qualitative 
investigation of OCBs for knowledge workers at Google and beyond. Academy 
of Management Perspectives, 27(3): 219–237. 
Dyer, N. G., Hanges, P. J., & Hall, R. J. 2005. Applying multilevel confirmatory 
factor analysis techniques to the study of leadership. Leadership Quarterly, 
16(1): 149–167. 
Edmondson, A. 1999. Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. 
Administrative Science Quarterly, 44: 350–383. 
Edmondson, A. C., & McManus, S. E. 2007. Methodological fit in management field 
research. Academy of Management Review, 32(4): 1155–1179. 
Ehrhart, M. G., & Naumann, S. E. 2004. Organizational citizenship behavior in work 
groups: A group norms approach. Journal of Applied Psychology, 89(6): 960–
974. 
Feldman, D. C. 1984. The development and enforcement of group norms. Academy 
of Management Review, 9(1): 47–53. 
Fine, G. A., & Elsbach, K. D. 2000. Ethnography and experiment in social 
psychological theory building: Tactics for integrating qualitative field data with 
quantitative lab data. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 36(1): 51–76. 
Frese, M., Fay, D., Hilburger, T., Leng, K., & Tag, A. 1997. The concept of personal 
initiative: Operationalization, reliability and validity in two German samples. 
Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 70(2): 139–161. 
George, J. M., & Jones, G. R. 2000. The role of time in theory and theory building. 
Journal of Management, 26(4): 657–684. 
Gersick, C. J. G., & Hackman, J. R. 1990. Habitual routines in task-performing 
groups. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 47(1): 65–
97. 
Grant, A. M., & Patil, S. V. 2012. Challenging the norm of self-interest: Minority 
influence and transitions to helping norms in work units. Academy of 
Management Review, 37(4): 547–568. 
Grant, A. M., & Wall, T. D. 2008. The neglected science and art of quasi-
experimentation: Why-to, when-to, and how-to advice for organizational 
researchers. Organizational Research Methods, 12(4): 653–686. 
Hackman, J. R., & Wageman, R. 2005. A theory of team coaching. Academy of 
Management Review, 30(2): 269–287. 
Hofmann, D. A., & Gavin, M. B. 1998. Centering decisions in hierarchical linear 
models: Implications for research in organizations. Journal of Management, 
24(5): 623–641. 
  83 
 
Hofmann, D. A., Morgeson, F. P., & Gerras, S. J. 2003. Climate as a moderator of the 
relationship between leader-member exchange and content specific citizenship: 
Safety climate as an exemplar. Journal of Applied Psychology, 88(1): 170–178. 
Ilgen, D. R., & Hollenbeck, J. R. 1991. The structure of work: Job design and roles. 
In M. D. Dunnette & L. M. Hough (Eds.), Handbook of industrial and 
organizational psychology: 165–207. Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists 
Press. 
Ilies, R., Nahrgang, J. D., & Morgeson, F. P. 2007. Leader-member exchange and 
citizenship behaviors: A meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92(1): 
269–277. 
Jiao, C., Richards, D. A., & Hackett, R. D. 2013. Organizational citizenship behavior 
and role breadth: A meta-analytic and cross-cultural analysis. Human Resource 
Management, 52(5): 697–714. 
Jick, T. D. 1979. Mixing qualitative and quantitative methods: Triangulation in 
action. Administrative Science Quarterly, 24(4): 602–611. 
Kaplan, S. 2016. Mixing quantitative and qualitative approaches. In R. M. Kramer & 
K. D. Elsbach (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative organizational psychology: 421–
433. Routledge. 
Katz, D., & Kahn, R. L. 1978a. The taking of organizational roles. The Social 
Psychology of Organizations: 185–221. New York, NY: Wiley. 
Katz, D., & Kahn, R. L. 1978b. Defining characteristics of social organizations. The 
social psychology of organizations: 35–68. New York, NY: Wiley. 
Kim, Y. J., Van Dyne, L., Kamdar, D., & Johnson, R. E. 2013. Why and when do 
motives matter? An integrative model of motives, role cognitions, and social 
support as predictors of OCB. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision 
Processes, 121(2): 231–245. 
Kozlowski, S. W. J., Gully, S., Nason, E., & Smith, E. 1999. Developing adaptive 
teams: A theory of compilation and performance across levels and time. In D. R. 
Ilgen & E. D. Pulakos (Eds.), The changing nature of work performance: 
Implications for staffing, personnel actions, and development: 240–292. San 
Francisco, CA: Jossey-Baas. 
Kozlowski, S. W. J., & Klein, K. J. 2000. A multilevel approach to theory and 
research in organizations: Contextual, temporal, and emergent processes. In K. J. 
Klein & S. W. J. Kozlowski (Eds.), Multilevel theory, research, and methods in 
oraganizations: Foundations, extensions, and new directions: 3–90. San 
Francisco: Jossey-Baas. 
Lam, S. S. K., Hui, C., & Law, K. S. 1999. Organizational citizenship behavior: 
Comparing perspectives of supervisors and subordinates across four 
international samples. Journal of Applied Psychology, 84(4): 594–601. 
Lemoine, G. J., Parsons, C. K., & Kansara, S. 2015. Above and beyond, again and 
again: Self-regulation in the aftermath of organizational citizenship behaviors. 
Journal of Applied Psychology, 100(1): 40–55. 
  84 
 
LePine, J. A., Erez, A., & Johnson, D. E. 2002. The nature and dimensionality of 
organizational citizenship behavior: A critical review and meta-analysis. 
Journal of Applied Psychology, 87(1): 52–65. 
Lepine, J. A., & Van Dyne, L. 2001. Peer responses to low performers: An 
attributional model of helping in the context of groups. Academy of 
Management Review, 26(1): 67–84. 
Liang, J., Farh, C. I. C., & Farh, J.-L. 2012. Psychological antecedents of promotive 
and prohibitive voice: A two-wave examination. Academy of Management 
Journal, 55(1): 71–92. 
Locke, K., & Golden-Biddle, K. 2002. An introduction to qualitative research: Its 
potential for industrial and organizational psychology. In S. G. Rogelberg (Ed.), 
Handbook of research methods in industrial and organizational psychology: 
99–118. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publisers. 
Maris, E. 1998. Covariance adjustment versus gain scores—revisited. Psychological 
Methods, 3(3): 309–327. 
McAllister, D. J., Kamdar, D., Morrison, E. W., & Turban, D. B. 2007. Disentangling 
role perceptions: How perceived role breadth, discretion, instrumentality, and 
efficacy relate to helping and taking charge. Journal of Applied Psychology, 
92(5): 1200–1211. 
Miles, M. B., & Huberman, A. M. 1994. Qualitative data analysis. Thousand Oaks, 
CA: Sage. 
Miller, C. C., Cardinal, L. B., & Glick, W. H. 1997. Retrospective reports in 
organizational research: A reexamination of recent evidence. Academy of 
Management Journal, 40(1): 189–204. 
Miller, D. T., & Prentice, D. A. 2016. Changing norms to change behavior. Annual 
Review of Psychology, 67: 339–361. 
Mitchell, T. R., & James, L. R. 2001. Time and the better theory: Building of when 
things happen specification. Academy of Management Review, 26(4): 530–547. 
Morris, M. W., Hong, Y., Chiu, C., & Liu, Z. 2015. Normology: Integrating insights 
about social norms to understand cultural dynamics. Organizational Behavior 
and Human Decision Processes. 
Morrison, E. W. 1994. Role definitions and organizational citizenship behavior: The 
importance of the employee’s perspective. Academy of Management Journal, 
37(6): 1543–1567. 
Morrison, E. W., & Phelps, C. C. 1999. Taking charge at work: Extrarole efforts to 
initiate workplace change. Academy of management Journal, 42(4): 403–419. 
Muthén, L. K., & Muthén, B. O. 2010. Mplus User’s Guide (6th ed.). Los Angeles, 
CA: Muthén & Muthén. 
Naumann, S. E., & Ehrhart, M. G. 2011. Moderators of the relationship between 
group helping norms and individual helping. Small Group Research, 42(2): 
225–248. 
  85 
 
Neal, A., & Griffin, M. A. 2006. A study of the lagged relationships among safety 
climate, safety motivation, safety behavior, and accidents at the individual and 
group levels. Journal of Applied Psychology, 91(4): 946–53. 
Organ, D. W. 1997. Organizational citizenship behavior: It’s construct clean-up time. 
Human Performance, 10(3): 85–97. 
Organ, D. W., Podsakoff, P. M., & Mackenzie, S. B. 2006. Organizational 
citizenship behavior: Its nature, antecedents, and consequences. Sage 
Publications. 
Podsakoff, N. P., Whiting, S. W., Podsakoff, P. M., & Blume, B. D. 2009. Individual- 
and organizational-level consequences of organizational citizenship behaviors: A 
meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 94(1): 122–141. 
Podsakoff, P. M., MacKenzie, S. B., Moorman, R. H., & Fetter, R. 1990. 
Transformational leader behaviors and their effects on followers’ trust in leader, 
satisfaction, and organizational citizenship behaviors. Leadership Quarterly, 
1(2): 107–142. 
Podsakoff, P. M., Mackenzie, S. B., Paine, J. B., & Bachrach, D. G. 2000. 
Organizational citizenship behaviors: A critical review of the theoretical and 
empirical literature and suggestions for future research. Journal of 
Management, 26(3): 513–563. 
Raver, J. L., Ehrhart, M. G., & Chadwick, I. C. 2012. The emergence of team helping 
norms: Foundations within members’ attributes and behavior. Journal of 
Organizational Behavior, 33(5): 616–637. 
Rosenbaum, P. R., & Rubin, D. B. 1983. The central role of the propensity score in 
observational studies for causal effects. Biometrika, 70(1): 41–55. 
Schaubroeck, J., Ganster, D. C., Sime, W. E., & Ditman, D. 1993. A field experiment 
testing supervisory role clarification. Personnel Psychology, 46(1): 1–25. 
Schwartz, S. H., & Clausen, G. T. 1970. Responsibility, norms, and helping in an 
emergency. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 16(2): 299–310. 
Shadish, W. R., Cook, T. D., & Campbell, D. T. 2002. Experimental and quasi-
experimental designs for generalized causal inference. Belmont, CA: 
Wadsworth. 
Shipp, A. J., & Cole, M. S. 2015. Time in individual-level organizational studies: 
What is it, how is it used, and why isn’t it exploited more often? Annual Review 
of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 2(1): 237–260. 
Smith, C. A., Organ, D. W., & Near, J. P. 1983. Organizational citizenship behavior: 
Its nature and antecedents. Journal of Applied Psychology, 68(4): 653–663. 
Snijders, T. A. B., & Bosker, R. J. 1999. Multilevel analysis: An introduction to 
basic and advanced multilevel modeling. London, UK: Sage. 
Tepper, B. J., Lockhart, D., & Hoobler, J. 2001. Justice, citizenship, and role 
definition effects. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86(4): 789–96. 
Tepper, B. J., & Taylor, E. C. 2003. Relationships among supervisors’ and 
  86 
 
subordinates' proceedural justice perceptions and organizational citizenship 
behaviors. Academy of Management Journal, 46(1): 97–105. 
Van Dyne, L., Cummings, L. L., & Parks, J. M. 1995. Extra-role behaviors: In pursuit 
of construct and definitional clarity (a bridge over muddied waters). In L. L. 
Cummings & B. M. Staw (Eds.), Research in Organizational Behavior: 215–
285. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. 
Van Dyne, L., Kamdar, D., & Joireman, J. 2008. In-role perceptions buffer the 
negative impact of low LMX on helping and enhance the positive impact of high 
LMX on voice. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93(6): 1195–1207. 
Vuori, T. O., & Huy, Q. N. In press. Distributed attention and shared emotions in the 
innovation process: How Nokia lost the smartphone battle. Administrative 
Science Quarterly. 
Yaffe, T., & Kark, R. 2011. Leading by example: The case of leader OCB. Journal of 
Applied Psychology, 96(4): 806–826.