Organisations are frequently looking for new ways of enhancing performance and profitability. Organisational citizenship behaviour as well as task performance have the potential to achieve these goals and the paper shall look at how the latter can be achieved.
Leadership behaviour shown by supervisors that may enhance subordinates task performance and leadership behaviour that enhances organisational citizenship behaviour
In order to ensure that task performance is enhanced within an organisation. Leaders need to possess the ability to match employee competence levels alongside the complexity of tasks allocated to them. This can best be achieved through institution of certain structures within the workplace. More often than not, when a supervisor lacks such qualities then employee expectations will be diminished and this may impede their ability to carry out certain tasks.(Xin & Pelled, 2002)
Leaders need to know how to engage in effective conflict management because this affects task performance. Also, they should not in any way cause those conflicts by treating their subordinates in an inferior manner. (Xin &Pelled, 2002).
They also possess an ability to improve task performance by practicing participative leadership. An analysis of several Fortune five companies indicated that frontline employees as well as managerial employees were substantially motivated to perform their respective tasks. Also, a high interaction with one’s subordinates causes staff members to remain committed to their organisation and hence be more motivated. (Organ, 2000)
Task performance is an essential part of any organisation’s operations; however, companies need to recognise that there are still other aspects of employee performance that are not just defined by organisational tasks. Organisational citizenship behaviour refers to those components of employees’ behaviour that are not acknowledged and recognised by the traditional reward. However, this behaviour has the potential to increase efficiency of the workplace. (Watson & Michaelsen, 2001)
Since organisational citizenship behaviour has two separate dimensions associated with it then it is also essential for leaders to think of separate strategies for enhancing these aspects. The first portion of citizenship behaviour is altruism and the second is compliance. Compliance means those aspects of good citizenry that are done naturally or out of a need to comply with rules. This can be improved by meeting one’s end of the bargain and thus causing employees to have an inherent tendency to comply with expectations. Also, when one creates an organisational culture that supports this compliance, then one’s employees are also likely to follow suit. (Kavanagh, 2001)
The most important aspect of citizenship behaviour that needs to be encouraged is altruism because this causes them to stick to a certain challenge. There are no other ways of adopting these underlying issues. Here, leaders must be there for their employees in case their staffs encounter problems. They must forge a support system to the concerned party so that individuals may be motivated to want to help others in his line of duty. This can be understood through the social exchange theory.
The social exchange theory states that employment should be considered as a trade off between reward systems and social or monitory rewards. Adherents to this theory believe that human beings behave in such a manner that reciprocates that they receive from the people around them. There are three groups that are affected by this social exchange theory and they include:
- Co-workers
- Supervisors
- The organisation
In other words, the latter listed aspects are avenues for creating social exchanges. Consequently, the extent to which persons receive a reward is the same way with which they will engage with the concerned party. Alternatively, leaders also need to create an organisational culture that enhances loyalty from the concerned groups. (Decktop, 1999)
Training programmes that should enhance leadership behaviours that are conducive to organisational citizenship behaviour.
This leadership training program will teach leaders how to act as examples rather than as supervisors. On top of that, there would also be a need to volunteer for overtime so that their subordinates can learn from the best. (Anderson & Williams, 1991)
The participating leaders will be taught about empowering their employees in decision making processes. Statistics indicate that those staff members who are involved in decision making tend to feel a sense of obligation. The training process will involve identification of some aspects of the workplace that can be delegated to their staff members. (Organ, 2000)
Job satisfaction is another crucial area of the enterprise that will also have to be improved. In other words, the leaders involved in training need to look for ways in which they can cause their employees to be psyched about their tasks. They also need to be in a situation where they feel that they are valued in that institution. One cannot ignore the issue of organisational commitment. (Erez et al & Lepine, 2002) This is because this will make them more involved in the process. Leaders also need to work on increasing these aspects.
The evaluation technique of the latter process will entail five major parameters. Managers will analyse the ability of members to help one another, secondly, they will look at the number of times that they engage in overtime work, thirdly, their ability to cope with high stress situations, their ability to suggest some changes in the workplace and their consideration of the effects of their actions. All these aspects will be analysed on a monthly basis and if after one year it has been found that there is no change then the concerned leaders will have to change their approach to everything
Task performance is crucial in bringing out organisational success. However, organisational citizenship behaviour is just as important. Leaders need to realise that it is a two way exchange and that organisational citizenship behaviour as well as task performance can be realised if they meet their end of the bargain. Training therefore needs to deal with aspects that improve these social exchanges such that co-workers and supervisors have a sense of loyalty towards the company that they are working for at any one time.
References
Anderson, S. & Williams, L. (1991). “Organisational commitment and job satisfaction as predictors of OCB.” Management journal. 17(3): 601
Organ, W. (2000). The Good soldier syndrome. Lexington: Heath and Company publishers
Erez, A., Johnson, D. & Lepine, J. (2002). “Dimensionality and nature of OCB.” Applied psychology journal. 87(4): 52
Decktop, J. (1999). “Organisational citizenship and pay.” Journal of management Academy. 4 (5): 87
Kavanagh, M. (2001). “Leadership behaviour and task complexity.” Administrative Science Quarterly. 17(2): 600
Xin, K. &Pelled, K. (2002). “Subordinate – supervisor conflict.” Leadership Quarterly 14(1): 30
Watson, W. & Michaelsen, L. (2001). “Lead participation and task performance information.” Group and Organisation management journal. 9(1):122-144