The measurement of organizational citizenship behavior: Are we assuming too much?

Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) is assessed by measuring how frequently employees display extra-role and discretionary behaviors. One hundred forty-four managerial employees responded to an OCB scale and indicated the number of behaviors on the scale they believed to be formally evaluated. None of the behaviors were believed to be unevaluated by all employees. Data suggest that a typical OCB scale is not measuring citizenship behaviors for everybody, and that OCB measurement needs refinement. Best prediction of other organizational variables was obtained when both the OCB and an index of ''unevaluated'' behaviors were used as predictors. Supervisor fairness interacted with OCB when predicting organizational commitment, and this interaction was contingent on the extent OCBs were believed to be unevaluated.