Examination of organizational commitment and organizational citizenship behaviour among local government civil servants in Uganda

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between organizational commitment and organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB) among local government civil servants.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper adopts a cross-sectional survey research design with a response of 239 civil servants in the local government sector; data was collected using a questionnaire and quantitative approaches were used in analysis.

Findings

The findings reveal that there is a significant positive relationship between organizational commitment and organizational citizenship behaviour. The predictive power of organizational commitment on OCB is, however, lower than other similar studies in extant literature. Despite being significant, the coefficient of determination in the final model was very low raising thoughtful concerns hence recommendation for further analytical studies in the local government context in the African setting.

Research limitations/implications

The results in this study cannot be without limitations. The authors take a note of the sector that the authors studied, i.e., local governments, in which the authors may not have contextualized the concepts very well and had challenges of interpretation by the respondents. The authors were also limited by the lack of context-specific literature to underpin our discussion. The paper is also limited by the narrow scope of one region in Uganda and thus generalizability to the African level may be done with caution.

Practical implications

This study provides important implications to policy, practice and research. While policies provide for expected efficiencies and productivity, the authors note that an environment in which these are to be achieved is important when it promotes OCB. Policy makers should bear in mind behavioural elements for affective, normative and continuance commitment.

Originality/value

This study contributes to the body of knowledge by finding further support for the relationship between organizational commitment and OCB, and advances a likely debate that among local government civil servants in a developing country context the predictive power could be very low. This possibly explains the efficiency gaps at this level of state governance.

Citation

Obedgiu, V., Bagire, V. and Mafabi, S. (2017), "Examination of organizational commitment and organizational citizenship behaviour among local government civil servants in Uganda", Journal of Management Development, Vol. 36 No. 10, pp. 1304-1316. https://doi.org/10.1108/JMD-12-2016-0279