Job Autonomy, Role Ambiguity, and Procedural Justice: A Multi-Conditional Process Model of Change-Oriented Organizational Citizenship Behavior in Public Organizations

In: Review of public personnel administration

Abstract

Job autonomy allows employees to act upon contextual knowledge to introduce performance-enhancing work process improvements. However, autonomy is not a sufficient condition for change-oriented organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), as employees may lack the skills, information, or psychological safety necessary to pursue change. I propose a job autonomy-based multi-conditional process model of change-oriented OCB that takes into account the mediating role of job performance and the moderating roles of both role ambiguity and procedural justice. Using a large sample of Korean central and local government workers, I estimate a latent variable moderated mediation model. The results suggest that the effect of job autonomy on change-oriented OCB via job performance is strongest when role ambiguity is low and procedural justice is high. In closing, I argue that public managers need to be cognizant of the subtle factors that shape the impact of job autonomy on employee behavioral outputs.