Doing voluntary extra work?: Organizational citizenship behavior in the hospital -: a comparison between physicians and nurses

Aim of the study: The study compares physicians and the nursing staff of a hospital in terms of their extra-role behavior. Matters of interest include the extent of Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) shown on the one hand and on the other hand which conditions stimulate the OCB of both physicians and nurses, respectively. Method: The comparison was conducted by applying a questionnaire on n=70 physicians and n=112 nurses in a nursing department of a municipal hospital. Results: The results can be summarized as follows: (1) The extra-role behavior in terms of sportsmanship, individual initiative, and conscientiousness show equally high values with respect to physicians as well as nurses. In contrast, nurses rate their own helping behavior towards colleagues higher than the physicians do. Therefore, the extent of OCB does not seem to be job-specific in the narrower sense. (2) Differences between physicians and nurses exist indeed with respect to the conditions for the occurrence of OCB: Although the extent of OCB shown by physicians and nurses is independent from age, department tenure, and organizational tenure, job experience does play a role for the degree of conscientiousness (physicians) and individual initiative (nurses). Furthermore, gender affects the sub dimension sportsmanship (nurses). (3) While job characteristics (job control and stress) play a certain role for the degree of nurses' OCB, the physicians' extra-role behavior is independent from job control and strain. Vice versa, the analyzed person-related characteristics job insecurity and strain play a role for the extra-role behavior of physicians, while the behavior of nurses remains unaffected hereof. In other words: Nurses show the same OCB at high and low levels of strain and job insecurity, while physicians lower their OCB when strain and job insecurity rise. (4) For both physicians and nurses, job satisfaction is the most important predictor for extra-role behavior. Conclusion: When trying to enhance the extent of OCB within a hospital, it is - according to our results primarily essential to increase the job satisfaction of physicians as well as nurses. Within the nursing department, it is additionally recommended to enhance the employees' scope of action, if possible. However, for the enhancement of OCB it must be kept in mind - according to our results - that with rising OCB the stress (e.g. time pressure and interruptions) rise at the same time. The latter might result in higher strain for employees. In the group of physicians, on the other hand, a person-related approach seems promising: It is essential to reduce the physicians' subjectively felt strains as well as the job insecurity.