Abstract:
Although number of scholars attempted to show the gender differences in many
organizationally relevant areas over the past decades, treatment and expectations of
female and male at their workplace are still observed as differentiated. Organizational
citizenship behavior (OCB) is the behavior that employees engage in actions that are
organizationally significant and not prescribed in their formal job description. OCB has
been related to number of positive consequences at both individual and organizational
level. Therefore, scholars have paid their attention in studying this growing area. The
amount of engagement in OCB may vary based on the gender differences. The
objective of this study was to examine the gender differences in engagement of OCB.
A sample of 160 employees (N=180, 80 Males and 80 Females) was drawn from public
service sector in Sri Lanka. Validated questionnaire was used to collect the data. Five
dimensions of OCB namely conscientiousness, sportsmanship, civic virtue, helping
behavior, and courtesy have been used to test the differences. The findings revealed
significant gender differences on three dimensions of OCB. While conscientiousness
and helping behavior have shown female on the higher side, sportsmanship has shown
male on the higher side. But, in terms of other dimensions civic virtue and courtesy the
differences were insignificant falling far away from the probability level of .05.
However, analysis on overall OCB shown negligible gender differences suggest that
males and females are both almost equal in engaging in OCB. Nevertheless, the results
supporting in case of the dimensions of helping behavior females are on the higher side
suggesting that female are generally more empathic or sympathetic than male and
therefore, they are more helpfulness, kindness, and compassion than male. However,
in case of dimension of sportsmanship male are on the higher side suggesting that males
are willing to tolerate inconveniences without complaining petty grievances. This is
consistent with the previous findings that male possess certain characteristics such as
happily taking risk, stillness in a crisis situation, and the ability to work under pressure.
Findings of this study have number of implications and have shown new avenues for
future research.
