Promoting organizational citizenship behaviour through high involvement human resource practices: an attempt to reduce turnover intention

This study examines the possibility of inducing organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) through human resource (HR) philosophy and high involvement HR practices administered at the workplace. Leader-member exchange (LMX) is posited to be a potential mediator. Data was collected from hotel frontline employees and analyzed through structural equation modeling. Findings show that HR philosophy drives the formulation of the bundles of high involvement human resource practices and such philosophy contributes to employees’ willingness in exhibiting citizenship behavior directed at individuals (OCBI) as well as organizations (OCBO) as a whole. High involvement HR practices, however, do not elicit OCB but are significantly related to LMX, a new theoretical insight which should invite future research. Although exchanges between supervisors and subordinates are proven to have influences on employees’ willingness in performing OCB, LMX does not mediate the relationship between high involvement HR practices and OCB. Overall, hotel frontline employees participated in this study exhibit more of OCBO as a whole, rather than OCBI; and such behavior reduce their intention to leave. Both theoretical and practical implications as well as avenues for future research are discussed.