Chinese Organizational Citizenship Scale

Abstract

The Chinese Organizational Citizenship Scale (COCS) is a 20-item psychometric instrument developed by Farh, Earley, and Lin (1997) specifically for assessing Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) within the cultural context of Chinese society. Unlike measures developed in Western contexts, the COCS incorporates culturally specific dimensions relevant to collectivist and hierarchical organizational environments.

The scale measures five distinct dimensions of OCB: Identification with the company, Altruism toward colleagues, Conscientiousness, Interpersonal harmony, and Protecting company resources. These dimensions capture both proactive, affiliative behaviors (like protecting reputation) and behaviors related to resource stewardship and adherence to organizational norms, reflecting a comprehensive understanding of discretionary behavior in Chinese organizations.

Keywords

Organizational Citizenship Behavior, OCB, China, Farh, Organizational Psychology, Conscientiousness, Altruism, Interpersonal Harmony, Organizational Justice, Work Attitude

Authors

Jiing-Lih Farh, P. Christopher Earley, Shirley C. Lin

Purpose

The primary purpose of the COCS is to provide a culturally sensitive and empirically validated measure of Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) tailored for the Chinese cultural context. The developers aimed to capture facets of OCB that are specifically emphasized in Chinese organizations, particularly those related to collective identity, resource preservation, and maintaining social harmony (often associated with Guanxi).

The scale allows researchers and practitioners to assess an employee’s willingness to go beyond formal job requirements across five critical behavioral domains. By incorporating dimensions like Interpersonal Harmony and Protecting Company Resources, the COCS offers a more nuanced and culturally appropriate understanding of discretionary behavior than traditional Western measures of OCB.

Construct

The COCS measures Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) as a multidimensional construct comprising 20 items distributed across five empirically distinct factors. These factors reflect the unique cultural emphasis on collective welfare and interpersonal dynamics often found in Chinese workplaces.

• Identification with the company: This dimension describes an employee’s loyalty and proactive willingness to defend the organization’s reputation and offer constructive suggestions for operational improvement.
• Altruism to colleagues: This measures an employee’s readiness to assist peers, including helping new colleagues adjust, solving work-related problems, and covering work assignments when needed.
• Conscientiousness: This factor includes employee willingness to go beyond organizational expectations in areas such as attendance, obeying rules (even when unsupervised), and committing to hard work and self-improvement.
• Interpersonal harmony: This dimension assesses the employee’s willingness to avoid the pursuit of selfish personal power and gain, thereby ensuring positive organizational social relationships and minimizing destructive conflict.
• Protecting company resources: This covers the employee’s efforts to avoid and discourage negative behaviors, specifically the abuse of company policies, time, and physical resources for personal use.

Validity

The validity of the COCS was supported through correlational analysis demonstrating strong relationships between the subscales and key organizational variables. Construct validity was established by finding positive correlations among four of the five dimensions: Altruism, Conscientiousness, Interpersonal harmony, and Protecting company resources.

Furthermore, all five dimensions showed positive correlations with measures of interactive justice and organizational commitment. Specific findings included that Identification with the company correlated positively with employee participation and the presence of appeal mechanisms. Altruism also correlated positively with pay satisfaction and employee education level, while Conscientiousness correlated positively with distributive justice. Finally, Interpersonal harmony and Protecting company resources were positively linked to employee participation, distributive justice, appeal mechanisms, and pay satisfaction (Farh et al., 1997).

Reliability

Internal consistency reliability was established using Coefficient Alpha (Cronbach’s Alpha) for each of the five subscales, demonstrating acceptable to strong reliability across all dimensions, thus confirming the scale’s stability in measuring the intended constructs.

The reported Coefficient Alpha values from the original study (Farh et al., 1997) were: .87 for Identification with the company, .87 for Altruism, .82 for Conscientiousness, and .86 for both Interpersonal harmony and Protecting company resources. These high values meet conventional standards for research instruments, indicating that the items within each dimension consistently measure the intended underlying factor.

Factor Analysis

A Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) was performed by the developers to rigorously test the proposed five-factor structure of the 20 items. The need for CFA was driven by the desire to validate a structure that diverges from traditional two- or three-factor Western OCB models.

The results of the Confirmatory Factor Analysis strongly supported the empirical distinctiveness of the five dimensions. The analysis confirmed that the items loaded significantly onto their theoretically designated factors, validating the structure that separates OCB into the five culturally relevant components: Identification with the company, Altruism, Conscientiousness, Interpersonal harmony, and Protecting company resources (Farh et al., 1997).

Instrument

Test Type: Psychometric Self-Report or Peer-Report Scale

Format: 20 items utilizing a 7-point Likert-type scale (1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree). Several items are reverse-scored (R).

Language Available: Chinese (Original), English translation available for research purposes.

Population Group: Employees/Workers in Organizational Settings

Age Group: Adult (Working population)

Population Details: Developed and validated using samples from Chinese society, making it primarily applicable to organizational contexts reflecting East Asian cultural values and management practices.

Test Methodology: The measure can be used to gather data either through self-reporting (the employee rates their own behavior) or through peer/supervisor reporting (rating a focal employee’s behavior).

Keywords

Organizational Citizenship Scale, Employee Behavior, Work Performance, Organizational Commitment, Job Satisfaction, Cultural Adaptation, Psychometrics, Confirmatory Factor Analysis

Authors

Author ORCID Identifier: N/A

Affiliation Email addresses: N/A

Correspondence Address: N/A

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Chinese Organizational Citizenship Scale was published in 1997. The items utilized in the scale were published in Table 1, p. 428 of the source article. The original publication source states, “Copyright© 1997. Reproduced with permission.” Researchers seeking to use the scale must contact the journal, Administrative Science Quarterly, or the authors (Farh, Earley, Lin) directly to secure current usage permissions and inquire about potential licensing fees.

Reference’s

Farh, J. L., Earley, P. C., & Lin, S. C. (1997). Impetus for action: A cultural analysis of justice and organizational citizenship behavior in Chinese society. Administrative Science Quarterly, 42(3), 421-444.

Items of the Chinese Organizational Citizenship Scale

Responses are obtained using a 7-point Likert-type scale where 1 = strongly disagree and 7 = strongly agree. This measure can be used to describe another focal employee or for self-reporting.

Identification with the company items:

1. Willing to stand up to protect the reputation of the company.
2. Eager to tell outsiders good news about the company and clarify their misunderstandings.
3. Makes constructive suggestions that can improve the operation of the company.
4. Actively attends company meetings.

Altruism items:

1. Willing to assist new colleagues to adjust to the work environment.
2. Willing to help colleagues solve work-related problems.
3. Willing to cover work assignments for colleagues when needed.
4. Willing to coordinate and communicate with colleagues.

Conscientiousness items:

1. Complies with company rules and procedures even when nobody watches and no evidence can be traced.
2. Takes one’s job seriously and rarely makes mistakes.
3. Does not mind taking on new or challenging assignments.
4. Tries to self-study to increase the quality of work outputs.
5. Often arrives early and starts to work immediately.

Interpersonal harmony items:

1. Uses illicit tactics to seek personal influence and gain with harmful effect on interpersonal harmony in the organization (R)
2. Uses position power to pursue selfish personal gain (R)
3. Takes credits, avoids blame, and fights fiercely for personal gain (R)
4. Often speaks ill of the supervisor or colleagues behind their backs (R)

Protecting company resources items:

1. Conducts personal business on company time (e.g., trading stocks, shopping, going to barber shops) (R)
2. Uses company resources to do personal business (e.g., company phones, copy machines, computers, and cars) (R)
3. Views sick leave as benefit and makes excuse for taking sick leave (R)

Items denoted with (R) are reverse scored.