The impact of teacher and school factors on teachers' perception of their personal and group organizational citizenship behaviors

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between school ethical climate, organizational citizenship behavior and social loafing. The study participants included 878 teachers, 50 principals and 50 school counselors from 50 primary schools. The data analysis was based on multilevel SEM. The findings indicate different behavioral mechanisms between the individual and the group levels among teachers. A positive relation was found between personal organizational citizenship behavior and group organizational citizenship behavior, as well as a negative relation between group organizational citizenship behavior and social loafing. In practice, school leaders should encourage workgroups for maximizing school effectiveness. This study examines the behaviors of teachers at school, both as individuals and as a professional team, in order to utilize human resources by policymakers and school leaders, to bring about change in education and effectiveness in schools. Previous studies have examined the contribution of teachers’ organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) (helpful activities that go above and beyond one’s formal role) to school effectiveness. In recent years, researchers have begun to explore the contribution of group organizational citizenship behavior (GOCB) among teachers as a team. Behind this examination lies the understanding that OCB can exist as a collective pattern as well as an individual behavior.

Although individuals who go beyond their role description make a valuable contribution, it seems that the effect of collective OCB at the group level can drive the organization forward and give it a competitive edge over other organizations, in which OCB-type behaviors are less common (Vigoda-Gadot et al., Citation2007). However, previous studies that examined employees’ counterproductive and citizenship behaviors within the same research design produced different results, which raises the question of whether these two types of behavior are negatively related to each other – so that higher levels of one type of behavior necessarily imply lower levels of the other type – or whether there is no relationship between them whatsoever, and both types of behavior can, in fact, coexist in the same individual.

This study will examine the possible relationships between personal organizational citizenship behavior, group organizational citizenship behavior, and social loafing (The effort that individuals invest in individual work compared to the effort they invest in teamwork) among teachers, as well as whether the perceptions of the school ethical climate, at both the teacher and the school level, play a role in increasing or decreasing such behaviors. Thus, this study may have a great impact in shaping school policy toward encouraging appropriate behaviors among teachers that will contribute to school effectiveness.