Research Article
Felt Accountability and Job Characteristics as Incentive Factors for Contextual Performance
Published: January 2009 · Vol. 38 No. 6 · pp. 1505-1543
Full Text
Abstract
This paper was prepared to derive implications regarding what managers or executives can do in order to elicit contextual performance behavior of organizational members—known to positively influence organizational survival and growth—through more proactive managerial activities rather than relying solely on members' voluntary participation. To derive such implications, this paper established a basic hypothesis positing that managers can enhance organizational members' perceived accountability for contextual performance behavior by appropriately adjusting and managing the physical, psychological, and social/organizational job environments, and that this enhanced perceived accountability will ultimately lead to members' actual contextual behavior. This basic hypothesis was operationalized into a research model in which perceived accountability was set as a mediating variable between job environment variables—namely task significance, task feedback, skill variety, task identity, autonomy, and behavioral norms—and contextual performance. A series of multiple regression analyses on 344 matched supervisor-subordinate data points broadly supported the aforementioned basic hypothesis. Specifically, most job-related factors had a positive effect on members' perceived accountability, and perceived accountability in turn had a positive effect on contextual performance measured by job dedication. In this process, the effects of autonomy and task feedback on contextual performance were found to be fully and partially mediated by perceived accountability, respectively. These results were obtained after controlling for respondents' personality factors and job experience, suggesting that in addition to previous research findings indicating that contextual performance behavior is fundamentally driven by individual members' personality or values, these findings offer implications for what additional managerial activities managers should undertake to promote contextual performance behavior.
