Abstract: The last two decades have witnessed a surge in interest in the degree to what contribute to organizational citizenship behavior, which is viewed by some researchers as an important impetus to organizational effectiveness. A considerable amount of researches have shown that organizational citizenship behavior is largely derived from multiple determinants (i.e. organizational justice, perceived organizational support, organizational commitment, job satisfaction), yet the underlying mechanism of how those factors regulate OCB remains largely elusive. The present study introduced a social-exchange model of organizational citizenship behavior incorporating both direct exchange and indirect exchange, and explored the critical roles of organizational identification and need for self-esteem in the social exchange process.
A sample of 234 supervisor-subordinate dyads collected in China was used for data analysis by structural equation modeling and hierarchical regression analysis. Results indicated that: (1) perceived external prestige (PEP) and perceived organizational support (POS) had significant direct impacts on two types of organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBI and OCBO) by the full mediating effect of organizational identification. (2) Individual’s need for self-esteem moderated the relationship between POS and organizational identification. However, it didn’t moderate the relationship between PEP and organizational identification.
It is demonstrated that both indirect and direct social exchanges play important roles in determining employees’ organizational citizenship behaviors and organizational identification. Both POS and PEP have impacts on organizational citizenship behavior through the mediating effect of organizational identification. Meanwhile, individual’s need for self-esteem can moderate the relationship between POS and organizational identification, rather than the relationship between PEP and organizational identification. Results highlight the importance of organizational identification and need for self-esteem in enhancing the understanding of the links between social exchange and organization citizenship behavior.

Key words: perceived external prestige, perceived organizational support, organizational identification, need for self-esteem, organizational citizenship behavior