Measuring the citizenship behaviour of IT professionals in India: Development of a scale

Pages: 455-459
K. N. Jayakumar and S. Kadhiravan (Department of Psychology, Periyar University, Salem, Tamil Nadu)

Extensive reviews invariably suggest that organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB) improves organizational effectiveness and it has become increasingly clear that effective management of human resource is critical for organization’s sustained competitive edge. The IT industry is no exception. The Indian IT industry employs more than two million professionals and the number keeps increasing. The functions, culture, values and employer employee dynamics of IT industry is very different from the traditional organizations. Starting from Barnard in 1938 to till date many tools were developed in the West and some in India to measure the construct OCB. Reviews suggest that nature of Industry influences the OCB and using a measure developed in a traditional organizational context cannot capture the phenomena precisely in another industry. Hence, Industry specific measures are needed. But it is hard to find a tool to measure the OCB of IT professionals in India. The aim of the present study is to develop an OCB measure exclusively meant for the Indian IT professionals. The research process involved reviewing literature, choosing the dimensions of OCB, item generation, scale development and establishing the reliability and concurrent validity with the purpose to aid researchers and practitioners in the field of organizational behaviour.