How and When May Leader Influence Tactics Affect Followers’ Organizational Citizenship Behavior? A Social Cognitive Approach

Utilizing social cognitive theory, we suggest that leader influence tactics convey salient social cues to be incorporated into followers’ self-efficacy evaluation, which shapes their engagement in organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). We contend that leader soft tactics enhance followers’ self-efficacy and thereby foster their OCB, whereas leader hard tactics damage their self-efficacy and ultimately hamper their OCB. Further, we propose that organizational justice functions as a key boundary condition for these contentions, as the fair work environment makes social cues from these tactics salient. To test the hypotheses, we collected the data of 198 supervisor-subordinate dyads from various companies located in South Korea. As expected, soft tactics were positively related to self-efficacy, and their indirect effect on OCB toward individuals (i.e., OCBI) via self-efficacy was positive. In addition, the effect of soft tactics on self-efficacy and the indirect effect of soft tactics on OCBI via self-efficacy were stronger when organizational justice was higher. However, self-efficacy was not significantly related to OCB toward the organization (i.e., OCBO), and the indirect effect of soft tactics on OCBO via self-efficacy was not significant. Notably, hard tactics were not significantly related to self-efficacy, and organizational justice did not moderate this relationship. Further, the proposed indirect and conditional indirect effects of hard tactics were not significant. Overall, our research shows that soft tactics can be powerful tools for leaders to enhance followers’ self-efficacy and, ultimately, foster their OCB, especially when organizational justice is established at work.