Exploring the Relationship Between Perceived Interpersonal Influence and Citizenship Behavior: The Mediating Roles of Social Identity and Team Member Exchange

Social or interpersonal influence has been widely studied in both social and organizational psychology, however no research to date has examined how perceptions of one’s ability to influence their coworkers impacts work-related attitudes and behavior. Experimental work in lab settings provides evidence that successfully influencing others consistently leads to increased helping behavior (Bruno, 2013; Bruno et al., 2008; Sywulak, Sommer & Bourgeois, 2013), but the relationship between influence and helping has not been studied in an organizational setting. Further, while several mediating mechanisms have been tested, how perceived influence leads to helping is still unknown. I present a study that attempted to model how the perceived ability to influence one’s coworkers can lead to helping at in the work environment, conceptualized as organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). I argued that perceived influence over coworkers can lead to OCB through social processes, specifically social exchange and social identification, to impact specific types of OCB. Some support was found for these relationships, indicating that perceived influence over others is as an important construct in organizational life and that social processes mediate the relationship between influence and helping.