Can proactively induced organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) foster positive work attitudes? Theorising the mediating role of ‘meaning of work’ for IT professionals

Abstract Given the high employee turnover rates among information technology (IT) professionals, firms are on the lookout for ways to retain them. With this end in view, to keep their professionals committed and satisfied, many IT firms are making proactive efforts to induce a favourable organisational environment by encouraging employees towards extra‐role organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs). However, there is scant evidence as to whether orchestrating proactively induced OCB results in positive work attitudes. Our study contributes by theorising the mechanisms through which OCB fosters positive work attitudes among IT professionals, which is expected to lower their turnover rates. Grounding our research in self‐perception and self‐determination theories, we hypothesize the relationships between IT professionals' OCB and their affective attitudes towards their organisation and job, as being mediated by their cognitive evaluations of the ‘meaning of their IT work’. We test the theorised model with data collected through a large‐scale two‐wave survey design from a multinational IT‐services company. The results offer a nuanced understanding of the relationship between OCB and positive work attitudes for IT professionals, which have significant implications for research and practice.