According to social exchange theory (Homans, 1958; later revised by Z. Liu et al., 2016), subordinates’ behavior in the workplace is governed by the contrast between subjective cost–benefit analysis and other choices for weighted relative interests. More specifically, subordinates will meet their employer’s expectations and maintain positive relationships if they feel valued (Rhoades & Eisenberger, 2002). Conversely, subordinates will feel frustrated if their employer ill-treats them or does not fulfill the terms of their contract.

However, to achieve organizational goals, subordinates must willingly engage in extrarole behaviors, which can have negative effects. For instance, being required to perform extrarole behaviors results in a heavier workload for subordinates that goes beyond their designated work responsibilities. As a result, they feel greater work pressure and, in severe cases, experience emotional exhaustion or engage in negative behaviors (Vigoda-Gadot, 2007). Although extrarole behaviors inevitably increase subordinates’ workload, supervisors might indirectly make their subordinates aware that refusing to take on more responsibility could put their work or social position at risk (Vigoda-Gadot, 2007). This creates an atmosphere where taking on additional work becomes the norm in the workplace.

The notion of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) comes from Barnard (1938) and refers to a cooperative system in which the contributions of individuals in the workplace are integrated. OCB promotes effectiveness and efficiency within an organization, since it is characterized by purposeful cooperation among subordinates. Therefore, it represents the willingness of subordinates to invest effort in their job (H. Zhang et al., 2020). Organ (1988) referred to extrarole workplace behavior as the good soldier syndrome, meaning activity that goes beyond formal requirements and has no expectation of reward. Employees with good soldier syndrome have been found to have positive personality characteristics and a disciplined and dedicated attitude. Therefore, OCB has been redefined as a spontaneous initiative taken by subordinates, and it is recognized as an extrarole behavior that is performed with no expectation of additional advantages (Köksal & Gürsoy, 2020).

As an extension to OCB theory, Schein et al. (1961) proposed that social influence can be modified via forced strategy, persuasion, and manipulation, all of which steer individuals toward engaging in interpersonal and group behaviors. This is termed compulsory citizenship behavior (CCB). However, to increase productivity, some supervisors—especially those working in highly competitive industries—create an unfair work environment that pressures subordinates into performing CCB.

Subordinates also evaluate their working environment based on their perception of psychological safety, which can be reflected in their work performance (Lyu, 2016; Tiwari & Lenka, 2016) and, subsequently, organizational performance (Ayenew et al., 2015; Baer & Frese, 2003). In the context of the workplace, psychological safety is an indicator of subordinates’ psychological contract with and trust in an organization (Smithson & Lewis, 2000). Therefore, psychological safety can be defined as a subordinate having the confidence to make a statement without fear of repercussions (Detert & Burris, 2007; Ge, 2020; J. Liang et al., 2012).

Rich et al. (2010) stated that performance is a collection of individual actions that can be divided into task and contextual types. Task performance refers to job responsibilities that directly contribute to the operation of core technical processes (Hawkes & Weathington, 2014). The goal of task performance is to complete the task at hand, which is undoubtedly the main contributor to overall organizational performance. Contextual performance refers to the individual’s enthusiasm for completing tasks, being willing to help others, and following the organizational rules, including volunteering and mutual help (Borman & Motowidlo, 1997). Therefore, contextual performance entails extrarole behavior that is not listed in a job description and that is harder to measure but vital. Although OCB, CCB, and contextual performance are all out-of-role behaviors, CCB usually occurs when subordinates feel forced to perform the behaviors. Conversely, contextual performance refers to the voluntary behavior of subordinates and is an aspect of OCB (Zellars et al., 2002). Hence, as CCB is a citizenship behavior that is an extension of OCB (Schein et al., 1961; Zhao et al., 2013), we examined the extent to which contextual performance is negatively affected by CCB through the mediator of perceived psychological safety.

Political skill is the ability to work with and influence others to achieve organizational goals and to control one’s interpersonal relationships (Ferris et al., 2007; Perrewé et al., 2004). Individuals usually use their political skills to influence others’ impressions of them (Ferris et al., 2007). Thus, we adopted political skill as a potential moderator of contextual performance because, as a social skill, political skill is consistent with social exchange theory, on which this study is based.

The extant research has been focused primarily on OCB (He et al., 2020; H.-L. Liang, 2021), with fewer studies having examined the case of a forced situation. Thus, we examined the effect of CCB on subordinates’ contextual performance and further probed the causes underlying this effect.

Organizational Citizenship Behaviors and Compulsory Citizenship Behavior

Zellars et al. (2002) stated that although both OCB and CCB are citizenship behaviors that go beyond baseline job responsibilities, OCB is a voluntary behavior, whereas CCB is a behavior that employees feel is expected by the organization, and that they are forced to perform.

Psychological Safety

As well as indicating an atmosphere of trust in which employees are able to communicate freely, psychological safety for an organization’s members includes permitting and encouraging adventurous behavior (Bradley et al., 2012). As people’s behavior is triggered by their psychological climate, subordinates tend to reason and predict consequences according to their perception of psychological safety (Jones & James, 1979). Moreover, the perception of psychological safety directly affects staff members’ performance and indirectly influences their behaviors through work attitude and inspiration (Ayenew et al., 2015). In short, individuals’ behavior is based on their beliefs and expectations, whereby their perception of psychological safety significantly affects their job motivation, satisfaction, and engagement (Lyu, 2016; Tiwari & Lenka, 2016).

Contextual Performance

Although contextual performance does not directly affect an organization’s core technical processes, it encompasses activities that promote social networks (Aniefiok et al., 2018; Özçelik & Uyargil, 2019). To clarify the differences between task and contextual performance: First, task performance requires knowledge and capability that enable subordinates to accomplish the task at hand, whereas contextual performance is closely associated with volunteering, helping, and cooperative personality traits. Second, task performance is underpinned by in-role behaviors that are delineated in a job description, whereas contextual performance relies on out-of-role behaviors that are conducive to interpersonal harmony, yet cannot be so easily specified in a job description. Last, task performance involves specific activities that differ between various job levels, which means requirements and performance indicators differ according to job position or job content. By contrast, contextual performance generally involves similar behaviors at all organizational levels. For these reasons, it is more challenging to evaluate contextual versus task performance (Vigoda-Gadot, 2007). Given that variables such as job stress, emotional exhaustion, perceived organizational support, job satisfaction, and out-of-role performance have been examined in CCB-related research (Vigoda-Gadot, 2007), and each was found to correspond to contextual performance, we adopted motivation contextual performance as the outcome variable of CCB.

The Relationships of Compulsory Citizenship Behavior, Psychological Safety, and Contextual Performance

Political Skill

Method

Participants and Procedure

Participants were employees of 80 businesses in a number of industries (e.g., service, technology, manufacturing) in Taiwan. Dyadic sampling was utilized to avoid common method variance (Podsakoff et al., 2003), with one version of the survey completed by supervisors and another version by their subordinates. Initially, we recruited 200 subordinate–supervisor dyads, comprising 200 supervisors paired with 600 subordinates, with between two and four subordinates matched with each supervisor. After removing data from 61 invalid dyads, data from 139 dyads (139 supervisors and 534 subordinates) were used to test the moderated mediation model, for a response rate of nearly 70%.

Regarding supervisors, 61.8% were men (n = 86) and 38.2% were women (n = 53). Most were aged between 31 and 50 years (67.9%), followed by those aged over 51 years (26.4%) and those aged between 21 and 30 years (5.7%). For marital status, 81.6% were married and 18.4% were unmarried. As regards education level, most supervisors held a bachelor’s degree (39.6%), followed by a master’s degree (29.5%), an associate’s degree (16.5%), and less than an undergraduate degree (14.4%). For the position held, most were supervisors (457.8%), followed by mid-level executives (31.3%), high-level executives (18.7%), and low-level executives (2.2%). In terms of job type, most supervisors worked in management/human resources (25.5%) and R&D/manufacturing/engineering/quality control positions (23.4%), followed by others (19.8%), administration/general affairs (13.1%), sales/marketing (10.9%), financial/accounting (5.1%), and assistant positions (2.2%). For seniority, 69.1% of supervisors had more than 9 years of experience, followed by 7–9 years of experience (12.2%), 5–7 years of experience (6.5%), 3–5 years of experience (6.5%), 1–3 years of experience (4.3%), and under 1 year of experience (1.4%). As regards industry type, most supervisors were in a service industry (32.6%), followed by manufacturing (22.5%), technology (13.8%), others (11.6%), finance (10.1%), and nonprofit (9.4%) industries.

Regarding subordinates, 41.1% were men (n = 220) and 58.9% were women (n = 314). Most were aged between 31 and 50 years (70.1%), followed by those aged between 21 and 30 years (24.4%), those aged under 20 years (4.4%), and those aged over 51 years (1.1%). In terms of marital status, 56.8% were married and 43.2% were unmarried. For education level, more than half held a bachelor’s degree (53.8%), followed by an associate’s degree (19.2%), less than an undergraduate degree (16.2%), and a master’s degree (10.8%). For the position held, most were entry-level employees (84.4%), followed by low-level employees (11.8%), middle-level employees (3.2%), and high-level employees (0.6%). As regards job type, most subordinates held development/manufacturing/engineering/quality control jobs (24.1%), followed by others (21.1%), administration/general affairs and research (20.9%), marketing/sales (11.4%), management/human resources (10.8%), financial/accounting (8.1%), assistant (2.1%), and design (1.5%) jobs. For seniority, 33.2% of subordinates had more than 9 years of experience, followed by 1–3 years of experience (22.9%), 3–5 years of experience (18.2%), under 1 year of experience (10.7%), 5–7 years of experience (10.5%), and 7–9 years of experience (4.5%). In terms of industry, most subordinates worked in a service industry (30.2%), followed by manufacturing (25.5%), technology (13.1%), others (12.8%), finance (10.5%), and nonprofit (7.9%) industries.

We sent the survey to the supervisors at each company, along with clear instructions for administration. This study originated from a project conducted by the Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan, which received approval from the Ethics Committee of National Changhua University of Education. Purposive sampling was employed to recruit participants from nearly 500 industrial firms. Participants were informed that their responses would be kept anonymous, coded, and used only for academic research purposes. Stamped, self-addressed envelopes were provided for return of the survey form.

Measures

Compulsory Citizenship Behavior

Contextual Performance

Psychological Safety

Political Skill

Negative Affect (Control Variable)

Results

Confirmatory Factor Analysis

We performed confirmatory factor analyses to test the construct independence of the variables in the study and also to examine the construct reliability and validity of these constructs. The measurement model showed an acceptable level of fit to the data, chi square/degrees of freedom = 3.66, root mean square error of approximation = .082, comparative fit index = .96, nonnormed fit index = .91, standardized root mean square residual = .077. Further, factor loadings ranged from .66 to .90.

Preliminary Analyses

Pearson product-moment correlation coefficients were used to examine correlations between variables. As shown in Table 1, CCB was significantly and negatively correlated with both contextual performance and perceived psychological safety, whereas perceived psychological safety was significantly and positively correlated with contextual performance.

Hypothesis Testing

Association of Compulsory Citizenship Behavior With Contextual Performance via Psychological Safety

Moderated Mediation Effect of Political Skill in the Relationship Between Compulsory Citizenship Behavior and Contextual Performance via Psychological Safety

Discussion

Theoretical Contributions

We found that CCB was negatively associated with employees’ contextual performance, which supports social exchange theory. This finding aligns with those of previous studies (Ahmadian et al., 2017; Peng & Zhao, 2012). Subordinates doubt their ability to accomplish duties when they do not feel respected in the workplace (Tepper, 2007). Furthermore, CCB and life dissatisfaction have been found to increase psychological pressure and the incidence of poor mental health (Zhao et al., 2013). These sources appear to support our finding that CCB had a negative effect on subordinates’ perception of their psychological safety.

We found a positive association between perceived psychological safety and subordinates’ contextual performance. This result indicates that negative internal emotions and a negative mental state govern subordinates’ reactions in the workplace, which directly and negatively affect their performance. By contrast, subordinates who perceive high psychological safety have a tendency to show trust, engage in adventurous behaviors, and be willing to assist and cooperate with others and contribute to the organization, all of which might promote their contextual performance.

We also found that perceived psychological safety mediated the association between CCB and subordinates’ contextual performance. This is consistent with previous research on frustration–aggression, in which it is claimed that organizational frustration increases employees’ workplace withdrawal attitudes and behaviors (Keenan & Newton, 1984; Spector, 1978). Moreover, this result indicates that subordinates have a tendency to compensate for an unfair workload in high exchange relationships when they engage in CCB, even when their perception of psychological safety decreases. Therefore, our findings have academic implications for the effect of the psychological safety path between CCB and subordinates’ behaviors.

Contrary to Hypothesis 2, we did not find a moderated mediation effect of political skill on the association between compulsory citizenship behavior and contextual performance through perceived psychological safety. A possible explanation for this result might be found in Harzing (2006), who demonstrated in a 26-country study that Chinese respondents had a lower preference for extreme positive and negative responses when filling out surveys. Harzing suggested that the differences might derive from the power distance in Chinese culture. As all the respondents in our study were Chinese, and, therefore, living in a high power-distance culture (Wang & Fränti, 2022), they might have tended to choose a more neutral answer when filling out our survey.

Practical Implications and Recommendations

Our results show that managers of organizations should be conscious of the harm caused by CCB. They can design suitable procedures during the hiring process to identify supervisors who are more prone to avoiding CCB. Subordinates are not always aware that they are performing CCB since supervisors might create an atmosphere where taking on more additional work is seen as the norm in the workplace (Vigoda-Gadot, 2007), and so might not adjust their behavior. Therefore, supervisors should attempt to identify their subordinates’ mental status and account for this. Moreover, organizations could create a friendly workplace via educational training, thereby encouraging supervisors to communicate with subordinates using positive language. In addition, managers and supervisors should avoid treating subordinates in careless, abusive, or sarcastic ways, given that adopting a good leadership style can noticeably reduce CCB (H. Zhang et al., 2020).

To solve the problem of CCB from the root, it is vital to choose suitable supervisors, rather than considering how to deal with the subordinates’ decline in perception of psychological safety. Thus, supervisors must be capable of assessing whether the tasks they assign will exert too much psychological pressure on subordinates. Furthermore, supervisors could offer counseling services for subordinates to deeply understand the source of their pressure and thus avoid the destruction of their psychological safety. In short, true CCB prevention occurs when subordinates perceive that their feelings and ideas are valued in the workplace.

Increasingly, enterprises are emphasizing task performance. However, this could mean that subordinates are wholly invested in achieving their own goals and less willing to assist others. Moreover, the lack of cooperation and coordination among subordinates might result in vicious competition and an unpleasant working environment. Such an organizational culture will inevitably reduce the perception of psychological safety among subordinates. Managers should aim to shape the organizational culture by giving weight to contextual performance.

Thus, it is essential for organizations to create a better work culture through a more humanized performance management system. Specifically, supervisors should consider the relationship between their method of measuring performance and the assigned tasks. As Grote (1996) pointed out, there are three main performance measures: behaviors, results, and traits. Supervisors should decide in advance if performance measurement methods are appropriate for the assigned tasks. This could contribute to a workplace characterized by a greater willingness of subordinates to cooperate, assist, and share information and skills, thus encouraging their career development.

Limitations and Future Research Directions

In terms of methodological limitations, the results of this study were obtained from a cross-sectional analysis, and so only the correlations between variables could be measured, whereas causal relationships could not be determined. Future researchers could perform a longitudinal analysis to infer cause-and-effect relationships. In addition, to measure perception of psychological safety, we adopted the seven-item Psychological Safety Scale, which had a Cronbach’s alpha of .68. DeVellis and Thorpe (2021) indicated that although a range from .60 to .70 is acceptable, the reliability should preferably be higher than .70. Hence, in future work a more reliable scale could be adopted. Concerning theoretical limitations, the moderated mediation model of this research was constructed using CCB, contextual performance, perceived psychological safety, and political skill as variables. However, all participants were Chinese, which means that the generalizability of the model may be insufficient in the context of different cultures. Future research could expand the sampling range to strengthen the external validity of the results.

This study was partially supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan.

Shu-Chuan Lee, Human Resources Department, National Changhua University of Education, 500, 2 Shida Road, Changhua, Taiwan 500. Email: [email protected]