The impact of empathy, concern with future consequences, and time horizon on organizational citizenship behaviors

We hypothesized that organizational citizenship behaviors represent a social dilemma in which short-term employee sacrifice leads to long-term organizational benefits. Three studies involving 643 engineers supported this hypothesis in two ways. First, participants rated OCBs as costly to an employee in the short-run, and beneficial to an organization in the long-run. Second, self-reported (Study 2) and supervisor-rated (Study 3) likelihood of engaging in OCBs was higher among those high in empathy (Davis, 1983) and those who adopted a long-term horizon within an organization. Most important, empathy showed a stronger relationship with OCBs when participants adopted a short-term horizon, and individuals high in concern with future consequences were less likely to engage in OCBs under a short-term horizon. We explore the implications of these findings for practice as well as research.