Abstract:
Organisational practitioners and academics have recognized that employees’
discretionary behaviours that go beyond their formally prescribed roles hold great
promise for organizations and their members. This calls for identification of individual
and organizational factors that promote these behaviours. The study investigated the
extent to which employees’ level of religiosity predicts their organizational citizenship
behaviour. A cross-sectional survey was conducted involving 272 which comprised of
125 males (46%) and 147 females (54%) and were conveniently sampled from various
organizations in the Central region of Ghana. Sixty-four percent of the respondents
were Christians, while 34.3% and 1.7% were Muslims and Traditionalists respectively.
Religiousity was measured using Huber and Huber’s five dimension Centrality of
Religion Scale (CRS), and OCB was measured using Organizational Citizenship Behavior
Checklist (OCB-C) developed by Fox and Spector’s which has a total of 20 items. The
data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, independent samples t-test, Pearson’s
Product Moment correlation, ANOVA and multiple regressions. The results indicated
that religiosity of the employees had significant contribution to their citizenship
behaviour in their organizations. Regression analysis of the dimension of the religiosity
scale showed that only religious ideological values and private practice significantly
contributed to the OCB of the employees. ANOVA analysis also indicated that the
religious denominations of the employees significantly influenced their OCB. The
findings of this study suggest that efforts by organizations and society at large to
inculcate religious values in employees would be invaluable for smooth and efficient
organizational functioning. Further implications are discussed.
