Should I Do It or Not? an Initial Model of Cognitive Processes Predicting Voice Behaviors

In this chapter, we advance the idea that organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) are discretionary and, as a result, employees engage in decisional processes before acting. Emphasizing conceptual differences in affiliative OCBs, such as helping, compared to challenging OCBs, such as voice, we propose that voice is a function of more elaborate cognitive processes than helping. Extending this idea, our primary objective is to develop a conceptual model that explicates cognitive processes as antecedents to employee voice behavior. We draw on work in social psychology with an emphasis on dual process decision-making theories (e.g., systematic vs. heuristic processing: see Smith and DeCoster, 2000, for a review) to guide our model. We aim to stimulate research on voice and other comparatively neglected forms of challenging OCB (e.g., personal initiative, taking charge) as well as research on decision processes that should enhance our ability to predict and encourage these important citizenship behaviors. * Phone: (814) 865-1263; E-mail: [email protected]. # Email: [email protected]. † Tel: (517) 432-3512; Email: [email protected]. Dan S. Chiaburu, Sophia V. Marinova and Linn Van Dyne 2