Does mentoring increase organizational citizenship behavior?

Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) refers to going above and beyond the job requirements. There are two types of organizational citizenship behaviors: behavior that aims to benefit individuals (OCB-I) and behavior that aims to benefit the organization as a whole (OCB-O).

A recent study in the Journal of Applied Psychology entitled Cross-Lagged Relations Between Mentoring Received from Supervisors and Employee OCBs: Disentangling Causal Direction and Identifying Boundary Conditions examined the relationship between mentoring and organizational citizen behavior. The researchers found that employees who were mentored by their supervisors were more likely to engage in organizational citizenship behavior. However, they were only more likely to engage in OCB-I type, behavior aimed at benefiting individuals. Mentoring by a supervisor was not related to citizenship behavior aimed at benefitting the entire organization (OCB-O).

The authors had several explanations of these findings. They explained that when an employee is mentored, they are likely to emulate the actions of the mentor. Mentors, by definition, are engaging in OCV-I type behavior, because they go above and beyond to help individuals. Therefore, the mentees will want to engage in similar behaviors. Further, engaging in citizenship behavior that aims to benefits an entire organization (OCB-O) is not necessarily something that the employee would learn from his or her mentor. By setting up formal mentoring programs, organizations can increase organizational citizen behaviors that benefit employees.