Identifying Different Patterns of Citizenship Motives: A Latent Profile Analysis

Examining organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) motives is important as different citizenship motives influence work and health outcomes. However, the current understanding of citizenship motives is limited in that most studies have not considered that multiple citizenship motives can coexist within individuals as well as how many different combinations of citizenship motives can exist. Therefore, we adopted a person-centered approach and examined latent profiles of citizenship motives using the most well-known motives in the literature: organizational concern, prosocial values, and impression management. Results identified four profile groups and showed that participants with high levels of all three types of motives gave and received the most OCB. Additionally, participants with high levels of organizational concern and prosocial values (regardless of whether they had high or low levels of impression management) reported the lowest levels of burnout. Our results suggest that having high impression management can yield positive outcomes when accompanied by high prosocial values and high organizational concern. From a practical standpoint, this study indicates that organizations should consider promoting the development of all forms of citizenship motives among employees to facilitate giving OCB and receiving OCB and to reduce burnout in the workplace.