Change-Oriented Organizational Citizenship Behavior in Public Administration: The Power of Leadership and the Cost of Organizational Politics

Using a well-grounded theory of organizational citizenship behavior, this study attempts to extend the meaning of the good soldier syndrome beyond its common boundaries of the business sector. We follow We extend Bettencourt's model and demonstrate its usefulness and contribution to public administration organizations, focusing especially on leadership behavior, leader-member exchange relations, and perceptions of organizational politics in public agencies. A field study of 217 public personnel in a large public health care organization yields interesting findings, demonstrating the uniqueness of change-oriented OCB over classical OCB measures (individual and organizational), the general positive effect of leadership on OCB and the moderating effect of perceptions of politics in this relationship. Implications of the findings are developed and discussed in the context of modern public administration.