Management Citizenship Behavior: A New Concept and an Empirical Test

Increased participation and heightened effort are increasingly expected of workers. Yet increased expectations of worker citizenship are not always matched by increased commitment on management's part. The workplace literature has had difficulty analyzing this discrepancy because of the underconceptualization of appropriate management behavior. The present article introduces the concept of “management citizenship behavior” to parallel the widely used concept of “organizational citizenship behavior.” Based on a quantitative analysis of data derived from organizational ethnographies (N = 108), management citizenship behavior is shown to be a principal determinant of worker citizenship behavior and workplace harmony. The concept of management citizenship behavior provides sociologists with a preliminary tool with which to evaluate management behavior in the contemporary workplace.