Interpersonal skills, role cognitions, and OCB: Exploring mediating mechanisms and contextual constraints on role enactment

While substantial research demonstrates that personal attributes and the manner with which people construe their work roles both play important antecedent roles in predicting organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), there has been very little examination of the process by which these distinct factors jointly affect the performance of OCB. We apply the principles of role theory and identity theory to articulate how an understudied personal attribute (interpersonal skill) influences OCB as well as the boundary conditions for this relationship. We posit role cognitions as a key mechanism through which interpersonal skills ultimately facilitate OCB. We also examine how work contexts characterized by demands from social contingencies placed on an individual's work role by other people shape this role enactment process, specifically situational differences in accountability, routinization, interdependence, and external interactions. Results support the proposed mediating effects of role cognitions and show the indirect effects of interpersonal skills through role cognitions are amplified when contexts are high in accountability and interdependence and are attenuated in contexts high in routinization.