Contextual performance

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Contextual performance is defined as the activities that employees carry out to contribute to the social and psychological functionality of an organisation. It is a component of an individual's job performance. [1] There is a perspective proficiency in a specific task is not sufficient and employees may be selected based on their competencies that may contribute to the wider functionality of an organisation.

Contents

Contextual performance may consist of activities such as volunteering for additional work, strict adherence to organizational rules and procedures, and various other discretionary behaviors.

Overview

This construct was first identified in the industrial and organizational psychology research world by Borman & Motowidlo. [2] With the rise of the knowledge economy, expectations for employees may increase. While the principles of contextual performance are very similar to those of organizational citizenship behavior (OCBs) and prosocial behavior, it is contested that contextual performance is in fact a construct in its own right. [1]

The counterpart of contextual performance is task performance. Task performance is defined as the work activities that contribute to an organization's technical capacity. [1] Contextual performance is more likely to be voluntary, whereas task performance is more likely to be prescribed by the job description. Although contextual performance is subjective, research suggests that managers increasingly include these behaviors when conducting performance evaluations. [3] While conceptually different, these two types of performance have moderately high correlations, whereby individuals who are good task performers are often also good contextual performers. [4]

Taxonomy

Research has yielded several taxonomies of contextual performance and organizational citizenship behavior. Borman & Motowildo describe the contextual performance as encompassing both OCB's and prosocial work behaviors. The following is Borman & Motowildo's taxonomy: [1]

To garner information regarding an employee's contextual performance, researchers adapt items from the previous taxonomy. Items are measured by supervisors on a Likert scale, from one to five. A few sample items are:

Predictors

Dispositional predictors

Researchers believe that there are different traits and abilities that predict task and contextual performance. Intelligence has been found to be a significant predictor of task performance and procedural knowledge, or knowledge of how to do a task, which predicts contextual performance. [5] Otherwise, there is limited support for the relationship between intelligence and contextual performance. Because of this, research has also explored non-cognitive predictors of performance, such as personality. [6] Research findings show that the personality trait of conscientiousness does indeed have a weak to moderate positive relationship with contextual performance. Openness to experience and extraversion were found to have a weak correlation. [7]

In a team setting, the personality traits of conscientiousness, extraversion, and agreeableness predict contextual performance. [8] Other personality traits, besides the Big Five, have also been researched. It was found that the relationship between dependability, work orientation, cooperativeness and contextual performance is greater than their relationship with task performance. [2]

If an individual perceives that he or she is being treated fairly, if they are satisfied with their job, and if they feel that their supervisor or leader provides support, their contextual performance is expected to increase. [7] Procedural justice describes the fairness used in the allocation process and found a weak-to-moderate positive correlation between the two dimensions of contextual performance: interpersonal facilitation and job dedication. [9] [7] Both individual differences and situational constraints influence contextual performance. [10]

Outcomes

Research shows that contextual performance is a significant predictor of turnover over and above task performance. [11] The facet of interpersonal facilitation significantly predicts organizational commitment. [11] Research supports that contextual performance relate to overall organization performance as measured by quality, quantity, financial measures, and customer service measures. [7]

Theoretical implications

Many conceptualizations of employee performance focus only on task performance, and may thus be deficient because they lack the contextual performance construct. [12] Since evidence indicates that supervisor ratings include contextual performance, a holistic conceptualization of performance should include both task and contextual performance. [3] Another theoretical implication is the overlapping nature of contextual performance with both OCB and prosocial behavior. Some researchers argue that OCB clearly overlaps with contextual performance and should be redefined as the same construct. [13] Contextual performance is considered be an extra-role behaviors that is not expected or rewarded by the organization. However, this conceptualization may not be accurate. [12]

Related Research Articles

Industrial and organizational psychology "focuses the lens of psychological science on a key aspect of human life, namely, their work lives. In general, the goals of I-O psychology are to better understand and optimize the effectiveness, health, and well-being of both individuals and organizations." It is an applied discipline within psychology and is an international profession. I-O psychology is also known as occupational psychology in the United Kingdom, organisational psychology in Australia and New Zealand, and work and organizational (WO) psychology throughout Europe and Brazil. Industrial, work, and organizational (IWO) psychology is the broader, more global term for the science and profession.

Emotional intelligence (EI) is defined as the ability to perceive, use, understand, manage, and handle emotions. People with high emotional intelligence can recognize their own emotions and those of others, use emotional information to guide thinking and behavior, discern between different feelings and label them appropriately, and adjust emotions to adapt to environments.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Job satisfaction</span> Attitude of a person towards work

Job satisfaction, employee satisfaction or work satisfaction is a measure of workers' contentment with their job, whether they like the job or individual aspects or facets of jobs, such as nature of work or supervision. Job satisfaction can be measured in cognitive (evaluative), affective, and behavioral components. Researchers have also noted that job satisfaction measures vary in the extent to which they measure feelings about the job. or cognitions about the job.

Organizational behavior or organisational behaviour is the: "study of human behavior in organizational settings, the interface between human behavior and the organization, and the organization itself". Organizational behavioral research can be categorized in at least three ways:

In industrial and organizational psychology, organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) is a person's voluntary commitment within an organization or company that is not part of his or her contractual tasks. Organizational citizenship behavior has been studied since the late 1970s. Over the past three decades, interest in these behaviors has increased substantially.

The leader–member exchange (LMX) theory is a relationship-based approach to leadership that focuses on the two-way (dyadic) relationship between leaders and followers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Affective events theory</span> Psychological model

Affective events theory (AET) is an industrial and organizational psychology model developed by organizational psychologists Howard M. Weiss and Russell Cropanzano to explain how emotions and moods influence job performance and job satisfaction. The model explains the linkages between employees' internal influences and their reactions to incidents that occur in their work environment that affect their performance, organizational commitment, and job satisfaction. The theory proposes that affective work behaviors are explained by employee mood and emotions, while cognitive-based behaviors are the best predictors of job satisfaction. The theory proposes that positive-inducing as well as negative-inducing emotional incidents at work are distinguishable and have a significant psychological impact upon workers' job satisfaction. This results in lasting internal and external affective reactions exhibited through job performance, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment.

Greenberg (1987) introduced the concept of organizational justice with regard to how an employee judges the behavior of the organization and the employee's resulting attitude and behaviour. For example, if a firm makes redundant half of the workers, an employee may feel a sense of injustice with a resulting change in attitude and a drop in productivity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emotional exhaustion</span> Chronic state of physical and emotional depletion

Emotional exhaustion is symptom of burnout, a chronic state of physical and emotional depletion that results from excessive work or personal demands, or continuous stress. It describes a feeling of being emotionally overextended and exhausted by one's work. It is manifested by both physical fatigue and a sense of feeling psychologically and emotionally "drained".

Job performance assesses whether a person performs a job well. Job performance, studied academically as part of industrial and organizational psychology, also forms a part of human resources management. Performance is an important criterion for organizational outcomes and success. John P. Campbell describes job performance as an individual-level variable, or something a single person does. This differentiates it from more encompassing constructs such as organizational performance or national performance, which are higher-level variables.

Situational strength is defined as cues provided by environmental forces regarding the desirability of potential behaviors. Situational strength is said to result in psychological pressure on the individual to engage in and/or refrain from particular behaviors. A consequence of this psychological pressure to act in a certain way is the likelihood that despite an individual's personality, they will act in a certain manner. As such, when strong situations exist, the relationship between personality variables and behaviors is reduced, because no matter what the personality of the individual is, they will act in a way dictated by the situation. When weak situations exist, there is less structure and more ambiguity with respect to what behaviors to perform.

Counterproductive work behavior (CWB) is employee's behavior that goes against the legitimate interests of an organization. This behavior can harm the organization, other people within it, and other people and organizations outside it, including employers, other employees, suppliers, clients, patients and citizens. It has been proposed that a person-by-environment interaction (the relationship between a person's psychological and physical capacities and the demands placed on those capacities by the person's social and physical environment.) can be utilized to explain a variety of counterproductive behaviors. For instance, an employee who is high on trait anger is more likely to respond to a stressful incident at work with CWB.

Goal orientation, or achievement orientation, is an "individual disposition towards developing or validating one's ability in achievement settings". In general, an individual can be said to be mastery or performance oriented, based on whether one's goal is to develop one's ability or to demonstrate one's ability, respectively. A mastery orientation is also sometimes referred to as a learning orientation.

Civic virtue is one of the five dimensions of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) identified in Dennis Organ's prominent 1988 definition of the construct. Originally, Smith, Organ, and Near (1983) first proposed two dimensions: altruism and general compliance. Later, Organ (1988) deconstructed the dimension of general compliance and added additional dimensions of OCB. This resulted in a five-factor model consisting of altruism, courtesy, conscientiousness, sportsmanship, and civic virtue.

Trait leadership is defined as integrated patterns of personal characteristics that reflect a range of individual differences and foster consistent leader effectiveness across a variety of group and organizational situations.

Team composition refers to the overall mix of characteristics among people in a team, which is a unit of two or more individuals who interact interdependently to achieve a common objective. It is based on the attributes among individuals that comprise the team, in addition to their main objective.

A job attitude is a set of evaluations of one's job that constitute one's feelings toward, beliefs about, and attachment to one's job. Overall job attitude can be conceptualized in two ways. Either as affective job satisfaction that constitutes a general or global subjective feeling about a job, or as a composite of objective cognitive assessments of specific job facets, such as pay, conditions, opportunities and other aspects of a particular job. Employees evaluate their advancement opportunities by observing their job, their occupation, and their employer.

Adaptive performance in the work environment refers to adjusting to and understanding change in the workplace. An employee who is versatile is valued and important in the success of an organization. Employers seek employees with high adaptability, due to the positive outcomes that follow, such as excellent work performance, work attitude, and ability to handle stress. Employees, who display high adaptive performance in an organization, tend to have more advantages in career opportunities unlike employees who are not adaptable to change. In previous literature, Pulakos and colleagues established eight dimensions of adaptive performance.

Machiavellianism in the workplace is a concept studied by many organizational psychologists. Conceptualized originally by Richard Christie and Florence Geis, Machiavellianism refers to a psychological trait concept where individuals behave in a cold and duplicitous manner. It has in recent times been adapted and applied to the context of the workplace and organizations by many writers and academics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Trait activation theory</span>

Trait activation theory is based on a specific model of job performance, and can be considered an elaborated or extended view of personality-job fit. Specifically, it is how an individual expresses their traits when exposed to situational cues related to those traits. These situational cues may stem from organization, social, and/or task cues. These cues can activate personality traits that are related to job tasks and organizational expectations that the organization values. These cues may also elicit trait-related behaviors that are not directly related to job performance.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Borman, W., & Motowildo, S. (1997). Task performance and contextual performance: The meaning for personnel selection research. Human Performance, 10(2), 99-109.
  2. 1 2 3 Motowidlo, S., & Van Scotter, J. (1994). Evidence that task performance should be distinguished from contextual performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 79(4), 475-480.
  3. 1 2 Johnson, J. (2001). The relative importance of task and contextual performance dimensions to supervisor judgments of overall performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86(5), 984-996.
  4. ↑ Dalal, R. S. (2007). Contextual performance / prosocial behavior / organizational citizenship behavior. In S. G. Rogelberg (Ed.) Encyclopedia of industrial/organizational psychology (Vol. 1, pp.103-106). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
  5. ↑ Bergman, M., Donovan, M., Drasgow, F., Overton, R., & Henning, J. (2008). Test of Motowildo et al.’s (1997) theory of individual differences in task and contextual performance. Human Performance, 21, 227-253.
  6. ↑ Motowildo, S., Borman, W, & Schmit, M. (1997). A Theory of Individual Differences in Task and Contextual Performance. Human Performance, 10(2), 71-83.
  7. 1 2 3 4 Dalal, R. S. (2007). Contextual performance / prosocial behavior / organizational citizenship behavior. In S. G. Rogelberg (Ed.)Encyclopedia of industrial/organizational psychology (Vol. 1, pp.103-106). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
  8. ↑ Morgeson, F. P., Reider, M. H., & Campion, M. A. (2005). Selecting individuals in team settings: The importance of social skills, personality characteristics, and teamwork knowledge. Personnel Psychology, 58(3), 583-612.
  9. ↑ Aryee, S., Chen, Z., & Budhwar, P. (2004). Exchange fairness and employee performance: An examination of the relationship between organizational politics and procedural justice. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 94, 1-14.
  10. ↑ Witt, L., Kacmar, K., Carlson, D., & Zivnuska, S. (2002). Interactive effects of personality and organizational politics on contextual performance. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 23, 911-926.
  11. 1 2 Van Scotter, J. (2000). Relationships of task performance and contextual performance with turnover, job satisfaction, and affective commitment. Human Resource Management Review, 10(1), 79-95.
  12. 1 2 Werner, J. (2000). Implications of OCB and contextual performance for human resource management. Human Resource Management Review, 10(1), 3-24.
  13. ↑ Organ, D. (1997) Organizational citizenship behavior: It’s construct clean-up time. Human Performance, 10(2), 85-97.
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