Examining the roles of job involvement and work centrality in predicting organizational citizenship behaviors and job performance

A recent meta-analysis by Brown (1996) concluded that job involvement was unrelated to job performance. The present investigation proposed that the null findings reported in this meta-analysis stem from the choice of performance criteria and the use of job involvement measures that are confounded with work centrality in the primary studies included in the meta-analysis. The current study found that job involvement, when assessed with a recently published measure (Paullay et al., 1994), is a significant predictor of supervisor ratings of organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB) and in-role performance, controlling for work centrality and other individual difference variables. Consistent with recent findings, there is evidence that sex moderates some of the job involvement and OCB relationships, with females having a stronger, positive relationship between these constructs than males. Copyright (C) 2001 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.