ORGANIZATIONAL CITIZENSHIP BEHAVIORS AND SALES UNIT EFFECTIVENESS

Organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) are defined as discretiona ry, extra-role behaviors on the part of a salesperson that have been s hown to influence managers' evaluations of performance. It has been su ggested that one reason managers value OCBs is that they believe OCBs contribute to organizational success. The authors' purpose is to inves tigate the impact of OCBs on objective unit performance and compare th is effect with the impact that OCBs have on managerial evaluations. Fi rst, the impact of OCBs on overall performance evaluations is examined . Second, the aggregate effects of unit-level OCBs on agency performan ce are examined using objective performance data for 116 agencies in a major insurance company. The results show that OCBs make an important contribution to overall agency performance; however, some citizenship behaviors appear to help and others hinder agency performance. Finall y, a comparison of the results of the two studies suggests that manage rs tend to over-value some citizenship behaviors and undervalue others .