OPPORTUNITY FOR INNOVATION AND ORGANIZATIONAL CITIZENSHIP BEHAVIOR IN THE NIGERIAN HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY

The purpose of this study was  to examine the relationship between  opportunity for innovation and organizational citizenship behavior in the Nigerian hospitality industry.  The cross sectional survey was conducted with a sample size of 1450 workers drawn from a population of 3768 workers in the South-South geopolitical region of Nigeria. The scales used were within the acceptable Cronbach Alpha values of 0.7, which was interpreted to be reliable. A total of  1,093 copies of completed and usable questionnaire were used for data analysis. Furthermore, the data obtained were analyzed using the  Spearman Rank Order Coefficient. The results reveal that opportunity for  innovation  is strongly related to  altruism, conscientiousness, civic virtue, courtesy and sportsmanship. The findings suggest that organizations  conducive for innovation  tends to promote extra discretionary employee behavior. The study concluded that  in the presence of opportunity for innovation of the worker, organizational citizenship behavior is activated.
KEYWORDS:  Innovation, Organizational Citizenship Behaviour,  Altruism, Conscientiousness, Civic Virtue, Courtesy And Sportsmanship, Hospitality Industry

The surge in knowledge of OCB has become imperative and progressively a priority for organizations. From the time Katz and Kahn (1966) introduced the concept of positive behaviour, there has been expanded research need toward exploring the nature of such behavior and its effect on organizational performance (Organ, 1988, Podskakoff et al 2000). This view is supported by Chaitanya and Tripathi (2001) who argue that, it is increasingly realised that employee behaviours that are beyond the traditional measures of job performance, like organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), hold promise for long-term organizational success.  Furthermore, there exists evidence that OCB contributes not only to organizational benefits but also to the individual worker’s benefit (Podsakoff et al. 2009). Accordingly, issues regarding the fluid nature of OCB have received considerable attention among organisational behaviorist scientists (Wyss, 2006).  For instance, personality traits (Borman, Penner, Allen & Motowidlo, 2001), mood (Miles,
Spector, Borman, & Fox, 2002), employee attitudes  ( Organ & Ryan, 1995), leader behaviors (Pillai, Schriesheim, & Williams, 1999) Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Moorman, & Fetter, 1990), employee perceptions of fairness (Niehoff & Moorman,  1993),  learning organization (Obiora and Okpu, 2014), task characteristics (Piccolo & Colquitt, 2006)  and organizational commitment (Organ & Ryan, 1995)  have been shown to have association with OCB.
A growing need therefore has arisen to investigate factors that contribute to ..