Abstract
The behaviour of employees at work, particularly their organisational citizenship behaviour, has drawn increasing attention from academics in recent decades due to its clear benefits for the efficacy and efficiency of organisations. Despite the recognition of the importance of good citizenship behaviour , further research is necessary to determine how managers can best support their staff members' commitment to exhibiting extra-role behaviours to maximise the organisation’s competitiveness in the current environment of rapidly changing technology and globalisation. This study examines the relationship between employee motivation (EM) and organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB), with a focus on the moderating effect of career choice regret (CCR).
A cross-sectional quantitative design was used, with a probability simple random sample of 345 teachers in public schools of Bukavu town in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The results indicated that the five-factor structure of OCB, the two-components, extrinsic-intrinsic motivation structure and the unidimensional measure of CCR are reliable while assessing behaviour in a developing country’s educational system. Furthermore, intrinsic motivation correlates negatively with courtesy and positively with conscientiousness, while extrinsic motivation correlates negatively with conscientiousness. Besides, CCR negatively correlates with conscientiousness and intrinsic motivation but positively with extrinsic motivation. In addition, CCR negatively moderates the positive effect of intrinsic motivation on OCB.
These results offer more empirical evidence for the relationship between EM and OCB as well as between their dimensions and, completing the Relational Cohesion Theory (RCT), confirm that the relationship between EM and OCB is different when specific emotions such as CCR are involved: in the event that employees are certain of their career choice and do not regret it, they will demonstrate greater OCB if they are highly intrinsically motivated.
Keywords: Career Choice Regret, Career Decision regret, Employee Motivation, Intrinsic Motivation, Organisational Citizenship Behaviour