Social networks and citizenship behavior: The mediating effect of organizational identification

Are employees more likely to identify with their organization and engage in helping behaviors on its behalf if the coworkers who make up their social networks identify and help the organization? We draw on social information processing theory, social learning theory, and research on diffusion of innovation to develop a model that predicts how relational (advice ties) and structural (structural equivalence) factors predict organizational identification and organizational citizenship. We argue that OI is neither a matter of individual perceptions generated in isolation, nor a simple function of the number of ties that an employee has, but that it is instead an outcome of relations and interactions with coworkers, as reflected in the social structure of the employing organization. We tested our model by conducting a social network study of employees in a construction company. Our findings show that (1) employees tend to have similar levels of OI to the OI of their advice ties; (2) employees who are structurally equivalent tend to demonstrate similar levels of OCB; (3) similarity in OI mediates the relationship between advice ties and similarity in OCB; and (4) advice ties with high and moderate levels of OI are most strongly associated with similarity in OCB. In a supplementary analysis we show that the social influence model that we tested offers a better explanation for the role that the social context plays in shaping OI than does a “more ties, more OI” model. We discuss implications for theory and practice.