A cross sectional study of the impact of psychological capital on organisational citizenship behaviour among nurses: Mediating effect of work engagement

To examine relationships between psychological capital, work engagement and organisational citizenship behaviour among nurses.Psychological capital, work engagement and organisational citizenship behaviour are all positive variables associated with work. Clarifying the relationship between the variables can help nursing managers implement tailored and effective intervention strategies to improve individual and organisational performance and quality of care.A quantitative cross-sectional study was designed.The study was carried out from June 2021 to September 2021 in Sichuan Province, China. A total of 606 nurses working at six tertiary hospitals were selected with convenience sampling. Participants were investigated using demographic, work-related information questionnaire, Psychological Capital Questionnaire, Utrecht Work Engagement Scale and Organizational Citizenship Behavior Questionnaire.The scores of psychological capital, work engagement and organisational citizenship behaviour were 102.56 ± 15.47, 67.96 ± 21.71 and 101.57 ± 11.57, respectively. The multiple linear regression model explained 7.3% of the total variance in organisational citizenship behaviour related to demographic and work-related factors. There was a significant positive correlation between psychological capital, work engagement and nurses' organisational citizenship behaviour. Additionally, structural equation modeling showed that work engagement mediated the relationship between psychological capital and organisational citizenship behaviour with the partial mediating effect of 0.093. The final model explained 28% of organisational citizenship behaviour.Our results suggest that both psychological capital and work engagement are facilitators for organisational citizenship behaviour in nurses. Managers can increase nurses' organisational citizenship behaviour through developing psychological capital and improving the work engagement.This study indicates that both psychological capital and work engagement are protective factors of organisational citizenship behaviour, which provide proof for optimizing human resources management from a positive psychology perspective. Our finding can help managers correctly understand the mechanism of the relationship among work engagement, psychological capital and organisational citizenship behaviour and adopt effective intervention strategies to promote nurses' organisational citizenship behaviour.