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Personality traits refer to enduring patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior that are not likely to change over time and explain people's behavior across different situations (Costa and McCrae, 1989; Funder, 2001). The five-factor model of personality (FFM) or "Big Five" has influenced the field of personality during the last two decades, providing a significant degree of convergence in the trait-factor analytic psychology (Robertson and Callinan, 1998). Many studies have examined the relationship of personality traits to job performance, finding significant relationships between them (e.g., Barrick and Mount, 1991; Barrick, Mount, and Judge, 2001a; Barrick, Parks, and Mount, 2005; Hurtz and Donovan, 2000; Salgado, 1999).
Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), which is described as a discretionary behavior, has emerged as a popular area for study (Organ, 1990). Citizenship behaviors are those helpful to the company but not considered core elements of the job. Citizenship behaviors are often performed by employees to support the interests of the organization even though they may not lead directly to individual benefits (Moorman and Blakely, 1995). Thus, managers often find it difficult to reward good citizenship directly as well as difficult to punish the absence of it.
Of particular relevance to the present study is that previous studies have found a substantial variance in personality-performance relationship that remains unexplained (e.g., Barrick et al., 2001a; Barrick et al., 2005; Hogan and Holland, 2003; Hough, 1992; Hurtz and Donovan, 2000; Nikolaou and Roberston, 2001; Organ and Ryan, 1995). This is significant because it indicates mat other individual variables and situational conditions facilitate or constrain the influence of personality traits on performance and influence the relationship between them. Hence, the present study used four control variables two individual factors (work locus of control and self-esteem) and two situational factors (stress at work and organizational justice) - to control their effects on OCB. Accordingly, the purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between "big five" personality traits and OCB after controlling the impact of the control variables.
* The Five-factor model (FFM) of personality
The FFM has achieved popular acceptance as a meaningful description of personality traits (Saucier and Ostedorf, 1999). The five factors are usually labeled extraversion (sociable vs. introverted), agreeableness (cooperative vs. competitive), conscientiousness (organized and planful vs. unorganized and careless),...