Testing a theory of sense of community and community responsibility in organizations: an empirical assessment of predictive capacity on employee well-being and organizational citizenship

TLDR: The authors empirically tested a theory of community responsibility (SOC-R) in relation to traditional measures of sense of community [SOC] on outcomes of employee well-being and organizational citizenship.

Abstract: This study attempts to advance our understanding of the experience of community in organizational settings by empirically testing a theory of sense of community responsibility (SOC-R) in relation to traditional measures of sense of community [SOC] on outcomes of employee well-being and organizational citizenship. Findings support the notion that SOC is a better predictor of employee well-being, while SOC-R more strongly predicts organizational citizenship behavior. The findings add new knowledge to the literature on the experience of community in organizations, as well as representing an important contribution to our understanding of the factors that drive employee action and well-being at work.

Figures

Table 3. Direct Effects of SOC Versus SOC-R

Table 4. Mediation Effects of Psychological Well-Being and OCBs

Table 2. Descriptive Statistics and Correlations for Major Study Variables

Table 1. CFA Measurement Model Structure of all Variables in the Study

Table 5. Moderation Effects of Psychological Well-Being and OCBs

Figure 2. Moderation of psychological well-being on SOC-OCBO relationship.

Full text

Bucknell University Bucknell University
Bucknell Digital Commons Bucknell Digital Commons
Faculty Journal Articles Faculty Scholarship
2017
Testing a theory of sense of community and community Testing a theory of sense of community and community
responsibility in organizations: An empirical assessment of responsibility in organizations: An empirical assessment of
predictive capacity on employee well-being and organizational predictive capacity on employee well-being and organizational
citizenship. citizenship.
Neil Boyd
Bucknell University
, nmb015@bucknell.edu
Branda Nowell
North Carolina State University
, branda_nowell@ncsu.edu
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Recommended Citation Recommended Citation
Boyd, Neil and Nowell, Branda. "Testing a theory of sense of community and community responsibility in
organizations: An empirical assessment of predictive capacity on employee well-being and organizational
citizenship.."
Journal of Community Psychology
(2017) : 210-229.
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ARTICLE
TESTING A THEORY OF SENSE OF
COMMUNITY AND COMMUNITY
RESPONSIBILITY IN
ORGANIZATIONS: AN EMPIRICAL
ASSESSMENT OF PREDICTIVE
CAPACITY ON EMPLOYEE
WELL-BEING AND
ORGANIZATIONAL CITIZENSHIP
Neil M. Boyd
Bucknell University
Branda Nowell
Nor th Carolina State University
This study attempts to advance our understanding of the experience of
community in organizational settings by empirically testing a theory of
sense of community responsibility (SOC-R) in relation to traditional
measures of sense of community [SOC] on outcomes of employee well-being
and organizational citizenship. Findings support the notion that SOC is a
better predictor of employee well-being, while SOC-R more strongly predicts
organizational citizenship behavior. The findings add new knowledge to
the literature on the experience of community in organizations, as well as
representing an important contribution to our understanding of the factors
that drive employee action and well-being at work.
C
2017 Wiley
Periodicals, Inc.
Community psychologists have long recognized the workplace as an important commu-
nity space (Klein & D’Aunno 1986; Burroughs & Eby 1998; Chioneso & Brookins 2013;
Please address correspondence to: Neil Boyd, Professor of Management, C. Graydon and Mary E.
Rogers Faculty Fellow, School of Management, Bucknell University, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania 17837.
E-mail: Neil.Boyd@Bucknell.edu
JOURNAL OF COMMUNITY PSYCHOLOGY, Vol. 45, No. 2, 210–229 (2017)
Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/jcop).
C
2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. DOI: 10.1002/jcop.21843

Sense of Com munity and C omm unity Responsibility in O rganizations
r
211
Pretty & McCarthy 1991; Royal & Rossi 1996; Speer et al. 2013; Zani & Cicognani 2012).
More recently, organizational scholars have likewise devoted increasing attention to the
topic of developing communities in organizational settings. Perhaps the most prominent
examples of popular press scholarship are contained in the writings of Mintzberg (2009)
and Block (2008), which provided a landscape for managers to consider creating commu-
nities at work. For example, Mintzberg noted that successful organizations usually have a
sense of community, and Block (2008) proposed that we need to consider developing an
authentic sense of community in institutional settings.
In the recent peer-reviewed literature, there is a growing consensus that community-
oriented constructs are value-added in organizational settings (Barczak, Smith, & Wile-
mon, 1987; Brytting & Trollestad, 2000; Cunha, Rego, & Vaccaro, 2014; Dessler 1999;
McBride 2006; Milliman, Czaplewski, & Ferguson, 2003; Rego & Cunha 2007; Rego,
Cunha, & Souto, 2007; Rowley, Kupiec-Teaham, & Leeming 2007). Notable among this
work is Kets de Vries (2001), who suggested that healthy organizations include a sense of
belonging, a sense of community, and a preparedness to help others. In addition, a num-
ber of scholars proposed that a sense of connection and community is a key dimension of
spirituality at work (e.g., see Ashmos & Duchon, 2000; Milliman et al. 2003), and empiri-
cally, Rego and Cunha (2008) showed that spirituality at work correlated to organizational
commitment. Their findings provided a platform for the argument that spirituality (with
the dimension of team’s sense of community) can potentially produce effects on factors like
commitment, employee well-being, organizational citizenship behaviors, performance,
and ultimately organizational-level factors that improve the longevity and health of the
firm.
Despite the growth of commentary on the role and importance of community in the
workplace in the literature to date, empirical studies are scarce (for review, see Boyd,
2014). As such, there is limited theoretical and empirical knowledge available to propel a
specific research agenda of community at work forward. The present study seeks to address
this gap, examining the relative contribution of two aspects of community experience:
sense of community (SOC) and sense of community responsibility (SOC-R) in relation to
employee well-being and organizational citizenship. In doing so, this study aims to both
advance our understanding of the role of community experience in a single organizational
setting and test theoretical propositions on the relative contributions of resource versus
responsibility aspects of community experience as put forth by Nowell and Boyd (2011,
2014).
SOC and SOC-R in Organizations
One theoretical model that has particular promise for application in organizational con-
texts is the community experience framework developed by Nowell and Boyd (2010,
2014). As Nowell and Boyd (2010) articulated (see bottom of Figure 1), traditional
measures of SOC tend to reflect an individual’s sense that their community serves as
a resource for meeting key physiological and psychological needs such as the need for
affiliation, influence, and connection (e.g., see the Sense of Community Index (Perkins,
Florin, Rich, Wandersman, & Chavis, 1990), the Sense of Community Index-2 (Chavis, Lee, &
Acosta, 2008), and the Brief Sense of Community Scale (Peterson, Speer, & McMillan, 2008).
They noted that a SOC should be positively related to community engagement and
personal well-being. Significant empirical support across a variety of community s ettings
backs up this proposition (Brodsky, O’Campo, & Aronson, 1999; Miers & Fisher, 2002;
Obst, Zinkiewicz, & Smith, 2002; Perkins et al., 1990; Pretty, 1990; Sonn, 2002). For
Journal of Community Psychology DOI: 10.1002/jcop

212
r
Journal of Com munity Psychology, M arch 2017
Community Context
Sense of
Community as
Responsibility
(SOC-R)
Psychological
Well-being
Community
Engagement
Personal Belief System
Norms
Beliefs
Values
Ideology
Standards
Community Context
Sense of
Community as
Resource
(SOC)
Psychological
Well-being
Community
Engagement
Psychological and
Physiological Needs
Figure 1. Comparison of SOC-R and SOC models with outcomes.
Source: Nowell & Boyd (2010)
Journal of Community Psychology DOI: 10.1002/jcop

Sense of Com munity and C omm unity Responsibility in O rganizations
r
213
example, SOC has been found to predict outcomes like psychological well-being (David-
son & Cotter, 1991; Peterson, Speer, & McMillan, 2008; Pretty et al., 1996; Prezza & Pacilli,
2007), as well as community engagement, political participation, and civic involvement
(Albanesi, Cicognani, & Zani, 2007; Brodsky, O’Campo, & Aronson, 1999, Hughey, Speer
& Peterson, 1999; Peterson et al., 2008; Prezza, Pacilli, Barbaranelli, & Zampatt, 2009).
Nowell and Boyd (2010) proposed SOC-R as complementary to SOC, arguing that
it represented a different and undertheorized aspect of experiencing community. They
define SOC-R as a feeling of duty or obligation to protect or enhance the well-being
of a group and its members. It is distinguished from traditional measures of SOC in
its emphasis on feelings of obligation to a community rather than perceptions of what
one gets from a community. SOC-R theorizes that individuals develop personal values,
norms, ideals, and beliefs through being embedded in various institutions (e.g., families,
churches, schools, neighborhoods, social groups) that they carry with them into new
settings (see top of Figure 1). T hese a priori belief structures interact with specific aspects
of a given setting and, in some cases, can evoke sentiments of duty and obligation for
individuals as they seek to reconcile who they perceive they are in a given setting and
their normative beliefs about what a person like them should do in such a setting. Once
developed, SOC-R perceptions are posited to increase engagement in that setting (Nowell
& Boyd, 2010, 2014; Boyd & Nowell, 2014).
The community experience framework further posits that SOC and SOC-R will have
differential effects. SOC, with its emphasis on community as a resource for meeting one’s
needs, is hypothesized to be the stronger predictor of indicators related to psychological
happiness and well-being. However, the relationship of SOC to community engagement
is theorized to be more attenuated for SOC because, according to the underlying model,
SOC would drive engagement to the extent that individuals felt that such engagement
would ultimately increase needs fulfillment. Conversely, Nowell and Boyd (2010) posit
that SOC-R, with its emphasis on the desire to create psychological congruence between
identity and behavior, will have a relatively stronger direct effect on engagement with a
community relative to SOC. At the same time, the dissonance that is theorized to drive
behavior in SOC-R is likely to have an attenuated relationship to happiness and well-being,
likely mediated through engagement efforts.
Preliminary support for the basic propositions of Nowell and Boyd’s resource and
responsibility framework was found by Nowell and Boyd (2014) in a recent study that
looked at both SOC and SOC-R in the context of community collaboratives. They empir-
ically demonstrated that resource versus responsibility experiences of community were
unique constructs to each other, and they showed discriminant validity between each
other on measures of satisfaction with the group and engagement in leadership action
within a collaborative network setting. In particular, the findings demonstrated that SOC
was the strongest predictor of general satisfaction, whereas SOC-R was the stronger pre-
dictor of higher order engagement and uniquely predicted leadership. Finally, this work,
in conjunction with theoretical justifications for construct distinction (Boyd & Nowell,
2014), has helped to clarify that SOC-R is different from related organizational constructs
with more general referents (e.g., organizational commitment and identity), and “other
regarding” constructs like civic engagement, social responsibility, and public service mo-
tivation, because SOC-R describes the unique relationship of an individual to a specific
community in which they are embedded. Other prosocial constructs are not designed
with such context-specific referents.
Because empirical research on community experiences at work is in its infancy, we
believe it is important to continue to both determine that SOC-R is empirically distinct
Journal of Community Psychology DOI: 10.1002/jcop

Frequently asked questions

Q1. What have the authors contributed in "Testing a theory of sense of community and community responsibility in organizations: an empirical assessment of predictive capacity on employee well-being and organizational citizenship" ?

In this paper, the psychology that serves as the bedrock of an individual 's SOC and SOCR for a community in an organizational context is discussed. 

Q2. What are the future works in "Testing a theory of sense of community and community responsibility in organizations: an empirical assessment of predictive capacity on employee well-being and organizational citizenship" ?

With an eye to the future, the introduction and validation of the community experience framework to the workplace setting suggests several important directions for future research. Therefore, a future area of inquiry could evaluate how SOC and SOC-R vary across people nested within the same workplace and within individuals across organizational settings in which they are nested. The psychology behind where and how people identify the boundaries that define their perceived realms of community and responsibility is an interesting area for future research. Moreover, if SOC is a driver of psychological well-being, and responsibility is a driver of organizational citizenship behavior and engagement with these variables leading to outcomes like turnover, absenteeism, and performance, then future studies should explore how managers can design workplace settings to evoke a SOC and SOC-R perceptions.