Correlates of psychological capital, emotional intelligence and organisational citizenship behaviour among Nigerian graduate employees

Abstract

In the years past, the phenomenon of organisational citizenship behaviour was conceptually reviewed by scholars with a little regards to scientific investigation of the concept. However, because of its relevance to organisational performance and continual existence of organisations, organisational citizenship behaviour is now studied empirically along with some psychosocial variables. This study therefore, was conducted to demonstrate whether the presence of organisational citizenship behaviour correlates in any form (high or low level) with psychological states of development. The study adopted the positivist explanatory cross-sectional (survey) research design to systematically sample opinions of 1,532 male and female graduate employees across the various sectors of the Nigerian economy, using a structured and validated questionnaire, and the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). The results showed that there was a significant positive relationship between psychological capital and organisational citizenship behaviour (r = 0.588, p<0.01); there was a significant positive relationship between emotional intelligence and organisational citizenship behaviour (r = 0.473, p<0.01); and there was a significant positive relationship between psychological capital and emotional intelligence (r = 0.493, p<0.01). The study recommended that human resource managers should develop psychological capital and emotional intelligence in employees in order to increase their levels of organisational performance.

Keywords: emotional intelligence; organisational citizenship behaviour; psychological capital; graduate employee