Organizational sportsmanship, a norm of behavior, and a norm of judgment

Abstract

Organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB) are usually considered as extra-role behaviors, transversal to different jobs, although sometimes they are considered part of the usual role; maintaining the elasticity of its definition as a result of the existence of concepts that, although in competition, refer to similar models (social organizational behaviors, contextual performance, etc.). Still, it seems to have formed a consensus around its constituent dimensions: altruism, courtesy, civility, professionalism, and sportsmanship. It is this last dimension that interests us here. According to Gangloff (2016), sportsmanship would have a normative character. However, it is possible to distinguish two types of norms: norms of behavior and norms of judgment (Dubois, 1994). The present study raises the possibility of transforming organizational sportsmanship into a standard of judgment. 120 private sector employees (60 men and 60 women) have answered questions that correspond to four sportsmanship items randomly distributed among 24 items to be completed. Two of these items were extracted from a classic OCB questionnaire - and are formulated in the form of behaviors - while the other two were constructed ad hoc and formulated in the form of judgments. The results obtained are in the sense of the hypothesis raised.