Gender factor and organisational citizenship behaviour among academics in South Africa

A company cannot grow unless its employees engage in meaningful behaviours. Therefore, higher learning institutions must foster organisational citizenship behaviour. An educational institution's overall operations are impacted by it, which significantly affects institutions’ operations, enhances the effectiveness of educators, and has a favourable effect on students' academic performance. However, the behaviours that men and women are expected to exhibit and how their actions are perceived are both influenced by their gender. Based on the role theory as the theoretical framework, this study explored the differences between male and female respondents' exhibition of altruism, conscientiousness, sportsmanship, courtesy, and civic virtue among academics. 253 academics were chosen at random from a group of 405 participants using a convenience sampling strategy. Data were gathered using a structured questionnaire and analysed through descriptive, factor analysis, and the Mann-Whitney U test. The means showed that employees of this institution appeared to be good citizens displaying all five citizenship dimensions. Furthermore, factor analysis results reported the extraction of five components. Thereafter, the Mann-Whitney test revealed that there were no discernible differences between the organisational citizenship behaviour scores of male and female respondents across all dimensions. These findings create an awareness of the importance of organisational citizenship behaviour in higher learning institutions and give managers a better knowledge of these behaviours. This study advocates that leaders should foster a strong organisational culture that promotes the exhibition of these behaviours within the workplace to make it easier for them to offer assistance to students, and colleagues and advance institutions’ goals.