EXPLORING UPWARD INFLUENCE STRATEGIES AND THEIR IMPACT ON ORGANIZATIONAL CITIZENSHIP BEHAVIOR IN NIGERIAN LOCAL GOVERNMENTS

Prior studies report that citizenship behavior (OCB) of employees within organizations lead to improved growth and performance, however while several antecedents such as leaders’ behavior is known to influence OCB, the effect of upward influence strategies adopted by subordinates have not featured prominently in the literature. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between upward influence strategies and organizational citizenship behavior. 221 randomly selected employees of Ughelli North Local Government Council participated in the study. A structured questionnaire was administered to the respondents at place of work and retrieved thereafter. Simple linear regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses. Findings indicate that OCB was positively and significantly related to soft upward influence strategy, while hard upward influence strategy was negatively and significantly related to OCB. The study recommends that soft upward influence strategy should be adopted by employees as this will enhance OCB at the Local Government Councils