Examining Structural Relationships among LMX, Empowerment, Cooperation, and Organizational Citizenship Behavior in the Hotel Industry: A Moderating Role of Gender

It has long been discussed that organization citizenship behavior promotes the effective functioning of the organization,thus increasing shareholder value of a company. This research aims to reveal the antecedents of organization citizenship behavior and causal relationships among the concepts. Based on the literature review, this study found three key antecedents of organization citizenship behavior (LMX, cooperation, and empowerment) and moderating function of a gender. Accordingly, the purpose of this study was to examine the structural relationships among LMX, cooperation,empowerment, and OCB with the moderating role of gender. The proposed model was tested using the data collected from 178 hotel employees. According to structural equation modeling analysis, it was revealed that LMX directly/indirectly influences organization citizenship behavior via cooperation and empowerment. Also, moderating role of empowerment in the relationship between LMX and empowerment was revealed. More importantly, a moderating function of gender was found, indicating differential effect of LMX on empowerment and organization citizenship behavior. Based on data analysis, theoretical/empirical implications were discussed.