Impact of organizational socialization on organizational citizenship behavior: mediating role of knowledge sharing and role clarity

The present study proposed and tested a model of organizational socialization that specified that organizational socialization might lead to more frequent organizational citizenship behaviors through knowledge sharing and role clarity in a purposive sample of new employees (with current job experience ≤6 months, N = 300) of various banks, hospitals, and universities of Sargodha, Rawalpindi, and Islamabad cities. Organizational Socialization Scale (Haueter et al., 2003), Knowledge Sharing Scale (Hsu, 2008), Role Clarity Scale (Rizzo et al., 1970), and Organizational Citizenship Behavior Scale (Lee & Allen, 2002) were used to measure the focal constructs. Path analysis revealed that besides the direct effect of organizational socialization on the OCB, knowledge sharing and role clarity serially mediated between socialization and OCB. Moreover, both knowledge sharing and role clarity had positive direct effects on OCB. Implications of the research and recommendations for further research have been reflected upon.