Vázquez Rodríguez, PaulaRomero Castro, Noelia MaríaPérez Pico, Ada María2024-03-052024-03-052021Paula Vázquez-Rodríguez, Noelia Romero-Castro & Ada M. Pérez-Pico (2021). To engage or not to engage in organisational citizenship behaviour: that is the question!, Economic Research-Ekonomska Istraživanja, 34:1, 2506-2521, DOI: 10.1080/1331677X.2020.18337431331-677Xhttp://hdl.handle.net/10347/32982Organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) can be defined as discretional, voluntary and useful informal behaviour that is not directly acknowledged by the organisation’s formal reward system. Such behaviour refers to actions that go beyond performing the tasks defined as part of one’s job. Previous studies have shown that organisations that promote OCB can notably improve their productivity and efficiency. It is therefore important to know what causes employees to engage in OCB rather than just limiting themselves to doing what is strictly expected at work. However, it is more important to know why they do not engage in OCB. Using a sample of public prison employees and the fsQCA method, this study examines how the combined effects of organisational characteristics, leadership behaviours and individual characteristics lead to the absence of OCB. The results indicate that the absence of affective commitment, or job satisfaction, or interactional justice is a necessary condition for the absence of OCB. Four conditions are identified as sufficient, and the absence of affective commitment and the presence of laissez-faire leadership are found to be the most relevant conditions for the absence of OCB. Managerial implications and directions for future studies are discussed at the end of the paper.eng© 2020 The Authors. Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA)Organisational citizenshipbehaviour (OCB)Affective commitmentLaissez-faire leadershipBullying at workjournal article10.1080/1331677X.2020.18337431848-9664open access