Organizational citizenship behaviors perceived by collectivistic 50-and-older customers and medical-care service performance: an application of stimulus-organism-response theory

Purpose The study aims to examine the underexplored agenda in organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) through the collectivistic 50-and-older customers' lens when encountering medical-care services by applying stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) theory. Design/methodology/approach The authors propose an integrative causal model derived from employees OCBs perceived by the collectivistic 50-and-older outpatients in Korean medical-care organizations and test the causal relationships using structural equation modeling (SEM). Findings The three dimensions of OCBs are external stimuli to the synergistic relationship of both cognitive and affective organisms for enhancing the organization's external outcomes. The customers' organismic processes mediate the relationships between OCBs and the resultant outcomes. Customer satisfaction plays a pivotal role in determining customers' future behavior when converting the business relationship to friendship. Practical implications The proposed integrated model provides an overall mechanism of the collectivistic customer decision process in the medical-care service setting. The integrated model helps to understand better how customers proceed mental and emotional states with the encountered services and how frontline employees offer extra-roles beyond in-roles to their customers in touching points to maintain superior organizational performance. Originality/value The authors respond to the underexplored agenda in the OCB research discipline. The study is one of the few studies to examine the effect of OCBs from collectivistic customers' perspectives and apply a consumer behavior theory to explain a service organizational performance in an integrative causal model.