Organizational Elements and Collaborative Organizational Citizenship Behavior in Off-Site Construction Projects: Configurational Approach

Abstract

Collaboration has become a popular way for off-site construction (OSC) project teams to achieve cross-operation construction tasks. However, prior studies of collaboration have focused on the stakeholders’ in-role collaboration behavior and the effects of a narrow subset of organizational elements (i.e., contract, organizational structure, trust, and social relationship). Our study focuses on collaborative organizational citizenship behavior (COCB), viewed as a form of extrarole behavior. It explores organizational elements’ configuration effects using a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA). Our main findings verify the configuration effects of organizational elements on COCB. The double-edged sword effects of contractual control and organizational formalization are identified. A social exchange strategy is explored, consisting of benevolence trust, organizational integration, and social relationship, as it is the most prevalent strategy found in OSC project team COCB. Configuration conditions are found to be asymmetric in the presence or absence of high COCB. This study expands the theoretical understanding of COCB, showing that its emergence is not a completely altruistic behavior but is instead a limited discretionary behavior. This study also contributes to organizational citizenship behavior and stakeholder theory by linking projectized stakeholder management based on formal contracts to COCB based on informal social exchange. It offers policymakers, project managers, and stakeholders a complete picture of how the organizational strategy configurations, including the mutual benevolence trust, agile organizational integration, and close social relationships foster high COCBs in the OSC project team.