OPPORTUNITY FOR INNOVATION AND ORGANIZATIONAL CITIZENSHIP BEHAVIOUR IN THE NIGERIAN HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY

The purpose of this study was  to examine the relationship between  opportunity for innovation and organizational citizenship behaviour in the Nigerian hospitality industry.  The cross sectional survey was conducted with a sample size of 1450 workers drawn from a population of 3768 workers in the South-South geopolitical region of Nigeria. The scales used were within the acceptable Cronbach Alpha values of 0.7, which was interpreted to be reliable. A total of  1,093 copies of completed and usable questionnaire were used for data analysis. Furthermore, the data obtained were analysed using the  Spearman Rank Order Coefficient. The results reveal that opportunity for  innovation  is strongly related to  altruism, conscientiousness, civic virtue, courtesy and sportsmanship. The findings suggest that organizations  conducive for innovation  tends to promote extra discretionary employee behaviour. The study concluded that  in the presence of opportunity for innovation of the worker, organizational citizenship behaviour is activated.  
KEYWORDS:  Innovation, Organizational Citizenship Behaviour,  Altruism, Conscientiousness, Civic Virtue, Courtesy And Sportsmanship, Hospitality Industry  

The surge in knowledge of OCB has become imperative and progressively a priority for organizations. From the time Katz and Kahn (1966) introduced the concept of positive behaviour, there has been expanded research need toward exploring the nature of such behaviour and its effect on organisational performance (Organ, 1988, Podskakoff et al 2000). This view is supported by Chaitanya and Tripathi (2001) who argue that, it is increasingly realised that employee behaviours that are beyond the traditional measures of job performance, like organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB), hold promise for long-term organizational success.  Furthermore, there exists evidence that OCB contributes not only to organizational benefits but also to the individual workerâ€s benefit (Podsakoff et al. 2009). Accordingly, issues regarding the fluid nature of OCB have received considerable attention among organisational behaviourist scientists (Wyss, 2006).  For instance, personality traits (Borman, Penner, Allen & Motowidlo, 2001), mood (Miles,
Spector, Borman, & Fox, 2002), employee attitudes  ( Organ & Ryan, 1995), leader behaviors (Pillai, Schriesheim, & Williams, 1999) Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Moorman, & Fetter, 1990), employee perceptions of fairness (Niehoff & Moorman,  1993),  learning organization (Obiora and Okpu, 2014), task characteristics (Piccolo & Colquitt, 2006)  and organizational commitment (Organ & Ryan, 1995)  have been shown to have association with OCB.   
A growing need therefore has arisen to investigate factors that contribute to -