The influence of perceived organizational support, ethnocultural empathy dimensions, and trust in organization towards organizational citizenship behaviour dimensions among public servants in Jabatan Pendaftaran Negara, Sabah

The literature on organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB) has demonstrated that it benefits to organizations and employees’ welfare. Thus, it is important to understand the factors that drive OCB to increase employees’ engagement in an organization. Jabatan Pendaftaran Negara (JPN) is one of the public agencies that aims to provide citizen-centric in its services therefore, it is crucial for its employees to exhibit OCB due to its services to meet societal demands and requirements. Nonetheless, enhancing efficiency in service delivery remains an ongoing challenge among public servants. The objective of this study is to examine perceived organizational support (POS), ethnocultural empathy and trust in organization as the antecedents of OCB among public servants in Jabatan Pendaftaran Negara (JPN) Sabah. Cluster sampling was used to select 213 respondents representing JPN’s public servants, with 11 out of 25 districts in Sabah were chosen in this study. A set of questionnaires (The Survey of Perceived Organizational Support- SPOS, the Scale of Ethnocultural Empathy- SEE, Robinson’s Trust in Organization, Lee and Allen’s Organizational Citizenship Behaviour Scale) were employed to measure the variables of this study. The results revealed a significant effect of POS on OCB-Organization and trust in organization but, there was no significant effect on OCB-Individual. The finding also indicated that the dimension of ethnocultural empathy (empathic feeling and empathic awareness) significantly influenced the OCB dimensions. This supports the suitability of Organizational Support Theory (OST) and Batson’s Empathy-altruism Hypothesis in explaining the study’s model. The relationships between POS, trust in the organization, and OCB as guided by the Social Exchange Theory (SET), providing new perspective into social exchange processes, particularly among employees in public organizations. The study led to empathy guidelines based on the JPN code of ethics, recommending broader application of ethnocultural empathy in diverse and multi-ethnic organizations