Title: Work-life balance in the service sector: predicting organisational citizenship behaviour

Authors: Friday Ogbu Edeh; Isaac Monday Ikpor

Addresses: Department of Business Administration, Faculty of Management & Social Sciences, Alex Ekwueme Federal University, Ikwo, Ebonyi State, Nigeria ' Department of Business Administration, Faculty of Management & Social Sciences, Alex Ekwueme Federal University, Ikwo, Ebonyi State, Nigeria

Abstract: This study empirically investigates the effect of work-life balance on Organisational Citizenship Behaviour (OCB) in Nigerian service organisations, using border theory and social exchange theory, as theoretical framework. The population for the study comprises ten selected four star hotels that are registered with Ebonyi State Ministry of Commerce and Tourism. Simple random sampling was employed to selected ten registered hotels from Ebonyi State Ministry of Commerce and Tourism. Questionnaire was used to collect data from the respondents while linear regression was used to analyse the hypotheses with IBM SPSS Statistics (20.0). Our results indicate that work-life balance is significant and positively affects OCB. The study concludes that work-life balance measured in terms of supervisor support, co-worker support and flexible working period are important variables in predicting OCB in four star hotels in Nigeria. Even though this study used Nigeria data, countries with similar attributes can benefit immensely from the study. This paper is expected to contribute to organisational behaviour literature and provide additional evidence on how work-life balance affects organisational citizenship behaviour in Nigeria.

Keywords: work-life balance; co-worker support; supervisor support; flexible working period; organisational citizenship behaviour; altruism; conscientiousness; civic virtue.

DOI: 10.1504/EJIM.2025.143277

European Journal of International Management, 2025 Vol.25 No.1, pp.122 - 137

Received: 11 Mar 2020
Accepted: 17 Jul 2020
Published online: 12 Dec 2024 *

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