Occupational Stress as a Correlate of Organisational Citizenship Behaviour and Psychological Capital Among Graduate Employees in Nigeria

It is a documented fact that occupational stress is widespread worldwide. Moreover, there are clear signs of many variables, related to occupational stress. The study therefore, was conducted to demonstrate whether the presence of occupational stress in the world of work correlates in any form (positive or negative) with a better level of organisational performance and employee psychological wellbeing.

The study adopted the positivist explanatory cross-sectional (survey) research design to systematically sample opinions of 1,532 male and female graduate employees across the various sectors of the Nigerian economy, using a structured and validated questionnaire, and the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS).

The results showed that there was a weak positive relationship between occupational stress and organisational citizenship behaviour (r = 0.070, p<0.01); there was a significant positive relationship between occupational stress and psychological capital (r = 0.128, p<0.01); and there was a significant positive relationship between psychological capital and organisational citizenship behaviour (r = 0.588, p<0.01).

The study recommended that human resource managers should develop psychological capital in employees in order to increase their levels of organisational performance and reduce the negative impact of occupational stress.