Although the original conceptualization of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) defined these behaviors as discretionary in nature, over two decades of research on how employees view OCBs and their job responsibilities indicates that the boundary between in-role and extra-role behavior is blurry, and that there is substantial variation in employees’ OCB role perceptions. In this chapter, we provide a review of over 40 articles that have examined the perceived boundary between required and discretionary citizenship behaviors. These include studies that have examined the predictors of OCB role perceptions, role perceptions as antecedents of OCBs, and role perceptions as mediators and moderators of the relationships between other predictors and OCBs. We conclude with several recommendations regarding future research directions for scholars interested in further understanding how OCBs are perceived by employees and the implications of different role perceptions for understanding employee performance.
