Does Gender Really Matter? Testing the Mediating Role of Public Service Motivation between Gender and Organizational Citizenship Behavior in Federal Agencies

Although a wide variety of studies have been conducted on the role of gender, public service motivation, and organizational citizenship behavior, the findings have not completely dispelled the suspicion about the causal relationship between these concepts. This article examines the mechanisms through which gender affects the performance of organizational citizenship behavior directly and indirectly through a mediating variable – public service motivation (PSM). A sample of 485,534 employees from the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS) was used to test the mediation model using the bootstrapping technique. Findings show that women scored higher on their PSM level, which, in turn, positively affected their OCB levels compared to men. Also, this study demonstrates that PSM as a construct has distinct gender dimensions attached to it.