Exploring the drivers of organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB) among corporate meeting attendees

Corporate meetings are a large sector of the global meetings, incentive, convention and exhibition (MICE) industry. However, regular attendance and productive participation by employees are regularly cited as critical problem areas. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how key inhibiting factors related to meeting attendance influence one dimension of employee organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB)–civic loyalty.

An online survey was administered to 229 attendees of corporate meetings, drawn from a large range of private companies and government agencies. Regression analysis was used to investigate which factors affected two variables reflecting employee OCB–civic loyalty: future attendance intentions and positive co-worker advocacy.

It was found that opportunity costs and travel convenience were the two most important factors. Opportunity costs reflected the personal costs faced by attendees attending corporate meetings offsite through family or work-related responsibilities. In addition, organizational support was a further significant factor. The strength of relationships varied depending upon gender and mode of transport to the destination.

While there is a large literature on motivators of meeting attendance in general, this is the first study to examine attendance factors for the corporate meeting sector. This study addresses calls for studies that seek to understand which key factors are related to positive attendance outcomes, and especially extends the scant level of research on meeting inhibitors. This study is also the first to utilize organizational citizenship theory to understand these relationships within the MICE sector. Implications are drawn for event organizers.