Quality of work life and organizational citizenship behavior: Beyond net effects

Quality of work life (QWL) is often treated as a set of additive predictors of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), but this view says little about whether some work-life conditions must be present before high employee attitudes and discretionary behavior can occur. Focusing on Da Nang, Vietnam, in the post-COVID-19 period, this study examines the QWL-OCB relationship through job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Drawing on the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) framework and social exchange theory, survey data were collected from 735 full-time employees across multiple sectors. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) and necessary condition analysis (NCA) were used to estimate both net associations and threshold conditions. PLS-SEM showed that QWL was strongly associated with job satisfaction (β = 0.864) and organizational commitment (β = 0.852). Organizational commitment was the strongest proximal correlate of self-reported OCB (β = 0.532), and the model accounted for 72.0% of OCB variance. NCA further showed that selected QWL dimensions were necessary conditions for high job satisfaction and organizational commitment, with the largest CE-FDH effect size reaching d = 0.186. Job satisfaction and organizational commitment were also necessary conditions for high self-reported OCB. By combining sufficiency-based and necessity-based reasoning, this study shows that QWL relates to citizenship behavior not only through average positive associations but also through minimum enabling conditions for satisfaction and commitment. Findings are specific to the Da Nang sample and require validation in other contexts.