Relationships between job burnout, ethical climate and organizational citizenship behaviour among registered nurses: A cross‐sectional study.

Aim: This study aimed to investigate the levels of nurses' organizational citizenship behaviour and the associations between job burnout and ethical climate with organizational citizenship behaviour. Background: Organizational citizenship behaviour improves adverse outcomes led by nursing shortage. However, the associations between three dimensions of job burnout and organizational citizenship behaviour are inconsistent, and little is known about whether ethical climate is related to organizational citizenship behaviour in nurses. Methods: In this cross‐sectional study, 1157 nurses were selected using convenience sampling from April to October 2019. Self‐report surveys assessed nurses' organizational citizenship behaviour, emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, personal accomplishment and perceptions of ethical climate. Results: Mean organizational citizenship behaviour was high among nurses. The regression model showed that job burnout and ethical climate explained an additional 38.6% of the variance in organizational citizenship behaviour over and above sociodemographic factors, with 44.9% of the total variance. Conclusion: Nurses' organizational citizenship behaviour was at a relatively high level. Depersonalization was negatively associated with organizational citizenship behaviour while personal accomplishment and ethical climate were positively related to organizational citizenship behaviour. Therefore, nurse leaders are encouraged to take measures to help nurses reduce job burnout and create a favourable ethical climate for increasing nurses' organizational citizenship behaviour. Summary statement: What is already known about this topic? Organizational citizenship behaviour has been found to have positive effects for both nurses and hospitals.Contrasting findings have been found for the relationships between emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and organizational citizenship behaviour in different populations.Personal accomplishment is negatively associated with organizational citizenship behaviour in non‐nurse groups. What this paper adds? Nurses with higher organizational citizenship behaviour are more likely to be older and work in internal medicine.Lower depersonalization and higher personal accomplishment are significantly associated with greater organizational citizenship behaviour in nurses.Ethical climate is positively related to nurses' organizational citizenship behaviour. The implications of this paper This study highlighted the importance of job burnout and the ethical climate for workplace productivity in health‐care fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]