Empowerment and Leader Member Exchange towards Organizational Citizenship Behavior Readiness among Government Workforce in Malaysia

State agencies are among vital agencies that meet the needs of the public at large and their services are important to drive the economic growth and development of a State specifically and the nation in general. For years, as evidenced from Public Complaints Bureau, state agencies have been plagued with public complaints as the issues of inefficiency of service quality and delivery has yet to meet the expectation of the public. This study attempts to attain three objectives with participation from 15 State agencies workforce in east coast region of Malaysia. The first and second objectives are to examine the relationships of leader-member exchange (LMX) and empowerment towards OCB. The last objective is to determine the dominant variables that can impact OCB willingness. 288 respondents participated in the survey using cluster sampling procedure. Pilot test results indicated the survey items have achieved the required reliability and several sub-dimensions were renamed after underwent factor analysis. Employing multiple regression in answering first and second objectives revealed that LMX-LoyalAffect, LMX-Contribution and EMP-MeanSelf have the abilities to invoke OCB. In answering third objective employing stepwise regression revealed that EMP-MeanSelf has strongest Beta at 0.325, p<0.001, followed by LMX-Contribution with Beta of 0.216, p<0.01 and lastly LMX-LoyalAffect with Beta of 0.158, p<0.05 with moderate R2 of 31%. The findings from this study provide significant contribution to the State agencies management that fostering quality dyadic relationship and empowering the workforce should be given priority as these elements are vital in elevating OCB. By focusing on these interrelationships by implementing the suggestions for improvement, State agencies in east coast region can achieve the mandated objectives and instil public confidence towards efficiency of the various services provided by these important agencies. Limitations of the study and recommendations for future research are also emphasized.