Under conditions of economic threat, such as during economic downturns, organizations can benefit from employees’ willingness to go beyond the call of duty and engage in organization-directed citizenship behavior (OCBO). Yet, such behavior is discretionary and competes for time with employees’ other interests and priorities. I integrate life history theory with the temporal dilemma perspective on organizational citizenship behavior to propose that childhood environments sensitize individuals to prioritize different goals in response to economic threat later in life. Consistent with strategies for responding to threat that are functional in their childhood environments, employees from wealthier backgrounds respond to economic threat by focusing on the future and allocating more time to OCBO, whereas employees from poorer backgrounds exhibit the opposite response. Two pre-registered multi-source field surveys found support for the theory and also showed that the effects of economic threat may lead to a reproduction of childhood inequalities by impacting employees’ promotion potential. A pre-registered experiment replicated the effects on future focus and OCBO and found that they can be attenuated through a future focus induction. I discuss implications for research on employee responses to economic threat, influences of early-life conditions on employee psychology and behavior later in life, and organizational dynamics as drivers of inequality.

在经济威胁的情况下，例如在经济衰退期间，组织可以从员工超越职责范围并参与组织指导的公民行为 (OCBO) 的意愿中受益。然而，这种行为是随意的，并且会与员工的其他兴趣和优先事项争夺时间。我将生命史理论与组织公民行为的时间困境视角相结合，提出童年环境使个人敏感地优先考虑不同的目标，以应对以后生活中的经济威胁。与童年环境中有效的应对威胁的策略一致，来自富裕背景的员工通过关注未来并为 OCBO 分配更多时间来应对经济威胁，而来自贫困背景的员工则表现出相反的反应。两项预先登记的多源实地调查发现了该理论的支持，并表明经济威胁的影响可能会影响员工的晋升潜力，从而导致童年不平等的再现。一项预先注册的实验复制了对未来焦点和 OCBO 的影响，并发现它们可以通过未来焦点诱导来减弱。我讨论了员工对经济威胁的反应、早年生活条件对员工心理和晚年行为的影响以及组织动态作为不平等驱动因素的研究的意义。