Abstract
Drawing upon theoretical lenses of social cognitive theory, this study explores whether, when, why, and how the helping behaviors of team leaders influence individual work role performance of team members (in terms of individual task proficiency, task adaptivity, and task proactivity) through self-efficacy of team members. The consequences of different types of help of leaders are uncovered in this study. By proposing a cross-level moderated mediation model and using multisource and multistage data from 303 team members in 39 work teams, autonomy-oriented help of leaders was found to have a differential effect on individual work role performance of members via the self-efficacy of the latter when controlling for dependency-oriented help of leaders. Moreover, the multilevel analysis of moderation uncovered that leader–member exchange relationship at the team level engendered a boundary condition for the mediating role of member self-efficacy in the relationship between autonomy-oriented help of leaders and individual work role performance of members in this model.
Highlights
Helping behavior, as “an important form of citizenship behavior” (Podsakoff et al, 2000, p. 516), has gained great attention in academia
Leveraging the social cognitive theory, we propose that grouplevel leader–member exchange (LMX) can interact with receiving help of team leaders to influence the improvement of self-efficacy of team members
The confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) results indicated that a five-factor model [χ2 = 882.69, df = 311, root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) = 0.06, standardized root mean square residual (SRMR) = 0.05, comparative fit index (CFI) = 0.93, non-normed fit index (NNFI) or (TLI) = 0.92] has a good model fit
Summary
As “an important form of citizenship behavior” (Podsakoff et al, 2000, p. 516), has gained great attention in academia. A team leader is responsible for coordination within the team (Zaccaro et al, 2001), helping members with problem solving by providing informational and advisory guidance (Courtright et al, 1989), and ensuring the services delivery of the team and collective goal achievement In this way, the help and support of team leaders can generate significant impacts on the perceptions and behaviors of team members (Li et al, 2015). 2; Wu and Parker, 2017) To better address such inconsistency and explore different working mechanisms of receiving help from team leaders, this study explores three aspects: different types of help behavior, the mediating process of help of leaders (why help of leaders is important, how it contributes to employee work performance, whether the effects of different types of help of leaders are differential), and boundary condition (when help of leaders matters)
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