Helping after dark: Ambivalent leadership outcomes of helping followers after the workday

Abstract

SummaryHelping has long been considered as a beneficial behavior that enhances organizational effectiveness. Recent technological boons, however, have expanded the boundaries of when and where employees fulfill their responsibilities. In the context of leadership, this means that leaders are now able to efficiently provide help to their followers in the evening after the official workday ends, and there is theoretical reason to expect that this behavior leads to meaningful emotional and behavioral reactions. In this manuscript, we draw from theory on emotional appraisal to explain how helping followers in the evening is positively associated with pride or irritation for leaders as a function of leaders' trust in their followers. Furthermore, we posit that these emotional reactions are positively associated with next‐day transformational and laissez‐faire leadership behaviors, respectively. The results of two experience sampling studies align with our predictions for the pride pathway, while providing mixed results for the irritation pathway. Overall, we extend existing theory on organizational helping by highlighting the theoretical and practical implications of helping followers after the official workday ends.