How New Employees’ Supervisor Relationship-Building Behavior Affect Coworker Helping Willingness?

Abstract

Drawing from attribution theory, this study explores the mechanism of new employees’ supervisor relationship-building behavior on their coworkers’ willingness to help. Adopting a situational simulation experiment involving 233 in-service workers, we found that coworkers attribute the supervisor relationship-building behavior of new employees to two distinct motives: organizational concern motives and impression management motives. Coworkers’ attribution of new employees’ organizational concern motives positively affects their willingness to help new employees, whereas coworkers’ attribution of new employees’ impression management motives has a negative effect. Under the condition of high cooperative goal interdependence, people are more likely to attribute the motives of new employees’ supervisor relationship-building behavior to organizational concern motives. Furthermore, the indirect effect of new employees’ relationship-building behavior on the coworkers’ willingness to help through coworker-attributed organizational concern motives is stronger.