Is Being a Good Samaritan Always Good? Unpacking the Pitfalls of Prosocial Behavior

Abstract

For decades scholars have studied ways that employees contribute to others and their organizations. In our symposium, we focus on prosocial behaviors – acts that help and benefit individuals, teams, and organizations that may be in-role or extra-role (Bolino & Grant, 2016) –which are generally seen as good and important. However, recent research has begun to explore the potential drawbacks of prosocial behavior (Bergeron, 2007), such as increased counterproductive work behaviors (e.g., Morrison, 2006; Levine & Schweitzer, 2015) or feeling burned out and depleted helping others, especially when it takes away from one's own work role (Bolino, Hsiung, Harvey, & LePine, 2015; Grant, 2008; Koopman, Lanaj, & Scott, 2016). In response to this work, our symposium comments on the personal resource outcomes associated with prosocial behavior, the role of individual and organizational motives behind promoting employee prosocial behavior, and whether prosocial behaviors vary under different contextual factors. Specifically, we consider how managers who solicit ideas from employees can be fatiguing and counterproductive to employees, and how employee suggestions can be seen as hindrance stressors that deplete managers. We also consider managers' developmental or exploitive motives in consulting with employees, and the sincere or insincere “greenwashing&x201D; motives of a pro-social organization that leads to increased OCB and performance or increased deviance and decreased performance. Finally, we consider how prosocial behaviors operate in a variety of contexts, including the interpersonal compassion displayed by repossession agents. Taken together, the symposium's featured studies offer a unique perspective of the pitfalls of prosocial behavior with important practical and theoretical significance.