When and How Workplace Helping Promotes Deviance? An Actor-Centric Perspective.

Hao Zhang,Xiumei Lai,Chunpei Lin,Xiayi Liu

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.795610

Abstract

Despite the vast academic interest in workplace helping, little is known about the impact of different types of helping behaviors on physiological and behavioral ramifications of helpers. By taking the actor-centric perspective, this study attempts to investigate the differential impacts of three kinds of helping behaviors (caring, coaching, and substituting helping) on helpers themselves from the theory of resource conservation. To test our model, 512 Chinese employees were surveyed, utilizing a three-wave time-lagged design, and we found that caring and coaching helping were negatively associated with workplace deviance, whereas substituting helping was positively associated with subsequent workplace deviance. Emotional exhaustion mediated the effects of three helping behaviors on subsequent workplace deviance. Moreover, employees' extrinsic career goals influenced the strength of the relationship between three helping behaviors and emotional exhaustion and the indirect effects of three helping behaviors on subsequent workplace deviance via emotional exhaustion. We discuss the implications of our findings for both theories and practices.

Highlights

In highly turbulent environments, companies have increasingly relied on team-based work, increasingly encouraging employees’ helping behaviors, which are inherently moral and virtuous in the workplace (Deckop et al, 2003)
Building on the existing work, we will start from the process of individual resource gain and loss, and draw from conservation of resources theory to examine how different types of workplaces helping may motivate individuals to direct workplace deviant behavior. We address these problems by classifying workplace helping into caring helping, coaching helping, and substituting helping based on the extent to which a helper engages in helping coworkers
Based on scales developed by previous research (Williams and Anderson, 1991; Van Dyne et al, 1994; Farh et al, 1997; Podsakoff et al, 1997; Lee and Allen, 2002; Settoon and Mossholder, 2002; McDonald et al, 2018), this study used items analysis, exploratory factor analysis, and confirmatory factor analysis; we developed the scales of caring, coaching, and substituting helping

Summary

Introduction

Companies have increasingly relied on team-based work, increasingly encouraging employees’ helping behaviors, which are inherently moral and virtuous in the workplace (Deckop et al, 2003). From the perspective of resource conservation, helpers often have different psychological and behavioral responses after their helping behaviors due to the limited resources (Lin et al, 2020). This difference leads to contradictory conclusions in the existing research on the relationship between helping behavior and its subsequent behavior. Some employees appreciate that they acquire resources when helping others in the workplace. Some employees hold the view that helping behavior will deplete

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