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Drawing on the conservation of resources (COR) theory, this study aims to examine the influence of abusive supervision on hospitality employees’ helping behaviors, especially, the joint moderating effects of proactive personality and ability to manage resources (i.e. RMA) in the hypothesized relationship.

Using a two-phase design, this study gathered data from 353 employees of ten hotels located in China. To test the hypotheses, the study conducted a series of hierarchical multiple regression analyses.

Findings demonstrated that abusive supervision was negatively related to hotel employees’ helping behaviors. Moreover, both proactive personality and RMA jointly moderated the abusive supervision–helping behavior relationship. Specifically, when both proactive personality and RMA had high degrees, the abusive supervision–employees’ helping behaviors linkage was weakest. Conversely, the strongest impact of abusive supervision on employees’ helping behaviors occurred when both proactive personality and RMA were low.

Hotel managers should reduce mistreatment and cultivate employees’ both proactive personality and RMA, to inhibit the decline of helping behavior resulting from abusive supervision.

First, the current study provides a novel theoretical underpinning of the COR theory to explain the abusive supervision–helping behavior association, particularly in the hospitality context. Second, this study contributes to the boundary effects of abusive supervision on helping behavior by investigating the moderating roles of individual differences (i.e. proactive personality and RMA).

Research examining the effect of helping on outcomes related to helpers has gained some mixed results. The purpose of this paper is to reconcile such inconsistency by understanding the multi-dimensional nature of helping behavior.

The authors first develop a helping behavior scale that differentiates between the proactive and reactive form of helping. Furthermore, the authors also examined whether these two forms of helping are differently related to employees’ well-being. Data were collected from 448 employees and their immediate supervisors working in different organizations in the South Jiangsu province, in which the authors examined the main relationship and also explored the mediating effect of meaningfulness.

Results provided corroborating evidence that helping behavior was a multi-dimensional construct, consisting of proactive and reactive dimensions. Furthermore, the authors are also able to support discriminatory validity between these two dimensions by showing that they are differently related to employees’ well-being.

This paper contributes to management practice by specifying the benefits and detriments of different kinds of helping behaviors.

The findings of this study do not only provide ideas to explain contradictions in the effect of helping behaviors on helpers themselves, but also deepens scholars’ knowledge and understanding toward helping behavior.

Drawing on the work-home resources (W-HR) model, this study examines the ripple effects of proactive helping behavior at work on helpers' family relationship quality at home via positive affect and work-family interpersonal capitalization, and tests the moderating role of independent self-construal in the resource spillover process.

Using an experience sampling methodology, data was collected (N = 382) from multiple sources in five consecutive working days. Multilevel path modeling was used to examine the hypotheses.

The results indicated that proactive helping other at work can generate affective resources for helpers, which in turn triggers them to share daily work experiences and feelings with their spouses at home, and strengthens their family relationship quality. Moreover, the effects of helping others on family relationship quality were more pronounced for helpers with relatively high independent self-construal.

The findings explore the enrichment effects and unintended family-related distal outcomes of helping behaviors for helpers, and contributes to the W-HR model by uncovering an affective-behavioral ripple mechanism linking work and family. Finally, our results identify the boundary condition, that proactive helping behaviors are more rewarding for helpers with higher independent self-construal.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a new classification of helping behavior using the recipient’s solicitation and the helper’s proactiveness. Additionally, the authors explore helping motives for each of the forms of helping behavior that the authors identify.

The authors examined relevant research and performed a theoretical analysis.

The authors classified helping behavior into three distinct forms, including unsolicited proactive helping behavior, unsolicited reactive helping behavior, and solicited reactive helping behavior. Additionally, the authors claimed that unsolicited proactive helping behavior is an outcome of personality and dispositions, that unsolicited reactive helping behavior is a process of social and instrumental exchange, and that solicited reactive helping behavior is a product of functional motives.

First, from the perspective of organizational justice, the authors recommend managers to take the form of helping behavior exhibited into consideration when evaluating employees’ helping behavior because certain forms of helping behavior require greater degrees of cooperation and sacrifices from the helper than other forms. Second, because employees who engage in high levels of unsolicited proactive helping behavior are likely to experience interrole conflict, the authors suggest that managers provide counseling and managerial support that help cope with emotional and psychological strain created by excessive role demands. Finally, findings of this study imply that managers need to create a workplace culture where employees can feel comfortable to solicit help when necessary.

This is the first study that classifies helping behavior and helping motives using both of the helper’s and recipient’s perspectives.

Drawing on the extended self-theory, this study explores the dynamic process through which reactive helping could influence proactive helping through self-investment and investigate the moderating role of task difficulty in affecting this process.

This study, with a sample of 582 diary surveys from 66 employees, used experience sampling techniques to analyze the proposed hypotheses.

The results revealed that self-investment could mediate the positive relationship between reactive helping and proactive helping. Additionally, task difficulty acts as an essential role in facilitating the process raised by reactive helping. Further examination revealed that the moderated mediation effect in this model was also significant.

Managers should encourage help-seeking and positive responses to requests, especially in groups with difficult tasks, which could build helpers’ extended self at work and increase their proactive helping behaviors at the following episode.

As verifying the dynamic trajectory of reactive helping, this study enriches our understanding of whether and how helping behaviors are likely to grow over time. Besides, it complements current pieces of literature by exploring the potential positive implication of reactive helping with a helper-centric perspective.

The study was intended to find out if there was a difference between reactive and proactive helping in terms of developing wellbeing.

There were two studies. Study One involved doing interviews with employees in Chinese businesses, then creating a scale that was used to test a series of hypotheses in Study Two.

The results showed that proactive helping behavior has a significantly positive effect on employees’ well-being. But the coefficients of reactive helping behavior toward work well-being were not significant. Finally, the results showed the significant effect of meaningfulness as a mediator for employees’ wellbeing for both proactive and reactive helping.

The authors felt their research had practical implications for both employees and managers. Specifically, their insights into the nature of different forms of helping could help them manage their careers. Many previous research papers have shown that those who help others are more likely to have successful careers. But the paper suggests that employees who help proactively may gain much more benefit than those helping reactively.

The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between supervisor and coworkers’ workplace incivility and newcomer proactive behaviors. Drawing on conservation of resources (COR) theory, the authors examined resource depletion as a mediator and newcomer proactive personality, as well as their current organizational tenure as moderators of the relationship between workplace incivility toward newcomers and their proactive behaviors.

A time-lagged research design was used to test hypotheses with data covering 322 newcomers and their immediate supervisors in two subsidiaries of a large food processing company in China. Regression analysis using the PROCESS macro in SPSS is used to test the hypotheses.

The results show that workplace incivility toward newcomers is negatively related to their proactive behaviors. This relationship is mediated by resource depletion. Furthermore, newcomers’ proactive personality moderates the relationship between workplace incivility and resource depletion. Moreover, both the direct effect of workplace incivility on resource depletion and its indirect effect on newcomer proactive behaviors are moderated by the combination of newcomer proactive personality and their current organizational tenure.

Drawing on COR theory, a theoretical framework is constructed that specifies the process through which workplace incivility affects proactive behaviors to expand collective understandings of workplace incivility in the newcomer context. Furthermore, the boundary conditions of the underlying process are investigated, which further enhances the contribution of this paper to the extant literature on workplace incivility.

There is a growing trend among online merchants to conduct help-request marketing campaigns (HMCs), which refers to a kind of marketing campaign that leverages participants' help-request to encourage the subsequent engagement of participants' online friends. The paper aims to investigate how individuals respond to online HMCs in social networking groups (SNGs). Integrating the norm activation model and regulatory focus theory, this paper examines the mediation effects of the two facets of responsibility perception, i.e. perceived causality and perceived answerability.

A field experiment was conducted by organizing a real HMC on WeChat. To manipulate request individuation, experimental confederates were engaged to serve as requesters in the HMC. The actual responses provided by the recipients (subjects) were captured via the HMC pages. The multiple-group analysis was used for data analysis.

Empirical results reveal that request individuation strengthens the effect of relationship closeness on perceived causality but reverses the effect of relationship closeness on perceived answerability from being positive to negative. Except for the negligible impact of perceived answerability on inaction, both perceived causality and perceived answerability affect recipients' reactions to HMCs as expected.

First, social media platforms should promote other-oriented prosocial values when designing features or launching campaigns. Second, the designers of HMCs should introduce a “tagging” feature in HMCs and provide additional bonuses for requesters who perform tagging. Third, HMC requesters should prudently select tagging targets when making a request.

First, this paper contributes to the literature on social media engagement by identifying responsibility as an other-oriented motivation for individuals' social media engagement. Second, this paper also extends our understanding of responsibility by dividing it into perceived causality and answerability as well as measuring them with self-developed instruments. Third, this study contributes to the research on WOM by demonstrating that individuals' response behaviors toward help-requests embedded in HMCs can take the form of proactive helping, reactive helping or inaction.

This paper aims to develop a theoretical model describing how newcomers’ team-member exchange (TMX), team identification and workplace loneliness may be affected by existing team members’ rejections to the newcomers’ interpersonal helping behavior (IHB).

A theoretical analysis was performed.

The authors propose the following propositions. First, higher levels of IHB rejections result in lower levels of TMX and team identification and higher levels of workplace loneliness experienced by a newcomer. Second, a newcomer’s TMX mediates the relationship between IHB rejections and the newcomer’s workplace loneliness and team identification. Finally, a newcomer’s team identification mediates the relationship between IHB rejections and the newcomer’s workplace loneliness.

This theoretical study provides the following managerial implications. First, managers need to proactively implement tactics that help satisfy newcomers’ affiliation needs through the development of strong formal work relationships with existing members. Second, managers are advised to consider the use of tactics that facilitate the development of effective informal relationships between newcomers and existing team members upon the entry of the team. Third, managers need to implement informal social events where newcomers have the opportunity to exhibit their helpful behaviors. Fourth, managers should periodically inform existing team members of some common anxieties and fears of newcomers that are triggered by entering new interpersonal environments. Finally, managers may utilize mentoring programs that help facilitate newcomers’ accurate interpretations of phenomena occurring around them.

This theoretical study is the first study that examines consequences of IHB rejections in organizations.

The literature on help-seeking at work has experienced significant growth in the past decades. However, our knowledge about this research domain remains fragmented and lacks sufficient theoretical integration. Therefore, this paper aims to comprehensively integrate the extant literature on help-seeking behavior at work and propose an overarching, organized framework to propel this field forward.

A state-of-the-art review and theoretical development on help-seeking at work are conducted.

First, the authors provide the conceptual clarity of its definitions, key characteristics, types and measurement techniques. Second, the authors develop a fine-grained and integrative process-based framework consisting of antecedents, proximal psychological mechanisms, subsequent influencing processes and distal outcomes to advance our understanding of seeking help in the workplace. Third, the authors offer a detailed agenda for future research to target opportunities within the field.

The current study is comprehensive in surveying the full body of knowledge on help-seeking at work. It uniquely provides a coherent overarching framework that organizes prior findings and channels future research. Additionally, this review paints a complete picture of what has been done and what needs to be done in the field. More research can be spurred based on our conceptual framework.