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Does a Help Giver Seek the Help from Others? The Consistency and Licensing Mechanisms and the Role of Leader Respect

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Abstract

This study adopts an intrapersonal perspective to explore how and when employees shift roles from help giver to help seeker by investigating the relationship between their help-giving and following help-seeking behavior. Based on self-regulation theory, we hypothesize two contradictory psychological processes (i.e., consistency vs. licensing) via which employees determine whether to seek help after giving help. Importantly, we differentiate autonomous help-seeking from dependent help-seeking and propose stronger effects of help-giving on dependent help-seeking. Further, we identify leader respect as a moderator to solve the opposite effects of employees’ help-giving on their subsequent help-seeking indicated by the two contradictory mechanisms. Results of two field studies consistently showed that the negative (positive) relationship between help-giving and dependent help-seeking was serially mediated by personal reputation and reputation maintenance concerns (perceived increase of moral credits and help-seeking justification). Results regarding autonomous help-seeking were inconsistent and help-giving only positively affected autonomous help-seeking via perceived increase of moral credits and help-seeking justification in Study 2. Leader respect weakened the positive (in Study 1) but strengthened the negative relationship (in Study 1 and 2). We discuss theoretical implications for helping literature, self-regulation theory, and moral behavior research.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the editor, Frank Belschak, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful and developmental feedback throughout the review process. We also thank Ye Li for his helpful comments on our previous drafts.

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Key Program) (No. 72132009); the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 72002098).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Economics and Management, Wuhan University, No. 299 Bayi Road, Wuchang District, Wuhan, 430072, Hubei, China

    Qiqi Wang

  2. School of Business, Nanjing University, No. 22 Hankou Road, Gulou District, Nanjing, 210093, Jiangsu, China

    Xueling Fan

  3. School of Business, Renmin University of China, No. 59 Zhongguancun Street, Haidian, Bejing, 100872, China

    Jun Liu

  4. School of Public Affairs, University of Science and Technology of China, No. 96 Jinzhai Road, Baize District, Hefei, 230026, Anhui, China

    Wenjing Cai

  5. Department of Management & Organisation, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Wenjing Cai

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Wang, Q., Fan, X., Liu, J. et al. Does a Help Giver Seek the Help from Others? The Consistency and Licensing Mechanisms and the Role of Leader Respect. J Bus Ethics 184, 605–626 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-022-05163-5

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