Asking how to fish vs. asking for fish: Antecedents and outcomes of different types of help‐seeking at work

Abstract

In the modern workplace, it is virtually impossible to succeed without seeking any help from others. Despite its widely recognized importance, several areas surrounding help‐seeking have not yet been clearly understood in the organization literature. Specifically, it is unclear whether seeking help always benefits employees in need, and how various work demands drive help‐seeking behavior in different ways. In this research, we drew from the dual‐type view of help‐seeking (i.e., autonomous and dependent help‐seeking) and the challenge‐hindrance stressors framework to elaborate how seeking help of different types influences employees’ work competence‐related outcomes in various directions, what work demands drive employees to seek different types of help, and when encountering work demands is particularly influential on their help‐seeking tendencies. Evidence from a field study (Study 1) showed that while challenge stressors increased employees’ autonomous help‐seeking, hindrance stressors increased dependent help‐seeking especially for employees with greater workflow centrality. Moreover, autonomous help‐seeking benefited help‐seekers’ job performance ratings through increased self‐perceived competence, whereas dependent help‐seeking hurt their job performance via decreased perceived competence by coworkers. To cross‐validate our findings, we then examined and replicated our core findings with three experimental vignette studies (Studies 2, 3a, and 3b). Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

When, why, and for whom is receiving help actually helpful? Differential effects of receiving empowering and nonempowering help based on recipient gender.

“…At the intersection of helping recipients and helping actors lies the reason for why help occurred in the first place—was help solicited or not. Research shows employees may ask for specific types of help from their coworkers (Geller & Bamberger, 2012), and a recent article showed that this request may be driven by the amount of challenge or hindrance stressors employees experience (Liu et al, 2021). Yet, help can, of course, also be provided without a request (Bolino & Grant, 2016; Spitzmuller & Van Dyne, 2013).…”

The emergence of team entrepreneurial passion from team helping: An affective events theory perspective

“…Based on resource allocation theory, Fu et al (2021) found that help-giving is negatively related to objective individual job performance. Lim et al (2020) and Liu et al (2021) pointed out that help-seeking in relation to problems can also bring about a lack of confidence in the ability of the team member and affect performance. Our study introduced and tested the idea of interaction between team help-seeking and -giving, rather than their separate discussion and consideration.…”

“…Help-seeking refers to the solicitation of others' emotional or instrumental assistance to manage either work-related or personal problems that have a bearing on performance (Lim et al, 2020), which occurs mainly in problem situations. The antecedent variables of help-seeking are perceived challenge pressure (Zhao et al, 2021), learning climate (De Vos et al, 2021), stressors (Liu et al, 2021), task interdependence, and so on. In new venture teams, team help-seeking is aimed at jointly solving entrepreneurial problems and dealing with the uncertainty of the start-up process.…”

Linking customer mistreatment to employees’ helping behaviour: a self-efficacy perspective of autonomous and dependent helping

“…Service workers may seek, receive and return help to coworkers, which reflects the fundamental ideal of social exchange (e.g. Hofmann et al , 2009; Liu et al , 2021). When mistreated by customers, employees are likely to feel that such customers provided negative feedback, which contradicts their task goal.…”