Relationally Charged: How and When Workplace Friendship Facilitates Employee Interpersonal Citizenship

Abstract

Having friends in the workplace not only provides an employee joy and meaning, but also facilitates one's positive behavior. In this study, we argue that workplace friendship has positive influence on an employee's interpersonal citizenship behavior. Drawing upon conservation of resources theory, the present study explores how and when workplace friendship fosters interpersonal citizenship. Using a time-lagged, multisource data of 620 employees from 83 workgroups, we found that workplace friendship increases an employee's relational energy, which subsequently, leads to greater interpersonal citizenship. Moreover, we discovered relational-interdependent self-construal as an important moderating influence that affects the saliency of this relationship. Specifically, for employee with a relational-interdependent self-construal, workplace friendship has a stronger positive influence on one's relational energy and hence interpersonal citizenship. Contributions to theory and practice are also discussed.

Job Insecurity and Employees’ Extra-Role Behavior: Moderated Mediation Model of Negative Emotion and Workplace Friendship

“…The results verify that extra-role behavior is the result of interaction between situational factors and individual factors. Previous literature mainly studied workplace friendship as a pre-dependent variable or outcome variable (Potgieter et al, 2018;Xiao et al, 2020), and seldom analyzed the role of workplace friendship from the perspective of boundary conditions. In this study, the moderating role of workplace friendship between job insecurity and negative emotion was explored in the workplace context, which expanded the research perspective of workplace friendship.…”

“…One-third of the time is devoted to working in life, due to the necessary contacts and connections in work, individuals inevitably establish various complex relationship networks with others. Workplace friendship is the manifestation of interpersonal relationships in the workplace (Mao et al, 2012;Xiao et al, 2020). Its establishment and maintenance can promote employees' mental health, provide employees with emotional support, and enhance employees' job satisfaction and workplace happiness (Song, 2005).…”

Workplace Friendship is a Blessing in the Exploration of Supervisor Behavioral Integrity, Affective Commitment, and Employee Proactive Behavior – An Empirical Research from Service Industries of Pakistan

“…As a result, it provides emotional support to employees to effectively achieve institutional participation, creates a supportive environment, and improves employees’ job satisfaction. 55 The main structure of Bowlby’s 18 attachment theory is the system of affection, which motivates people to perform better under the support of others. Hence a better and more profound connection will lead to a high relationship between supervisor behavioral integrity and proactive employee behavior.…”

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“…Results indicate that there is a positive and significant relationship between employee optimism and employee altruism; employee optimism and interpersonal adaptability; interpersonal adaptability and employee altruism; employee optimism, interpersonal adaptability and employee altruism; and that interpersonal adaptability mediates in the relationship between employee optimism and employee altruism. This finding is supported by the works of Xiao et al (2020) who argue that workplace friendship is the manifestation of interpersonal relationships in the workplace, which in turn, raise the emotions that workers have and the need to help each other. As applied to the context, these relationships imply the following.…”

“…Empirically, while there is scanty literature to attest to a relationship between employee optimism, status competitiveness interpersonal adaptability and employee altruism, somehow, the works of Xiao et al (2020) fragmentally suggest so. This is because, they argue that workplace friendship is the manifestation of interpersonal relationships in the workplace.…”