Abstract
Employees who are good organizational citizens help others to be more effective at work. However, the positive impact of helping is at odds with findings across studies suggesting those who help often experience worse performance. This study builds theory and helps to resolve the helping and performance dilemma by exploring the conditions under which individual job performance is enhanced for team members who frequently help others. A cross-level and time-lagged design was used to collect data from 227 consultants nested in 60 project teams. An objective job performance indicator was used. We find that team reflexivity, which refers to team members’ collective reflection and communication regarding team objectives and tasks, is a key moderator in the helping and job performance relationship. Our findings indicate that the helping-performance relationship is positive when team reflexivity is high and negative with low reflexivity. This study offers several implications for future theory and practice.
1. Introduction
Helping co-workers resolve work problems is important in organizations such as professional service firms where most work is done by project teams delivering customized client services (Gardner, Gino, & Staats, 2012; Podsakoff, Whiting, Podsakoff, & Blume, 2009). Helping others has been regarded as an act of kindness that can lead to high performance evaluations from team leaders (Podsakoff et al., 2009). Extensive research has investigated the consequences of helping behaviors at work (Burke, Weir, & Duncan, 1976; Grant, 2013; Lanaj, Johnson, & Wang, 2016; Organ, Podsakoff, & MacKenzie, 2006; Organ, 1997; Van Dyne & LePine, 1998). This research finds that helping is differentially related to various kinds of performance including subjective job performance (Podsakoff et al., 2009), organizational absorptive capacity (Hart, Gilstrap, & Bolino, 2016), and innovation (Gerke, Dickson, Desbordes, & Gates, 2017).
8. Conclusion
Organizations frequently organize work in teams and expect members to help each other in order to contribute to overall effectiveness. Yet, helping others can come at a cost to individuals when their own job performance suffers. This study sheds light on the conditions under which helping behavior can enhance performance, showing how team reflexivity contributes to understanding of the contributions helpers can make to their teams. We hope that our findings will help to encourage more widespread helping in organizations.
