TY - JOUR
T1 - The Relational Antecedents of Interpersonal Helping
T2 - ‘Quantity’, ‘Quality’ or Both?
AU - Stea, Diego
AU - Pedersen, Torben
AU - Foss, Nicolai Juul
PY - 2017/4
Y1 - 2017/4
N2 - Having a large network of colleagues means having several opportunities to help those colleagues, as well as a higher chance of receiving requests for help from them. Employees with large networks are therefore expected to help more in the workplace than those with small networks. However, large networks are also associated with cognitive costs, which may reduce the focal employee's ability to both recognize the need for help and engage in helping behaviours. For these reasons, the authors assert an inverted U-shaped relation between the size of an ego's social network and engagement in helping behaviour. However, high-quality relationships imply higher mutual understanding between the actors, and hence lower cognitive costs. In turn, the position (and threshold) of the curve between network size and interpersonal helping should be influenced by the quality of the relationship between the provider and the beneficiaries of help. Analysis of employee-level, single-firm data supports these ideas, providing preliminary evidence that quality of relationship compensates for the difficulties that may arise from having large social networks.
AB - Having a large network of colleagues means having several opportunities to help those colleagues, as well as a higher chance of receiving requests for help from them. Employees with large networks are therefore expected to help more in the workplace than those with small networks. However, large networks are also associated with cognitive costs, which may reduce the focal employee's ability to both recognize the need for help and engage in helping behaviours. For these reasons, the authors assert an inverted U-shaped relation between the size of an ego's social network and engagement in helping behaviour. However, high-quality relationships imply higher mutual understanding between the actors, and hence lower cognitive costs. In turn, the position (and threshold) of the curve between network size and interpersonal helping should be influenced by the quality of the relationship between the provider and the beneficiaries of help. Analysis of employee-level, single-firm data supports these ideas, providing preliminary evidence that quality of relationship compensates for the difficulties that may arise from having large social networks.
U2 - 10.1111/1467-8551.12176
DO - 10.1111/1467-8551.12176
M3 - Journal article
SN - 1045-3172
VL - 28
SP - 197
EP - 212
JO - British Journal of Management
JF - British Journal of Management
IS - 2
ER -