School of Management, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, Heilongjiang, China.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2020 Jul 13;17(14):5022. doi: 10.3390/ijerph17145022.
Extant research focuses on the antecedents of employee helping behavior, but the role of social technologies in enhancing employee helping behavior remains understudied. The purpose of our research is to investigate the relationship between communication visibility and employee helping behavior. Drawing on both communication visibility theory and social cognitive theory, we propose that the association between communication visibility and helping behavior is mediated by employee psychological state assessed by a cognitive state variable: trust in coworkers. Further, we also propose that proactive personality moderates the positive effect of trust in coworkers on employee helping behavior. We examined our hypothesized relationships using 149 employees collected in a field experiment in China. As hypothesized, we find that trust in coworkers mediates the relationship between communication visibility and helping behavior. Moreover, proactive personality strengthens the effectiveness of communication visibility. We discuss the implications of our findings for future research and practice.
现有研究主要关注员工帮助行为的前因，但社会技术在增强员工帮助行为方面的作用仍有待研究。我们的研究旨在探讨沟通可见性与员工帮助行为之间的关系。本研究以沟通可见性理论和社会认知理论为基础，提出沟通可见性与帮助行为之间的关联受到员工心理状态的中介作用，即员工对同事的信任，这一心理状态是通过认知状态变量来评估的。此外，我们还提出，主动人格特质会调节员工对同事的信任对员工帮助行为的积极影响。我们在中国的一项实地实验中收集了 149 名员工的数据，检验了我们的假设关系。正如假设的那样，我们发现，员工对同事的信任在沟通可见性与帮助行为之间起到了中介作用。此外，主动人格特质增强了沟通可见性的效果。我们讨论了研究结果对未来研究和实践的意义。
