Unsolicited Help and Face Threat: When and How Coworker Help Undermines Reciprocity

Abstract: Helping behavior among employees is essential to organizational effectiveness, yet recent research finds that helping, particularly when unsolicited, can sometimes trigger backlashes. This study examines whether unsolicited help undermines reciprocity between coworkers due to its impact on recipients’ ‘face’, i.e., their desired social image. Namely, we investigate whether unsolicited help is perceived as showing low regard for and a threat to recipients' positive face, dampening their desire to be helpful in return. We further examine whether this effect depends on the presence of masculine cultural norms within the organization’s culture. A vignette experiment showed that unsolicited (vs. solicited) help indeed undermines recipients’ willingness to reciprocate due to its perceived negative impact on recipients’ face. However, the presence of masculine (vs. feminine) cultural norms did not moderate this relationship as predicted. Together, these findings illuminate unsolicited help’s detrimental impact on help recipients’ desired social image and coworker helping dynamics.

Keywords: Helping dynamics; Face threat; Organizational Culture