Employee cooperative behavior in organizations: a vignette experiment on the relationship between training and helping intentions

Abstract

The mutual‐investment model predicts a positive relation between investments in training and employees’ willingness to behave cooperatively. In this paper, we argue that the extent to which employees increase their cooperative behavior after receiving training depends on the type of training provided, the skillfulness of the employee and the cohesiveness of the team. Focusing on intentions to help coworkers as an indicator for cooperative behavior, we conducted a vignette experiment among 2388 employees working in 127 organizations from four European countries. Multilevel analyses show that training increases employees’ intentions to help coworkers. Training promotes helping intentions the most when organizations provide general instead of firm‐specific training and when given to employees with limited skills. Whereas employees in cohesive teams indicate higher intentions to help coworkers than employees in non‐cohesive teams, training promotes helping intentions equally in both types of teams.

Leadership training and organizational learning climate: Measuring influences based on a field experiment in education

“…However, attention to leaders’ professional development is rather limited in education (Hallinger in Leithwood, 2019). Besides, a thorough understanding of how leadership development can increase organizational performance and supporting empirical evidence are scarce (Fernandez et al, 2010; Oberfield, 2012; Palo & Padhi, 2003; van Gerwen et al, 2018; Van Wart, 2003).…”

Joint Efforts: Can We Succeed? Stimulating Organizational Citizenship Behaviors Through a Psychosocial Safety Climate

“…OCBs that benefit the organization manifest mainly as civic virtue or responsible participation in organizational life (P. M. Podsakoff & MacKenzie, 1997). Those that benefit one's colleagues manifest mainly as helping behaviors (Van Dyne & LePine, 1998). However, regardless of whether OCBs manifest as civic virtue or helping behaviors, they consume employees' resources and energy (Bolino et al, 2015).…”

“…The findings of this study show that unlike organizational helping behaviors that use social exchange, helping behaviors toward coworkers are influenced by employee trait gratitude. Coworkers are key components of an organization and employees assisting their colleagues can increase the vitality of the organization and employees to deal with external challenges (van Gerwen et al, 2018). Therefore, in the face of emergencies, organizations should pay attention to the important role of employee traits.…”

Qualitative Vignettes Drawing on Real Cases as Method in Organizational Research

“…Most studies using vignettes start from fictional situations to conduct experiments (Aguinis & Bradley, 2014) and/or to work with quantitative data in the fields of health and psychology (Bachmann, et al, 2008;Evans et al, 2015;Wilson & While, 1998). Van Gerwen et al (2018). Good and Hyman (2020) conducted experiments by observing hypotheses and creating alternatives to quantitative research, based on scale measurements.…”

“…Van Gerwen et al. (2018). Good and Hyman (2020) conducted experiments by observing hypotheses and creating alternatives to quantitative research, based on scale measurements.…”