The effects of workplace resources on employees' decision to provide instrumental help to their colleagues

PurposeThe purpose of this research is to establish a hierarchy among different workplace resources in terms of their relative contribution to employee decision to provide instrumental help.Design/methodology/approachA within-person survey experiment was conducted and the data were analyzed using multilevel regression. The data are based on a random sample of 94 employees working in medium-sized companies in Crete, Greece.FindingsResults suggest that for employees’ decision to provide instrumental help, some job resources are perceived as more important than others. Workplace resources that are closer to employees (i.e. coworkers’ social support and manager–subordinate relationship) are perceived as more important compared to leadership style and the manager use of humor.Practical implicationsFindings suggest that organizations can successfully improve instrumental helping through interventions primarily aimed at building group-level resources.Originality/valueThe study highlights the importance of workplace resources for employees’ decision to provide instrumental help. However not all job resources are perceived as equally important. Theoretically, the study extends influential resource-based theories.