How Can Supervisors Improve Employees’ Intention to Help Colleagues? Perspectives From Social Exchange and Appraisal-Coping Theories

Abstract

Previous studies have not sufficiently investigated how supervisors can improve employees’ intention to help their colleagues. Therefore, research regarding this issue is required. Social exchange theory and the appraisal-coping model were adopted herein to hypothesize that supervisor-employee guanxi—informal interpersonal connections that involve the exchange of favors—and a supervisor’s negative mood are associated with employees’ intention to help their colleagues. The findings indicate that employees’ intention to help their colleagues is negatively related to their supervisor’s negative mood but positively related to employee agreeableness. Furthermore, for employees who have weak guanxi with their supervisors, the negative mood of the supervisors is negatively related to the employees’ intention to help colleagues, but this relationship does not apply to employees who have strong guanxi with their supervisors. The findings suggest that supervisors should manage their negative moods and strengthen their guanxi with employees to improve their employees’ intention to help colleagues.

Keywords

guanxi supervisor employee negative mood intention to help colleagues

Introduction

Health care services are essential in maintaining and promoting a population’s health. However, health care personnel are required to efficiently deliver health care of high quality. The tension between quality and efficiency can be resolved by proper coordination (Gittell et al. 2000). Coordination involves efficient and effective communication, problem solving, sharing goals, sharing knowledge, and mutual respect (Gittell et al. 2000). It can also refer to interactions among group members that enable them to avoid slippage (Sy, Côté, and Saavedra 2005). Helping colleagues can aid in reducing slippage and can therefore be an element of coordination. However, the helping element of coordination has been rarely studied in the health services sector. Research into this helping element can help improve coordination (and thus care quality). In particular, research must be conducted to investigate employees’ intention to help colleagues in the health services sector.

Health service personnel depend on each other to provide quality care, and thus, collaboration among personnel is critical. Therefore, research on ways in which supervisors can improve employees’ intention to help colleagues can contribute to health service outcomes.

Two theories can help elucidate the means by which supervisors can improve employees’ intention to help colleagues. First, social exchange theory (Blau 1964) posits that individuals help each other with the expectation of future benefits, and thus, formulates an exchange. In consumer contexts, customers exchange their money for goods and services, and their transactions can be explained using the theory. In business contexts, employees can be internal customers who exchange their time for a salary, and thus, their behavior also can be explained by the theory. The exchange of favors is the basis of guanxi (interpersonal informal connections that involve the exchange of favors), which is influential in Chinese organizations (Chen and Tjosvold 2006). Hence, the concepts of social exchange and guanxi apply to business contexts. This study thus considers guanxi.

Second, the appraisal-coping model (Lazarus and Folkman 1984) claims that when individuals encounter an external force, they are likely to evaluate it in terms of their capabilities and expected outcomes and rationally respond in a manner that is likely to be good for them. The negative mood of a supervisor is one such external force that strongly affects employees’ behaviors (Goleman, Boyatzis, and McKee 2001). Negative mood is associated with low tolerance for shortcomings (Blackwell, Miniard, and Engel 2001). Accordingly, negative supervisor moods may be regarded as a low tolerance for shortcomings, inducing employees to refrain from helping but to concentrate on their own jobs to prevent being negatively evaluated by their supervisors. The influence of negative supervisor mood on employees’ intention to help also can be explained by the misattribution of moods. Individuals (including supervisors) tend to attribute their moods to the object that is their current attention focus (Schwarz and Clore 1996). When the object of attention is unrelated to the actual cause of the mood, such an attribution is misattribution. When employees perceive negative supervisor moods, they are aware of the risks of misattribution. Employees are thus motivated to avoid being the focus. Employees’ extensive responses to negative supervisor mood warrant the consideration of negative supervisor mood herein.

In addition to being affected by guanxi and negative supervisor mood, employees’ intention to help colleagues is probably a function of their agreeableness, a trait that is defined as an individual’s tendency to be kind, cooperative, and sympathetic (McCrae and Costa 1987). This trait has a vital component—empathy—that motivates individuals to help others (Litvack-Miller, McDougall, and Romney 1997). Therefore, employees’ agreeableness probably strengthens their intention to help colleagues and also is thus considered in the present study.

However, the relevant literature has not elucidated the effects of supervisor-employee guanxi, supervisor negative mood, and employee agreeableness on employees’ intention to help colleagues, leaving a research gap. Research to fill this gap may contribute to the services literature by providing novel approaches for improving employees’ intention to help colleagues. Hence, this study examines how supervisor-employee guanxi, the negative mood of supervisors, and employee agreeableness have an impact on employees’ intention to help colleagues.

This study is novel in several respects. First, Gittell (2001) observed that supervisors with small spans of control (few subordinates who worked with) provided intensive coaching and feedback to their subordinates, resulting in high levels of relational coordination among their subordinates. The findings of Gittell (2001) help elucidate the effect of supervision on subordinates’ coordination. The present study also investigated the role of supervision on subordinates’ coordination, but the present study is unique in the literature in identifying negative supervisor mood as a determinant of subordinates’ intention to help colleagues.

Second, Weinstein and Ryan (2010) found that autonomous helping behavior satisfies the needs of both the helper and the recipient. The present study investigates how to evoke autonomous helping behavior in the workplace. It is novel in studying correlates of intention to (autonomously) help colleagues in the health services sector and in including the influence of a third party (supervisors, who are neither helpers nor receivers).

Numerous studies (such as those of Huang et al. 2010; Liu and Batt 2010; Pan, Sun, and Chow 2011) have investigated how supervisors can affect subordinate performance. The present study follows the pertinent literature in discussing the influence of supervisors, but it is novel in elucidating how supervisors can affect subordinates’ intention to help colleagues.

Theoretical Background

Employees’ Intention to Help Colleagues

Helping behavior has been defined as an act that can increase the welfare of its beneficiaries (Bendapudi, Singh, and Bendapudi 1996). Helping behavior among employees has numerous antecedents. It can be induced by increased job satisfaction, perceived fairness, a leader’s supportiveness, organizational commitment (Organ and Ryan 1995), physical proximity, group membership, prior relationships, demographic similarity (Constant, Sproull, and Kiesler 1996), and perception of membership within a group (Flippen et al. 1996). Moreover, highly altruistic individuals may voluntarily exhibit helping behavior (Dovidio 1984). However, previous studies have not sufficiently addressed how supervisors affect the helping behaviors of employees. One exception is the study of Sy, Côté, and Saavedra (2005), which posits that the negative mood of a supervisor reduces subordinates’ intention to help colleagues. The present study is consistent with Sy, Côté, and Saavedra in identifying supervisor negative mood as a predictor of helping behavior. However, the present study applies the experimental findings of Sy, Côté, and Saavedra to the important health services sector.

Helping behavior among employees is a form of collaboration, which supports knowledge distribution within organizations, promotes organizational collegiality, and expands the knowledge of helpers and receivers (Pressley et al. 1992). In health services, employee-employee collaboration helps to increase job satisfaction (Cortese, Colombo, and Ghislieri 2010), to ensure that the demands of the job are met, and to maintain the quality of health services (Freeney and Tiernan 2009). Hence, the intention to help colleagues is important in the health service context and should be studied in that context.

Supervisor-Employee Guanxi

In the workplace, individuals may help each other with the expectation of having future reciprocation. Such expectations are built on earlier experiences and a culture that formulates the rules and norms of exchange (Cropanzano and Mitchell 2005). The norms of exchange have been theoretically explained by social exchange theory, which posits that interpersonal interactions are resource-exchanging behaviors in which individuals are aware of what they contribute to a relationship and what they are likely to receive in return. In a relationship, receiving help, gifts, and time from one party implies obligation to return with equal or more help, gifts, and time (Emerson 1976). Accordingly, giving and receiving are interdependent and necessary for a culturally defined “high-quality” relationship (Cropanzano and Mitchell 2005).

The literature on guanxi (Chiao 1982; King 1991) posits that it exists among family, relatives, people born in the same place, neighborhoods, classmates, and colleagues and may be present in instructor-students relationships. The literature on guanxi (Chiao 1982; King 1991) also argues that the social exchange theory emphasizes the balance between give-and-take (Homans 1958), whereas guanxi motivates individuals to reciprocate with double the received benefit (Hackley and Dong 2001) because of an implied obligation. When one party in the guanxi relationship is in need, the counterpart feels an obligation to help, and a failure to help is regarded as an ethical violation (Vanhonacker 2004).

The literature on guanxi has not sufficiently addressed its importance and effects in a health service context, motivating the present study to examine the effect of guanxi in health service teams. Although guanxi can exist among any pair or group of people, this study specifically concerns that between supervisors and employees in health service teams.

Negative Mood of Supervisors

Mood is a moderate affective state that may not be directly related to certain activities or events. Mood is crucial because it affects individuals’ evaluations of their own experience (Cameron et al. 2003). Mood can vary, but once present, it can last for a long time, from many hours to many days. Unlike mood, emotion is strong affect that is directly related to certain activities or events (Bagozzi, Gopinath, and Nyer 1999). Because moods evoke extensive responses, this study investigates the effect of mood rather than emotion.

Moods can be positive, as when someone is excited, passionate, and enthusiastic. Positive moods make individuals feel energetic and active in their jobs. However, negative moods, in which someone may be sorrowful, hostile, or neurotic, can make individuals anxious and lacking in energy and motivation, frequently triggering interpersonal conflict (Bolger et al. 1989). Negative mood also can reduce the quality of social interactions between customers and employees (Bitner 1992), revealing its importance.

Supervisors’ moods are influential in the workplace. Specifically, supervisors’ moods influence subordinates’ feelings, thoughts, and responses (Goleman, Boyatzis, and McKee 2001), affecting their effort (Sy, Côté, and Saavedra 2005). Sy, Côté, and Saavedra (2005) experimentally determined that negative moods of supervisors worsen subordinates’ coordination and the group atmosphere and evoke negative moods in subordinates. Therefore, negative moods of supervisors are critically important in practice, warranting further research.

In a study of nine hospitals, Gittell (2008) found that environmental pressures are work stressors that improve employees’ coordination. According to Gittell (2008), because environmental pressure is external and influences all employees in a hospital, it is likely to increase employees’ intention to work together as a coping mechanism. However, in the present study, a negative supervisor mood is associated with his or her evaluation of individual employees. Hence, negative supervisor mood may change employees’ focus toward maintaining their evaluations, reducing collaboration (including employees’ intention to help their colleagues).

The workforce in the health services sector work under serious time pressure (Manderino et al. 1994), which has an adverse impact on service outcomes (Teng et al. 2010a; Teng, Hsiao, and Chou 2010). Additionally, such pressure may evoke negative moods (Lazarus 1991). Thus, supervisors under severe pressure are likely to experience such negative moods. The negative mood of supervisors may evoke a negative mood in subordinates (Sy, Côté, and Saavedra 2005). Negative moods further reduce intention to comply with instructions, to cooperate, and to help colleagues (Avramova and Stapel 2008). This finding is applicable to health service personnel. Gevers et al. (2010) found that nurses under strong pressure collaborate with each other less effectively. Therefore, the negative mood of supervisors critically and detrimentally affects service employees’ intention to help colleagues.

Employee Agreeableness

Personality is a set of psychological patterns that have a broad impact on individual behavior (Zimbardo and Weber 1994). Personality stabilizes as individuals become adults (Hampson and Goldberg 2006). Among personality traits, agreeableness is a personality trait that is strongly related to helping others. Highly agreeable individuals are friendly, courteous, cooperative, kind, sympathetic (Teng, Huang, and Tsai 2007), and empathetic (McCrae and Costa 1987). Accordingly, agreeableness is a personality trait that is very relevant to interpersonal relationships (Graziano and Tobin 2002). Since kindness and cooperation are frequently used in defining agreeableness, agreeableness also can be defined as the tendency to be kind and cooperative.

Agreeableness affects individual behavior. For example, agreeableness motivates individuals to maintain good relationships with others (Graziano, Hair, and Finch 1997). However, the effect of employee agreeableness in the health services sector is not sufficiently understood, revealing the need for research on this topic.

Development of Hypotheses

Guanxi is the informal interpersonal connection that involves an exchange of favors (Luo 1997). Guanxi may thus represent the making of frequent private interactions. Frequent interactions build the basis of trust in a relationship that yields mutual benefit. According to social exchange theory (Blau 1964), employees may feel obligated to do something in return for help or benefits that have been received from their supervisors. Helping colleagues is one way to improve the performance of a work unit or reduce the burden of supervisors; therefore, supervisor-employee guanxi probably motivates employees to help their colleagues as a means of helping their supervisors in return for help previously given by those supervisors.

The guanxi theory regards benefits or help as storable, to be retrieved or reciprocated twice the extent given (Yang 1994). That is, guanxi is a long-term or future-oriented concept. Moreover, the expectation of mutual benefit implies that guanxi is associated with interdependence (Yang 1994). Hence, when employees have high levels of guanxi with their supervisors, they are likely actively to share the workload of those supervisors. When supervisors have to assist other employees, those employees who have high levels of guanxi with their supervisors are likely to help their colleagues. Such helping behavior can be regarded as associated with the mutual benefits or obligations that are embedded in guanxi. Accordingly, we hypothesize a positive link between supervisor-employee guanxi and employees’ intention to help colleagues.

Hypothesis 1: Supervisor-employee guanxi is positively related to employees’ intention to help colleagues.

The appraisal-coping model (Lazarus and Folkman 1984) posits that individuals who are under pressure initially evaluate the pressure, their own resources, and the context. They then choose whether to respond in particular ways to the pressure. Their responses aim to restore the absence of pressure or to lessen it (Herman-Stabl, Stemmler, and Petersen 1995). We argue that the negative mood of supervisors is a source of pressure in the workplace because negative mood can reduce supervisors’ tolerance for shortcomings (Blackwell, Miniard, and Engel 2001), and they may misattribute their bad mood to whomever they are currently attending to (Schwarz and Clore 1996). Therefore, the appraisal-coping model is adopted herein.

Coordination has been defined as “group member synergistic interactions that avoid slippage and wasted effort” (Sy, Côté, and Saavedra 2005, p. 297). Accordingly, coordination can help busy employees reduce the likelihood of a service failure that is caused by employees’ slippage. Applying the findings of Sy, Côté, and Saavedra (2005) to service contexts suggests that the negative mood of supervisors may degrade coordination and cooperation among employees by reducing their intention to help each other. Thus, the negative mood of supervisors was hypothesized herein to be negatively related to employees’ intention to help colleagues.

Mood (or emotion) is often revealed by facial expressions, voice, and actions, which affect the mood of others (Neumann and Strack 2000). The perception that supervisors are in a negative mood imposes a pressure on employees because supervisors have a legitimate power on their career. According to the appraisal-coping model of Lazarus (1991), employees are likely to interpret the negative mood of supervisors as dissatisfaction with progress with work. This inference reorients employees toward their own work progress, reducing their intention to help colleagues. Therefore, we hypothesize that supervisors’ negative mood is negatively related to employees’ intention to help colleagues.

Hypothesis 2: Negative mood of supervisors is negatively related to employees’ intention to help colleagues.

Empathy is essential to helping behavior. It refers to the ability of an individual to put themselves emotionally in the position of others and feel what others feel. Accordingly, empathy is probably associated with altruism, as stated by the empathy-altruism hypothesis (Batson et al. 1981). The empathy-altruism hypothesis is that individuals who feel what others feel tend to be altruistic and willing to help others improve their situations, triggering actual helping behavior. Moreover, highly empathetic individuals are more capable of adopting the perspectives of others and so are more likely to help them (Litvack-Miller, McDougall, and Romney 1997). Applying the empathy-altruism hypothesis here suggests that highly agreeable employees are likely to feel what others feel and likely to be empathetic with others, increasing an intention to help them. Hence, this study hypothesizes that employee agreeableness is positively related to employees’ intention to help colleagues.

Hypothesis 3: Employee agreeableness is positively related to employees’ intention to help colleagues.

Supervisors have legitimate power over the reward, punishment, and career development of employees and so can strongly influence them. When supervisors are in a negative mood, they may reveal their negative mood to employees by their facial expressions, gestures, and their body language. Because negative mood is associated with low tolerance for shortcomings (Blackwell, Miniard, and Engel 2001), negative supervisor mood imposes pressure on employees. The literature on the appraisal-coping model (Herman-Stabl, Stemmler, and Petersen 1995; Lazarus and Folkman 1984) posits that individuals will respond in particular ways to such pressure to lessen it. Employees who have weak guanxi with their supervisors have weak interpersonal connections with their supervisors. Thus, they are afraid of being misattributed and negatively evaluated by their supervisors, reducing their intention to help colleagues but concentrating on their own jobs to prevent being negatively evaluated by their supervisors. That is, for employees who have weak guanxi with supervisors, negative mood of supervisors is negatively related to employees’ intention to help colleagues.

However, employees who have strong guanxi with their supervisors are confident in their connections and friendship with them because the strong guanxi has been established by preceding exchanges of benefit and help. The social exchange theory of Blau (1964) posits that individuals are likely to feel an obligation to reciprocate when help is received. Therefore, employees who have strong guanxi are generally less afraid of the negative moods of their supervisors, limiting their tendency to refrain from helping their colleagues and mitigating the negative association between the negative mood of supervisors and employees’ intention to help colleagues.

Hypothesis 4: Negative mood of supervisors is negatively related to employees’ intention to help colleagues only for employees who have weak guanxi with supervisors and not for employees having strong guanxi. Figure 1 shows the research hypotheses.

Figure 1.

Research framework.

Method

Sample

This study adopted a cross-sectional design with questionnaires used to collect responses from participants. Because nurses comprise most of the workforce in the health services sector, nurses and their supervisors were investigated. Samples comprised nurses and their supervisors at one medical center in Northern Taiwan. The institutional review board and the nursing department of the medical center approved this study. Informed consent was obtained from all participants. Nurse supervisors and nurses in 53 ward units were surveyed. Each group comprised one nurse supervisor and three nurses. Therefore, all supervisors had influence over the same number of nurses and that number exceeded one. The inclusion criteria were as follows: (1) working full time and (2) not a nursing student. Random sampling was used to select nurses, increasing representativeness. A total of 53 sets of questionnaires were distributed, and 46 complete sets were collected, yielding an effective response ratio of 86.8%. Of the subordinates (nurses), 96.4% were aged between 20 and 40 years and 97.8% of them had attended college or university. Of the nurse supervisors, 95.7% were aged between 30 and 50 years and 87.0% had attended college or university. All participants were female. The analysis was based on complete responses to the questionnaires, even when demographic data were incomplete. Therefore, the total number of responses to demographic questions was not always equal to the sample size. Table 1 lists the demographic data on the nurses. Table 2 lists the demographic data on the supervisors.

Table 1.

Employee Sample Description

Demographics	Categories	#	%
Gender	Female	138	100.0
Age	20-29 years old	93	67.4
	30-39 years old	40	29.0
	40-49 years old	3	2.2
	50 years old or elder	1	0.7
	Missing	1	0.7
Education	High school	2	1.5
	College or university	135	97.8
	Missing	1	0.7

Table 2.

Supervisor Sample Description

Demographics	Categories	#	%
Gender	Female	46	100.0
Age	20-29 years old	2	4.3
	30-39 years old	28	60.9
	40-49 years old	16	34.8
Education	College or university	40	87.0
	Graduate school	6	13.0

Data Collection

Research assistants approached the sampled nurses and the nurse supervisors in each ward unit in this study and issued them a copy of the study questionnaire. The names of the sampled nurses were to be filled in by their supervisor. The purpose was to evaluate the guanxi between the supervisor and the individual nurses. All participants received an envelope in which to return their completed questionnaires to the research assistants, to protect confidentiality and thus reduce the participants’ motivation to provide inaccurate answers.

Measures

Nurse supervisors were asked to rate items that measured supervisor-employee guanxi and negative supervisor mood. Nurses (employees) were asked to rate items that measured nurse agreeableness and intention to help their colleagues. All responses were on a scale of 1 (strongly disagreeable) to 7 (strongly agreeable).

The three items that were used to measure the negative mood of supervisors were taken from Moore, Harris, and Chen (1995) and Swinyard (1993). They were chosen because they accurately reflect the negative supervisor moods in the present research context. The 3 items that were used to measure supervisor-employee guanxi were modified from the supervisor-subordinate guanxi scale of Chen and Tjosvold (2006).

Four items that measured nurse agreeableness were taken from Saucier (1994). Four new items of nurse intention to help colleagues were adopted based on the items related to willingness to collaborate in Dougherty and Larson (2010). The measures of intention of nurses to help colleagues must be carefully examined for reliability and validity.

Statistical package for the social science (SPSS) 12 and LISREL (linear structural relations) v8 softwares were used to analyze the data. SPSS 12 was used to summarize the demographics and correlations among the constructs and test hypotheses. LISREL v8 was used to evaluate reliability and validity.

Table 3 presents the results of the analysis of reliability and validity. All items that were used to measure each study construct had a Cronbach’s α value of over .90, satisfying the criterion of Nunnally and Bernstein (1994). The lower bounds of 95% confidence intervals for Cronbach’s α value were above .87, satisfying the criterion of Iacobucci and Duhachek (2003). Moreover, measures for each construct had a composite reliability of over .93 with an average variance extracted (AVE) over .76, satisfying the criteria of Bagozzi and Yi (1988) and indicating the satisfactory reliability of the study measures.

Table 3.

Summary of Analytical Results on Reliability and Validity

Construct Item	μ	SD	λ	α	Confidence Interval of α	CR	AVE
Supervisor-employee guanxi				.98	[.97, .98]	.98	.95
After office hours, she visits me frequently.	4.51	1.35	.99
We have a good understanding of each other.	4.42	1.33	.99
We are very good friends.	4.32	1.35	.95
Negative mood of supervisor				.93	[.91, .95]	.94	.83
Irritable	3.36	1.55	.96
Depressed	3.36	1.69	.99
Worried	3.35	1.67	.78
Employee agreeableness				.94	[.93, .96]	.96	.86
Sympathetic	5.26	0.99	.91
Warm	5.20	0.98	.96
Kind	5.16	1.03	.94
Cooperative	5.41	0.93	.90
Employees’ intention to help colleagues				.90	[.87, .92]	.93	.76
Willing to help colleagues	4.99	1.01	.87
Willing to give colleagues a hand	4.70	1.15	.93
Tend to promise requests of colleagues	4.82	1.19	.95
Remind colleagues of what they should attend to	4.74	1.13	.72

Note. CR = composite reliability; AVE = average variance extracted.

The study measures had indicator loadings of over .72, revealing acceptable convergent validity, based on the criterion of Anderson and Gerbing (1988). Moreover, the maximum squared correlation between constructs was .23, which is below the minimum AVE (.76), satisfying the discriminant validity criterion of Fornell and Larcker (1981).

Data Analysis

Regression analyses were conducted. The unit of analysis was a supervisor/nurse pair. Intention to help colleagues was the dependent variable, and supervisor-employee guanxi, supervisor negative mood, and employee agreeableness were the independent variables. An interaction term representing the interaction of guanxi and negative mood was used to test the moderation hypothesis (Hypothesis 4). Control variables included nurse age, supervisor age, and supervisor educational background. Age was included as a control variable because Uzun (2001) identified its influence in a health service context. Educational background was a control variable because Aiken et al. (2003) identified the education level of nurses as a predictor of health service outcomes. Nurse education was excluded because most (97.8%) of the nurse respondents had the same educational level. Gender was excluded from analysis because all participants were female.

Results

Table 4 presents correlations among study constructs. There were only weak to moderate (≤.48) correlations, revealing discriminant validity and minimum common method variance. Moreover, this study used two data sources (supervisors and nurses), which method also helped to minimize common method variance (Podsakoff et al. 2003).

Table 4.

Correlations Among Study Constructs

	1	2	3	4
1. Supervisor-employee guanxi	—
2. Negative mood of supervisor	.05	—
3. Employee agreeableness	.00	−.07	—
4. Employees’ intention to help colleagues	.06	−.22^*	.48^*	—

Note. ^* p < .05.

Hierarchical regressions were used to test the hypotheses. Table 5 presents the analytical results, which indicate that supervisor-employee guanxi is positively (although nonsignificantly) related to nurses’ intention to help colleagues (β = .04, t = 0.75, p = .46) and so do not support Hypothesis 1. Hence, supervisor-employee guanxi may not encourage nurses to help their colleagues. The negative mood of supervisor is negatively associated with nurses’ intention to help colleagues (β = −.15, t = −2.89, p = .01), supporting Hypothesis 2. Consistently, nurses’ agreeableness is positively related to their intention to help colleagues (β = .51, t = 6.17, p = .00), supporting Hypothesis 3. This finding supports the notion that highly agreeable individuals are likely to help others.

Table 5.

Hierarchical Regression Results on the Sources of Employees’ Intention to Help Colleagues

		β	t	p	ΔR²	R²
Block 1	Employee age	.10	0.58	.56	.01	.01
	Supervisor age	−.18	−1.24	.22
	Supervisor education	.00	0.00	1.00
Block 2	Supervisor-employee guanxi	.04	0.75	.46	.28	.29
	Negative mood of supervisor	−.15	−2.89	.01^*
	Employee agreeableness	.51	6.17	.00^*
Block 3	Supervisor-employee guanxi × negative mood of supervisor	.11	2.74	.01^*	.04	.33

Note. ^* p < .05.

The suggestions in the literature (i.e., Frazier, Tix, and Barron 2004; Irwin and McClelland 2001; Zhao, Lynch, and Chen 2010) were followed in conducting a moderation test. The term that is associated with interaction between guanxi and negative mood is positively related to a nurse’s intention to help colleagues (β = .11, t = 2.74, p = .01), supporting the existence of a moderating effect. The positive interaction indicates that guanxi reduces the negative association between negative mood and a nurse’s intention to help colleagues, supporting Hypothesis 4.

Each unit included three employees, and so the responses of a single supervisor were included three times in the data set. To examine whether this issue affected the analytical results, the analyses were replicated using various subsets of the data set. The first/second/third subset included the responses of the first/second/third sampled employee from each unit and the response of the supervisor once. The fourth/fifth/sixth subset included the responses of the first and second/second and third/first and third sampled employees for each unit and the response of the supervisor twice. The analytical results indicate that for any subset of the data set, the β coefficients of the tested hypotheses had the same directions/signs as their counterparts in the analysis that was based on the whole data set. These results reveal that using the responses of a single supervisor three times did not significantly affect the study findings.

Discussions

Main Findings

Employee agreeableness is positively related to employees’ intention to help colleagues. Negative supervisor mood is negatively related to employees’ intention to help colleagues. Supervisor-employee guanxi moderates the effect of negative supervisor mood on employees’ intention to help colleagues. Specifically, for employees who have weak guanxi with supervisors, the negative mood of supervisors is negatively related to their intention to help colleagues. This relation does not hold for employees who have strong guanxi with supervisors.

A review of the literature on guanxi (including Luo 1997) and reciprocity (a construct similar to guanxi; including Settoon, Bennett, and Liden 1996; Van Dierendonck, Le Blanc, and Van Breukelen 2002) reveals that this study is the one of the first studies to address whether and how supervisor-employee guanxi affects employees’ intention to help colleagues. The findings may help service managers improve collaboration among employees, which improves service outcomes. This study integrates personnel psychology (supervisor-employee guanxi and intention to help colleagues) and social psychology (effects of personality) in a health service context, demonstrating the feasibility and usefulness of interdisciplinary studies.

Theoretical Implications

This study is the first to use the appraisal-coping model (Lazarus and Folkman 1984) to examine how the negative mood of supervisors can affect employees’ intention to help colleagues in a health service context. This study also applied social exchange theory to explain why supervisor-employee guanxi affects employees’ intention to help colleagues. When employees help their colleagues, they share the workload of the supervisors. Such help represents a favor that the employees feel obligated to provide to their supervisors with whom they have strong guanxi.

Weinstein and Ryan (2010) found that voluntary prosocial behavior is beneficial to the receiver and the helper. Helping colleagues is one such behavior, and thus, should be encouraged. The present study explores how nursing supervisors can encourage nurses to help colleagues in a health service context. It finds that supervisor-employee guanxi mitigates the negative association between the negative mood of supervisors and the intention of nurses to help colleagues, providing a novel means of encouraging prosocial behavior in health service contexts.

Jensen-Campbell et al. (2002) found that highly agreeable individuals are likely to maintain good relationships with others, demonstrating the importance of agreeableness to interpersonal interactions. The present study extends their work by considering the effects of agreeableness on health service practices. It is novel in showing that employee agreeableness is positively related to team collaboration by improving the intention of colleagues to help each other. This study contributes to the body of knowledge on service personnel psychology and social psychology by identifying a novel effect of employee agreeableness.

Freeney and Tiernan (2009) noted that peer support among nurses enables them to provide quality care to patients and is therefore valuable. The present study is consistent with that study in addressing the role of peer support in nursing. However, the present study is novel in identifying factors associated with supervisors that may affect the intention of nurses to support their peers. It identifies a new factor—the negative mood of supervisors—as negatively related to the intention of nurses to support their peers, reminding supervisors that emotional self-control facilitates peer support among their nursing staff.

Implications for Managers

This study found that the supervisor-employee guanxi moderates the effect of negative supervisor mood on employees’ intention to help colleagues. Hence, health service managers can hold entertaining and interactive activities to improve supervisor-employee guanxi and to refresh supervisors and employees. Such activities may improve supervisor-employee guanxi, which, according to this study, may improve employee collaborations.

The exchange of favors is a key element of guanxi (Luo 1997). Therefore, supervisors should consider doing favors for their employees to improve supervisor-employee guanxi, reducing the effect of negative supervisor mood on subordinates’ intention to help colleagues. Moreover, guanxi depends on characteristics in common, such as birth place, place of education, or place of residence (Chiao 1982; King 1991). Thus, supervisors should try to discover characteristics and experiences that they have in common with their employees. Knowledge of things in common facilitates the development of guanxi, which, according to this study, improves collaboration among employees.

This study found that the negative mood of supervisors reduces employees’ intention to help colleagues. The applicable theory is the appraisal-coping model, which is described in the hypotheses development section. Additionally, the concept of psychological safety (Edmondson 2004; Nembhard and Edmondson 2006) can explain the finding. Edmondson (2004) noted that a leader’s (supervisor’s) punitive actions can weaken subordinates’ (employees’) perception that the discussion of errors is safe. Because helping colleagues increases the workload of the helping individual in a given working time period, helping colleagues could reduce job performance of the helping individual. Subsequently, helping colleagues could increase the probability that the helping individual will be subject to the supervisor’s punitive actions. When supervisors are in a negative mood, they are more likely to take punitive actions, reducing employees’ willingness to help colleagues. Furthermore, psychological safety predicts engagement in quality improvement activities (Nembhard and Edmondson 2006). Because negative supervisor mood may reduce the psychological safety of employees, it also may inhibit their engagement in quality improvement activities by reducing their intention to help colleagues. Therefore, health service managers should provide training courses for supervisors about stabilizing negative mood, thinking positively, and increasing emotional intelligence. When such courses help reduce or eliminate the negative mood of supervisors, their employees are likely to feel more free to help colleagues.

In addition to training courses, listening to preferred music can help manage mood (Oldham et al. 1995). Accordingly, supervisors could listen to their preferred music. According to the findings in the present study, reduced negative supervisor mood is related to the increased intention of employees to help their colleagues. This suggestion is an example of using environmental psychology to improve service outcomes.

This study identified employee agreeableness as having a positive effect on employees’ intention to help colleagues. Hence, health service managers may include employee agreeableness as one evaluation criterion in recruitment. The simulation of situations and using items for measuring agreeableness may help health service managers to evaluate the agreeableness of a candidate. Furthermore, on-the-job training may emphasize the importance of agreeableness and its development, which may contribute to collaboration within service teams.

Research Limitations and Future Research Directions

This study used a cross-sectional design to avoid the confounding effects of time-related factors, such as participant maturity, work rotation, and changes to organizational policies. However, a cross-sectional design is limited in its ability to examine causality among the study constructs. Therefore, future studies can adopt a longitudinal design or qualitative design to determine whether the associations identified in this study are causal.

All participants in this study were female—consistent with the nursing population in Taiwan. However, the findings cannot be applied to male service workers. Future studies can investigate whether male service workers exhibit the behavioral patterns that were identified herein.

This study involved nurses at a single medical center to avoid the confounding effects of organizational culture. However, sampling from a single organization is a limitation of this study. Future studies may devise means for testing the relations identified herein in several organizations while minimizing the confounding effects of organizational culture.

Professional commitment rests in a belief in professional goals and the willingness to make an effort to achieve them. Professional commitment has been found to affect health service outcomes (Teng et al. 2009) and job satisfaction (Teng, Shyu, and Chang 2007). Therefore, it also may improve employees’ intention to help colleagues, and this possibility requires further research.

This study argues that employees’ unwillingness to help may be a response to the negative mood of a supervisor. However, the employees and the supervisors who were recruited in this study worked for the same hospital, and therefore, the effect of an organization’s evaluation system could not be examined. Gittell (2000) conducted case studies of two famous airlines and posited that emphasis on accountability and performance measurement creates a punitive system that boosts fear but reduces coordination and performance. The proposition of Gittell (2000) may imply that a punitive system causes both negative supervisor mood and an unwillingness of frontline nurses to help each other. However, the hospital that was involved in this study does not implement a strict punitive system, reducing the likelihood that such a system could be responsible for negative supervisor mood and employees’ unwillingness to help colleagues. Future investigations should include hospitals that operate some punitive systems and others that operate supportive systems.

Gittell (2008) found that external/environmental pressures are work stressors and increase employees’ collective coping responses (such as relational coordination). However, in the present study, negative supervisor mood may exert an internal pressure (internal to the organization) and does not pose a threat to the organization as a whole. Hence, negative supervisor mood may have a different effect from external pressures. The present study observed that negative supervisor mood reduces employees’ intention to help (one aspect of coordination), supporting the argument that the effect of pressure on coordination may be a function of its source. However, such an argument requires further research.

One concern is that, although nurses returned the questionnaires directly to the researchers, they might have felt reluctant to answer the questions honestly. The researchers utilized a cover page to assure them of the confidentiality of their responses, increasing the likelihood that they would answer the questions honestly. However, future studies should use more means to ensure that respondents do not feel reluctant to answer questions honestly.

The moderating effect of guanxi may have an alternative explanation. Nurses having strong guanxi with their supervisors may believe that even when their supervisors are in a negative mood, they will protect the nurses from punishment if nurses help their colleagues in the interest of the patients. This study cannot provide evidence to support such an explanation. Future studies should apply a qualitative research design to examine this possibility.

Conclusion

This study found that supervisors’ negative mood and their guanxi with subordinates can affect their employees’ intention to help colleagues. Moreover, employee agreeableness may affect employees’ intention to help colleagues. This study is novel in revealing how supervisors can increase their employees’ intention to help colleagues. This study also provides a means by which supervisors can increase collaboration among employees. However, more research is needed to replicate this study in other countries to verify its findings, and longitudinal designs should be adopted to identify causation in this study’s findings.

Footnotes

Acknowledgment

The authors are very grateful to Dr. Katherine N. Lemon for the helpful comments on an earlier version of this article.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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