How Coworker Upward Ingratiation Undermines Employee Helping Behavior: Dual Perspective Of Cognition-affection

Ingratiation is a kind of impression management strategy and interpersonal influence means widely existing in modern organizations,through which employees expect to obtain certain benefits.Previous studies on ingratiation have focused on how ingratiation affects both the actor and the person being ingratiated,but less on the bystander.In view of this,from the perspective of third-party colleagues,this study discusses when and how employees’ ingratiation toward superiors affects other employees’ attitudes and behaviors,and describes the process mechanism of upward ingratiation affecting bystanders.Specifically,based on the theory of social information processing,this study constructed and tested a two-path model of how coworker ingratiation affects employee helping behavior in terms of cognition and emotion,and verified the moderating effect of competitive goal interdependence.This helps to understand why ingratiation sometimes leads to negative consequences,and explains how social information processing plays a role in how ingratiation influences the reactions of bystanders.This study first analyzes existing researches on core variables,and then proposes research hypotheses and models.A two-wave study was conducted for data collection,then SPSS26.0 and AMOS26.0 were used for data analysis of 302 samples.The main conclusions are as follows:1.Coworker upward ingratiation is negatively related to employee helping behavior;2.Coworker upward ingratiation is positively related to employee future status threat;3.Future status threat mediates the effect of coworker upward ingratiation on employee helping behavior;4.Coworker upward ingratiation is positively related to employee other-condemning emotions;5.Other-condemning emotions mediates the effect of coworker upward ingratiation on employee helping behavior;6.Competitive goal interdependence moderates the positive relationship between coworker upward ingratiation and employee future status threat;7.Competitive goal interdependence moderates the positive relationship between coworker upward ingratiation and employee other-condemning emotions;8.Competitive goal interdependence positively moderates the mediating effect of future status threat;9.Competitive goal interdependence positively moderates the mediating effect of other-condemning emotions.