The Relational Antecedents of Interpersonal Helping: ‘Quantity’, ‘Quality’ or Both?
研究员工社交网络规模与人际帮助行为的关系，发现二者呈倒U形曲线，且关系质量能缓解大规模网络带来的认知成本，提升帮助行为。
Having a large network of colleagues means having several opportunities to help those colleagues, as well as a higher chance of receiving requests for help from them. Employees with large networks are therefore expected to help more in the workplace than those with small networks. However, large networks are also associated with cognitive costs, which may reduce the focal employee's ability to both recognize the need for help and engage in helping behaviours. For these reasons, the authors assert an inverted U‐shaped relation between the size of an ego's social network and engagement in helping behaviour. However, high‐quality relationships imply higher mutual understanding between the actors, and hence lower cognitive costs. In turn, the position (and threshold) of the curve between network size and interpersonal helping should be influenced by the quality of the relationship between the provider and the beneficiaries of help. Analysis of employee‐level, single‐firm data supports these ideas, providing preliminary evidence that quality of relationship compensates for the difficulties that may arise from having large social networks.