도움행동의 해석에 관한 연구: 행위자 자기표현 조절능력과 평가자 이미지 향상동기의 조절효과 (Are we on the same page? Role of actor’s and perceiver’s characteristics in interpreting helping behaviors)

서지정보

· 발행기관 : 한국경영학회
· 수록지 정보 : 경영학연구 / 39권 / 3호 / 739 ~ 767페이지
· 저자명 : 김보영, 박오수, 윤석화

초록

오늘날 기업의 조직구조가 수평화 되고 직무의 특성이 더욱 복잡해지면서 구성원들 간의 긴밀한 상호작용의 중요성이 점점 강조되고 있다. 이러한 추세 속에서 동료 간의 도움행동의 중요성 또한 점차 강조되고 있다. 일반적으로 도움행동은동료들 간의 협력적 관계를 조성하여 집단과 조직의 성과에 긍정적인 영향을 미친다고 알려져 왔다. 하지만 최근 연구에의하면 동일한 도움행동일지라도 이를 받아들이는 사람이 행동의 의도를 어떻게 해석하느냐에 따라 도움행동의 결과가상반되게 나타날 수 있다는 주장이 제기되었다. 본 연구에서는 이와 같이 동료의 도움행동을 해석하는 데에 영향을 미치는 요인이 무엇인지를 알아보기 위하여 일대일 동료 관계 속에서 행위자(도움제공자)와 평가자(도움수혜자)의 특성들이도움행동의 평가에 미치는 영향을 검증하였다. 구체적으로 첫째, 과업수행 행동과 차별되는 도움행동의 특징에 대해 고찰함으로써 이러한 특징이 도움행동 평가 프로세스를 설명하는데 가지는 함의를 논의하였다. 둘째, 동료의 도움제공 행동과 평가자가 이를 조직시민행동(OCB-I)으로 인식하는 관계를 조절하는 조절변수로서 행위자의 특성인 자기표현 조절능력(ability to modify self-presentation)과 평가자의 특성인 이미지 향상동기(self-enhancement motives)의 조절효과를 검증하였다.
실증연구결과 모든 가설이 지지되었다. 도움을 적게 제공하였을 때 행위자의 자기표현 조절능력이 높은 사람이 낮은 사람보다 조직시민행동을 많이 하였다고 평가받았다. 즉, 자기표현 조절능력이 높은 사람은 도움을 적게 제공하고도 상대에게 이를인상적으로 전달하는 능력이 있기 때문에 동료로부터 조직시민행동을 잘 한다고 평가받는 것이다. 또한 이미지 향상동기가강한 평가자는 약한 평가자에 비해 동료의 도움행동을 조직시민행동으로 평가하는 경향이 약했다. 이러한 결과는 귀인적 투사 효과에 의해 이미지 향상동기가 강한 평가자일수록 도움행동과 관련된 자기정보(self-information), 즉 이미지 향상 등을 위하여 도움행동이 도구적으로 사용될 수 있다는 인식이 평가 프로세스에 투사되기 때문으로 설명할 수 있다.
이러한 실증결과를 통해 본 연구는 세 가지 측면에서 도움행동 해석에 대한 이해에 공헌을 하고 있다. 첫째, 도움행동에대한 평가에 있어 인사평가와 마찬가지로 평가자의 인지 프로세스가 영향을 미침을 보임으로 도움행동 해석에 관한 연구영역을 확장하였다. 둘째, 도움행동 평가에 평가자와 행위자의 특성 모두가 영향을 미침을 보임으로서 일대일 관계에서의도움행동 해석에 대해 심도 있게 고찰하였다. 셋째, 그 중요성에 비해 조직행동 연구 분야에서 많이 연구되지 않았던 동료관계에서의 도움행동에 대해 고찰하였다.

영어초록

Recent firm- and job- related trends which translate into flatter organizational structure and more complex and collective tasks have enhanced coworker’s salience and their potential influence. In this change, coworker’s interpersonal helping behaviors are considered as important factor to influence on fellow employee’s attitudes and behaviors. In general, it has been argued that coworker’s interpersonal helping behaviors positively affect fellow employee’s attitudes and behaviors. However, recent literatures suggest that, consequences of interpersonal helping behaviors will be different according as how the intention of helping behaviors is interpreted by rater. Moreover, helping behaviors significantly affect task performance rating because these behaviors are frequently emphasized as like in-role behaviors in organization. Therefore,why coworker’s helping behaviors are subjectively interpreted has to be investigated before we discuss about consequences of coworker’s interpersonal helping behaviors. Specifically,characteristics of help giver (actor) and receiver (rater) have to be considered simultaneously for understanding rating process of interpersonal helping behaviors in dyadic coworker relationship. The purposes of this study are to explain the cognitive process involved in rating of interpersonal helping behaviors and to demonstrate the influence of actor’s and rater’s trait on rating process concerning helping behaviors. We investigated moderate effects of two variables; ability to modify self-presentation as an actor’s trait and self-enhancement motives as a rater’s trait on the relationship between coworker’s helping behaviors and coworker’s OCB-I rated by fellow employee. Hypotheses are like these.
H 1: Help giver’s ability to modify self-presentation will moderate the relationship between actor’s help giving and the extent of actor’s OCB-I rated by help receiver. That is,the positive slope will become smaller in graph when ability to self-presentation is high than when ability to self-presentation is low.
H 2: Help receiver’s self-enhancement motives will moderate the relationship between actor’s help giving and the extent of actor’s OCB-I rated by help receiver. That is, the positive slope will become smaller in graph when self-enhancement motives is high than when self-enhancement motives is low.
We conducted empirical test for examining hypotheses. Data were collected using questionnaires from 150 dyads of an employee and his/her coworker. As the result of the hierarchical regression analyses for OCB-I, the moderate effects of ability to modify self-presentation and selfenhancement motives on the relationship between coworker’s help giving and coworker’s OCB-I perceived by employee were significant respectively (ability to modify self-presentation: β =-.17, p < .05, self-enhancement motives: β = -.14, p < .05 ). Therefore, these results provided supports for Hypothesis 1, and 2.
Our study demonstrated that coworker’s interpersonal helping behaviors were easily rated as OCB-I by raters when help giver was high in ability to modify self-presentation. This result provides important practical implication. Recently coworker’s supportive attitudes are emphasized as important factor to enhance organizational effectiveness. Therefore, coworker’s engaging in interpersonal helping behaviors are rated positively by fellow employees and positively influence on overall evaluation concerning actor. By the result of our study,however, helping behaviors of individuals high in ability to self-presentation have to be carefully evaluated in that individuals with high ability to self-presentation were better judged as compared with behaviors which they really engaged in. Our study proved that rater high in self-enhancement motives had a weak tendency to evaluate coworker’s helping behaviors as OCB-I. This result indicates that cognitive schema that rater brings to the evaluation process influences the rating of coworker’s interpersonal helping behaviors. Finally, our research contributes in providing understanding concerning employee’s interpretation of coworker’s helping behaviors. Nowadays coworker’s rating concerning fellow employee’s engaging in helping behaviors toward other employees is functioned as substantial control system in team based organizational structure. For instance, multi-source appraisal system including coworker rating is conducted by many firms. The results of our study suggest that training and rating criteria for accurate evaluation concerning coworker’s helping behaviors are needed to diminish rating errors.

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