Helping in the Workplace: The Role of Leadership Relative to Employee Personality and Preferences
2026-09-04
Helping as an important form of social support is an integral part of a firm’s workplace culture. Using matched employer-employee panel data that are representative of larger, private-sector firms in Germany, we document significant between-firm variation in helping in the workplace. Helping is positively correlated with better organizational outcomes for both employees and firms. Differences in a firm’s quality of leadership together with employees’ level of general trust play a key role in explaining firm-level differences in helping. Our results corroborate the importance of both leadership and workforce characteristics for the manifestation of supportive workplace cultures.