Sharing Good News at Work to Collaborate and to Self‐Enhance: A Motivational and Reputational Perspective on Workplace Interpersonal Capitalization

ABSTRACT Employees routinely experience work‐related positive events. In the wake of these events, employees sometimes share the good news with coworkers—a phenomenon known as workplace interpersonal capitalization. Research shows that such capitalization matters for how employees feel and act. While capitalization is normatively expected within close relationships, sharing good news at work is relatively less expected and may even be actively discouraged, which raises questions about the factors that influence employees to disclose (versus conceal) positive events. Problematically though, scholars have yet to examine what drives employees to (not) share positive events with others. In this paper, we draw from socioanalytic theory to develop a contingency model that explains how employees' motives and individual differences interact to determine who capitalizes. Specifically, we describe how capitalization can be driven by either “collaboration” or “self‐enhancement” motives, and why the influence of these motives hinges on employees' level of self‐monitoring. In short, self‐monitors' sensitivity to the social context makes them more likely to act on their collaboration motives and less likely to act on their self‐enhancement motives. Finally, we theorize how employee reputation is affected by capitalization in terms of likeability and status. We find support for our predictions in a source‐ and time‐separated field study and an experimental study. We ultimately broaden our understanding of capitalization as it pertains to who is more (less) likely to act on their motives to disclose positive events at work, as well as elucidating downstream reputational outcomes.