Relative status and dyadic help seeking and giving: The roles of past helping history and power distance value

Employees may not always seek and give help when needed in the dyadic context because of status disparity. Drawing on the cost and benefit framework in social exchange, we examine the effects of relative status on help seeking and giving willingness and behaviors among dyads. We argue that low-status individuals tend to provide more help but seek less help from their high-status counterparts. We further consider two moderators that can help restore the balance in cross-status helping relationships: employees’ past helping history and low power distance (PD) value. Additionally, we investigate the mediating roles of perceived entitlement and perceived obligation in the relationships between relative status and help seeking and giving, respectively. We tested our hypotheses in three studies using both dyadic field studies and experiments with employee participants. Our findings consistently demonstrate that low-status employees had a disadvantage in dyadic help-seeking and help-giving relationships. We also find that past helping history mitigated the effects of relative status in predicting help giving, whereas low PD value attenuated the effects of relative status in predicting help seeking. Finally, we find support for the mediated effects of perceived entitlement and obligation in the hypothesized relationships.