Affiliations: Lally School of Management and Technology, Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, USA
Note: [] Corresponding author: Timothy D. Golden, Ph.D., Lally School of
Management and Technology, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), 110 8th
Street, Troy, NY 12180, USA. Tel.: +1 518 276 2669; E-mail: GoldenT@rpi.edu
Abstract: BACKGROUND: Employees frequently do not engage in help-seeking due
to the associated social costs. Despite the importance of help-seeking, little
research has been done to explore factors affecting whether individuals will or
will not engage in help-seeking at work, and existing research has thus far not
addressed help seeking in the telework context. OBJECTIVE: This paper expands the current literature on help-seeking
by exploring this behavior in the context of teleworkers and develops
propositions regarding how aspects of virtual work environments will help
determine teleworkers' willingness to engage in help-seeking behavior. METHODS: This article presents a review with critical analysis and
integration of selected telework and help-seeking literatures. Results: Grounded in the literature on inequity/indebtedness and the
literature on threats to self-esteem, theoretically-derived research
propositions are developed that help shed insights into help seeking behaviors
in the telework context. These research propositions encompass media presence
and the teleworker's perceived opportunity for reciprocation, and their
associated impacts on the perceived cost of seeking help. CONCLUSION: The proposed research propositions provide practitioners
and researchers a means to be better able to assess telework applications and
prevent unintended effects. Through such systematic understanding of how
telework alters the perceived cost of seeking help and the teleworker's
willingness to seek help, telework may be further improved to contribute to
more effective and productive individuals and organizations.
Keywords: Telework, help-seeking, telecommuting, virtual work
