Helping is ubiquitous in organizations and vital to individual and organizational effectiveness. Yet, for various reasons, offers to help are sometimes rejected. Help offeror reactions to help offer rejection, or how employees respond to coworkers refusing their propositions to assist with work tasks, is an important but overlooked area of inquiry in organizational research. Although negative reactions to having help rejected might seem intuitive, help offer rejection may also produce positive outcomes for help offerors. Drawing upon sociometer and sensemaking theories, we present a theoretical model in which help offer rejection indirectly reduces subsequent helping through reduced organization-based self-esteem (OBSE) and indirectly increases subsequent creativity through enhanced sensemaking. We propose that the strength of these effects is moderated by coworkers’ explanation sensitivity such that coworkers’ sensitive and sincere communication reduces the negative effect on OBSE and enhances the positive effect on sensemaking. We test and find general support for this conceptual model in two multiwave, multisource field studies of full-time workers and in an experimental vignette study. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our findings and suggest fruitful avenues for future research.

中文翻译：

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“你不需要我的帮助吗？”拒绝帮助提议的消极和积极后果

帮助在组织中无处不在，对于个人和组织的有效性至关重要。然而，由于各种原因，主动提供帮助有时会被拒绝。帮助提议者做出反应以帮助提议拒绝，或者员工如何回应同事拒绝他们协助完成工作任务的建议，是组织研究中一个重要但被忽视的调查领域。尽管对拒绝帮助的负面反应可能看起来很直观，但拒绝帮助也可能为帮助提供者带来积极的结果。借鉴社会计量学和意义建构理论，我们提出了一个理论模型，其中帮助提供拒绝通过减少基于组织的自尊（OBSE）间接减少随后的帮助，并通过增强意义建构间接增加随后的创造力。我们建议，这些影响的强度受到同事解释敏感性的调节，这样同事敏感而真诚的沟通就会减少对 OBSE 的负面影响，并增强对意义建构的正面影响。我们在两项针对全职工人的多波、多源实地研究和一项实验性小插图研究中测试并找到了对该概念模型的普遍支持。我们讨论了我们的研究结果的理论和实践意义，并为未来的研究提出了富有成效的途径。