How does job autonomy influence employee helping behavior?

Job autonomy has been recognized as an important job characteristic associated with a range of benefits for the employer. However, it remains unclear whether autonomous employees are more helpful than other workers, despite the critical importance of employee helping behavior in the workplace. In this study, we examine how employees’ job autonomy is related to their propensity to engage in workplace helping. Using two samples of service workers and their immediate supervisors in China, we find that organization-based self-esteem mediates a positive relationship between job autonomy and employee helping behavior. We also find that the personality trait of neuroticism negatively moderates this association, such that this positive relationship is weakened among those with a higher level of neuroticism. Our research contributes to the literature by elucidating how job autonomy is associated with helping behavior among frontline employees, while identifying both the underlying mechanism and the conditional effect under which this relationship holds.