From Needing Help to Seeking Help: A Cross-Cultural Exploration of Interpersonal Help Seeking Behavior in the Software Industry

Abstract

Helping behavior is appreciated and rewarded, and helping interactions are greatly encouraged in organizations. Research in organizational behavior too is replete with studies on helping and on helpers. The present study delves into the underexplored side of helping interactions – the help seekers. In this study, ‘help seeking’ is understood as asking for help. Research has shown that most helping interactions in the organizations are initiated by requests from people in need of help. To promote helping interactions at the workplace, it is as important to understand the perspectives of the help seekers as the helpers. Seeking help entails for the help seeker hesitation and assessment of certain costs such as dependence, inferiority and incompetence. In the organizational context, it also threatens misuse at the hands of hostile helpers. Studies on help seeking in the organizational context, especially those that are field-based, are scarce. This qualitative study follows the grounded theory approach to explore how people feel about help seeking at work. This study was conducted in the context of the software industry. Help seeking is salient in software organizations due to knowledge intensive work, interdependent tasks, and ambiguous roles. 55 interviews were conducted with software employees from three sets – Indians working in India, Indians working in USA, and Americans working in USA. The analysis proceeded in accordance with the grounded theory technique, and the data and memos were analyzed to generate the grounded theory. Ensuring a positive help seeking experience emerged as the core category around which the processes in help seeking are centered. The emergent model shows the path from needing help to seeking help. A person in need of help comprehends the problem, hesitates to seek help, assesses associated risks, formulates strategies to mitigate the risks, and then seeks help. This process is influenced by problem importance, helper support, organizational climate and cultural context. The help seeker encounters some decision points in this process where the evaluation of help seeking experience occurs, and the process continues if this evaluation is positive. This model contributes to research in help seeking by going beyond the cost/benefit analysis and explaining help seeking as a complex process showing the complete path from needing help to seeking help. This study also gives ‘positive help seeking experience’ as a novel lens to look at the help seeking behavior. Organizational climate conducive to help seeking will promote helping interactions, which facilitate problem resolution and contribute to informal knowledge sharing and strengthening of social networks at the workplace.