Is an informal leader always popular? The curvilinear relationships between informal leadership, threat to peers, and helping from peers

Abstract

The positive effect of informal leadership has been well established, whereas our understanding of its potential negative effect in interpersonal interaction is still limited. This study explores the influence of individual informal leadership on helping received from peers from an interpersonal interaction perspective. Drawing upon social comparison theory, we posit that a focal employee’s moderate level of informal leadership in a team can pose a threat to peers, which inhibits the helping behavior from peers to the focal employee. To test our hypothesis, we conducted an experiment in Study 1 and a field survey in Study 2. The results revealed that individual informal leadership had a curvilinear relationship with helping behavior from peers via threat to peers. Furthermore, the focal employee’s political skill mitigated this curvilinear effect. Theoretical and future research implications are discussed.