Previous studies have mainly focused on the negative impact of illegitimate tasks on recipients but ignored its impact on observers. Drawing on deservingness theory, this research developed a moderated serial mediation model to examine the underlying mechanism in the relationship between observed illegitimate tasks and observers’ helping behaviour.
This research tested the model using a sample of 218 employees in China through a two-wave field study. A path analysis was conducted with the bootstrapping procedure to test the hypothesized model.
The results showed that the effect of observing illegitimate tasks was contingent upon the degree of the observer’s interpersonal liking towards the recipient. Specifically, when the observer had a high level of interpersonal liking for a coworker, the observer may perceive that the coworker was undeserving of being assigned illegitimate tasks, which increased sympathetic emotion and the sequent helping behaviour.
This study shifted the perspective of the illegitimate task literature from the recipient to the third parties. Additionally, it provided a finer-grained understanding of the mechanism between observed workplace disrespectful treatment and the observer’s helping behaviour.
