Daily Work Time Pressure Predicts Prosocial Behavior In Workplace And Its Effect

In the modern society with rapid changes and fierce competition,organizations are having the pressure of survival and competition.Efficiency enhancement is a priority for organizations.Prosocial behavior in the workplace,as one type of employee behaviors,could benefit operation and efficiency of an organization and gradually becomes a hot topic in industrial and organizational psychology.It is critical to explore prosocial behavior in the workplace to meet the needs of organizational development in the era,in the meantime,keeping physical and mental health of employees.The way of accelerating the prosocial behavior in the workplace is capturing attention by both scholars and practitioners.Generally speaking,prosocial behavior in the workplace is at the cost of employee's extra time,however,time is limited.Employees are having time pressure on a daily basis.Therefore,individuals may be less inclined to be engaged in prosocial behaviors in addition to their jobs in order to avoid much more time pressure.If the individual were not willing to be engaged,effect of prosocial behavior in the workplace towards an individual is out of the question.In the view of this,sounds like employees' perceived time pressure negatively associated with the occurrence of prosocial behavior in the workplace.However,voluntary long overtime hours,a typical prosocial behavior in the workplace by employee,could be found everywhere today.To better understand this contradiction,this study explores the predictive effect of daily time pressure in the workplace on prosocial behavior as well as the aftereffect of prosocial behavior.In the study,work time pressure is an antecedent variable of prosocial behavior in the workplace,depletion a mediating variable between the two,subjective prosocial achievement and fatigue are the aftereffects.A longitudinal design was applied to survey the perceived time pressure,depletion,prosocial behavior in workplace,subjective prosocial achievement and fatigue of 88 employees for 10 consecutive working days.The data analysis includes descriptive statistics,reliability and validity analysis,and multilevel linear analysis.Based on the data analysis,we conclude that the time pressure of an individual in the morning of a workday can predict the occurrence of prosocial behavior and its effect in the workplace of the day,moreover,perceived time pressure positively associates with individual's depletion everyday significantly.Contrary to the hypothesis,daily perceived time pressure significantly and positively predicts the occurrence of prosocial behavior in the workplace of the day,and depletion plays a positive mediating role significantly between perceived time pressure and prosocial behavior in the workplace.The study support the hypothesis of the aftereffect of prosocial behavior in workplace,i.e.prosocial behavior in workplace positively associates with individual's daily subjective prosocial achievement significantly,while same applies to individual's daily fatigue.This study contributes something new to the research of prosocial behavior in the workplace,as well as an empirical research on antecedents and aftereffects of the same in industrial and organizational psychology.We also discuss on the recommendations for employers and employees in terms of time management and a prosocial working environment cultivation in the organization.