The term, "good soldier," refers to an employee who exhibits sustained, superior citizenship relative to others. Researchers have argued that this streaky behavior is due to motives, personality, and other individual characteristics such as one's justice perceptions. What is seldom acknowledged is that differences across employees in their helping behavior may also reflect differences in the number of requests that they receive asking them for assistance. To the extent that incoming requests vary across employees, a citizenship champion could emerge even among those who are identical in character. This study presents a situation by person framework describing how streaky citizenship may be generated from the combination of context (incoming requests for help) and person characteristics (reactions to such requests). A pilot web-scraping study examines the notifications individuals receive asking them for help. The observed empirical pattern is then implemented into an agent-based simulation where person characteristics and responses can be systematically controlled and manipulated. The results suggest that employee helping behaviors, in response to pleas for assistance, may exhibit sustained differences even if employees do not differ a priori in motive or character. Theoretical and practical implications, as well as study limitations, are discussed.
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