Workplace help is widely recognized for enhancing employee well-being and performance, yet its potential to yield negative outcomes remains poorly understood due to the lack of a unified theoretical framework, passive views of help recipients, and limited focus on recipients’ key psychological factors. This dissertation addresses these issues by integrating Conservation of Resources (COR) theory and Self-Determination Theory (SDT) to examine how help perceptions influence acceptance and outcomes through basic psychological needs (autonomy, competence, relatedness). Two complementary studies tested this model: Study 1 utilized a scenario-based design with 1,163 undergraduates to assess manipulated help features (proactive vs. reactive, disempowering versus empowering, prosocial versus impression management motives) on help acceptance intentions, while Study 2 employed a 5-week multi-wave survey with 99 full-time employees to explore real-world help dynamics and outcomes (task progress, affect, self-esteem). Findings revealed that disempowering help and helper motives were key predictors of basic psychological needs and had downstream effects on reactions to help. Study 2 highlighted the importance of perceived help quality in predicting workplace well-being, as well as the key role of competence needs and status perceptions in forming reactions to help. These results advance COR and SDT by framing help as a dynamic resource exchange contingent on recipient appraisals, offering a novel framework to unify positive and negative support effects. By clarifying the active role of help recipients’ responses to support, this work provides insights into how and why help may backfire. Practically, this work informs organizational policies and training to optimize help delivery, minimizing resource threats and fostering supportive cultures. Future research should explore nuanced appraisal patterns and relational contexts to refine this model.
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