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Contribution Details

Type Journal Article
Scope Discipline-based scholarship
Title How employees react to unsolicited and solicited advice in the Workplace: Implications for using advice, learning, and performance
Organization Unit
Authors
  • Blaine Landis
  • Colin M Fisher
  • Jochen Menges
Item Subtype Original Work
Refereed Yes
Status Published in final form
Language
  • English
Journal Title Journal of Applied Psychology
Publisher American Psychological Association
Geographical Reach international
ISSN 0021-9010
Volume 107
Number 3
Page Range 408 - 424
Date 2022
Abstract Text Employees are often reluctant to ask for advice, despite its potential benefits. Giving employees unsolicited advice may be a way to realize the benefits of advice without relying on them to ask for it. However, for these benefits to surface, it is critical to understand how employees react to unsolicited and solicited advice. Here, we suggest that recipients are likely to attribute self-serving motives to those providing unsolicited advice and prosocial motives to those providing solicited advice. These motives shape the extent to which recipients use advice, learn from it, and perform better as a result of receiving it. In an organizational network study of unsolicited and solicited advice ties (Study 1), an experience-sampling study of daily episodes of receiving unsolicited and solicited advice across two workweeks (Study 2), and an experiment where we manipulated advice solicitation and whether the advisor was a friend or a coworker (Study 3), we found general support for our model. Moderation analyses revealed that recipient reactions were not affected by friendship with the advisor, the number of overlapping advice ties between the advisor and recipient, or the position of the advisor in the social network. By showing how perceptions of the advisor’s motive can explain variability in the impact of unsolicited and solicited advice on recipients, this research clarifies the recipient reactions that advisors must navigate if their advice is to have impact at work.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1037/apl0000876
Other Identification Number merlin-id:20086
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Additional Information This article may not exactly replicate the final version published in the APA journal. It is not the copy of record.