Organizational citizenship behavior has been increasingly popular and focuses on a person’s action that is not openly acknowledged by the existing reward approaches despite its promotion of successful operations in an organization. It embraces factors such as courtesy, painstakingness, voice, help-giving, and sportsmanship. Among the five aspects, help-giving, which entails a worker’s intentional action of assisting a colleague who has job-associated problems, has the greatest impact on the performance of an organization. It promotes organizational productivity and success hence has prompted researchers to employ numerous theoretical foundations as they seek to understand the reasons that could make an employee desire to help a co-worker or not. The most common hypothetical argument is the social exchange theory, which is based on mutual understanding.
Offering help necessitates a worker to use personal resources (for example, energy and time) to assist a colleague experiencing a problem. Therefore, the notion of mutual benefit becomes a significant drive that influences the usage of one’s resources since it gives the worker hope that their colleague’s later reciprocal action will reward their kindness. Additionally, the conservation of resources theory becomes relevant since it is rooted in the thought that people always endeavor to protect and refill their resources. This theory has become fundamental in explaining the model of help-giving discontinuity. When a minimal possibility of obtaining reciprocal help is sensed, a protection-centered feeling arises and necessitates discontinuing assistance because of the underlying notion of the impossibility to replenish the used resources. Since giving help is an interpersonal and dynamic choice, it is subject to change over time. The help-giving discontinuity model offers a significant theoretical basis for further research into why some workers constantly assist their colleagues while others choose not to help.