At the Expense of others: Altruistic helping behaviour, performance management and transformational leadership

This article explores the influence of performance management (PM) and transformational leadership (TL) on altruistic helping behaviour (AHB). We argue that PM and TL provide alternative value frameworks against which employees will evaluate costs associated with AHB, and that consequently their influence may be interdependent. The results of regression analysis suggest that TL exerts a stronger influence on AHB in organizations that also have strong PM-based human resource systems, and that PM’s negative effects are stronger when leadership is weak. We conclude that leadership may be an important factor in determining whether public organizations can reap the benefits of PM.