Employee Assistance Programs (EAP's) are rapidly becoming an integral part of the corporate world. Implementation of these programs has resulted in considerable humanitarian and financial benefit to business and industry. The success of EAP's is largely dependent on the supervisor's willingness and ability to utilize these programs. Despite the recognized importance of the supervisor's role in EAP's, little research has been conducted on factors which might enhance or impede a supervisor's use of an EAP. This study examined the effects of supervisors' interpersonal need structure, and level of experience on: (1) supervisors' use of confrontation with problem employees; and (2) supervisors' referral rate of employees experiencing job performance problems to the company EAP. / Subjects consisted of 85 supervisors, all of whom work for one branch of state government in Florida. Every supervisor in the organization was asked to participate in the study. Subjects attended an all day workshop consisting of three hours of human relations training and four hours of employee assistance training. During the workshop subject's interpersonal need structure was assessed via the Fundamental Interpersonal Relations Orientation--Behavior (Schutz, 1966). The FIRO-B consists of three interpersonal dimensions, inclusion, control, and affection, which are held to be sufficient to explain and predict interpersonal phenomenon. Five months later a survey was sent to all supervisors who participated in the training. The primary purpose of the survey was to assess both the confrontive and referral behavior of supervisors following the training. / Results of the study indicated that supervisors who tended to relinquish responsibility were less likely to confront employees than supervisors who tended to accept responsibility. In addition, it was found that less experienced supervisors were more likely to refer employees to the company EAP than more experienced supervisors. Supervisor's use of confrontation was found to be the strongest predictor of referral behavior. Implications of the findings for counselors are discussed. Also discussed are the limits of Schutz' FIRO theory to work place behavior. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 48-02, Section: A, page: 0342. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1986.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_76024 |
| Contributors | KRUCHER, KORY JOHN., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 100 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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