Research in the work-life area has typically concerned individuals' assessments
of their own conflict. The current study went beyond this by examining supervisor
assessments of employee conflict and how they relate to the support given to employees.
This support, traditionally measured using a unidimensional measure of support, was
measured with a multidimensional measure that differentiates eight separate forms of
support, including listening, emotional, emotional challenge, reality confirmation, task
appreciation, task challenge, tangible assistance, and personal assistance support.
Additionally, the amount of personal contact between the supervisor and the employee
and the extent to which the supervisor likes the employee were examined as potential
moderators of the relationship between supervisor assessments and the support given.
Further, employee satisfaction with supervisor support, as well as the potential
moderating role of the need for support on the relationship between the provided support
and the employee's satisfaction with the support, were explored. Finally, employee
satisfaction with the eight forms of support and subsequent outcomes (i.e., subsequent
work-life conflict, job satisfaction, turnover intentions, organizational commitment, and
job performance) as they relate to the provided support were examined. Data were collected from 114 pairs of employees and supervisors. Employees were assessed at two
time periods two weeks apart whereas supervisors were assessed at one time period,
within five days of the employee's first time period. Results showed that supervisor
assessments of employee work-life conflict were either unrelated or negatively related to
the eight forms of support. Additionally, it appears that when supervisors perceived
employees as having a high degree of work-to-life conflict, they provided relatively high
and relatively equal amounts of emotional challenge and reality confirmation support to
employees regardless of how much they liked them. When supervisors perceived
employee work-to-life conflict as being low, however, they provided significantly more
emotional challenge and reality confirmation support when they liked the employee as
opposed to when they did not like the employee. Furthermore, the relationship between
emotional challenge support and job satisfaction was mediated by satisfaction with
emotional challenge support, the relationship between task appreciation support and
affective commitment was mediated by satisfaction with task appreciation support, and
the relationship between task appreciation support and job satisfaction was mediated by
satisfaction with task appreciation support. Finally, when emotional challenge support
was provided, greater levels of support led to greater employee satisfaction, especially if
there was a need for the support. However, when reality confirmation support was
provided, employees were less satisfied with the support when a large amount of support
was provided and the employees' need for support was low.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/3180 |
| Date | 12 April 2006 |
| Creators | Youngcourt, Satoris Sabrina |
| Contributors | Payne, Stephanie C. |
| Publisher | Texas A&M University |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Dissertation, text |
| Format | 555311 bytes, electronic, application/pdf, born digital |
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