Development and Validation of a Multidimensional Measure of Family Supportive Supervisor Behaviors (FSSB)

By Leslie B. Hammer, E. Kossek, Nanette L. Yragui, Todd E Bodner, Ginger Hanson. Journal of Management, 2009

761 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Due to growing work-family demands, supervisors need to effectively exhibit family supportive supervisor behaviors (FSSB). Drawing on social support theory and using data from two samples of lower wage workers, the authors develop and validate a measure of FSSB, defined as behaviors exhibited by supervisors that are supportive of families. FSSB is conceptualized as a multidimensional superordinate construct with four subordinate dimensions: emotional support, instrumental support, role modeling behaviors, and creative work-family management. Results from multilevel confirmatory factor analyses and multilevel regression analyses provide evidence of construct, criterion-related, and incremental validity. The authors found FSSB to be significantly related to work-family conflict, work-family positive spillover, job satisfaction, and turnover intentions over and above measures of general supervisor support.

Subfields: Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management, Social Psychology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4e54d59cf2ab6eee98cf97320056e8fb12c4ffaf

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

In Social Psychology

In Sociology and Political Science

Citations in the corpus

The link between national paid leave policy and work-family conflict among married working parents (2014, neutral): “demanding that employees work late) or through their own “career before family” attitudes (Hammer et al., 2009; Smith & Gardner, 2007).”
When Family Supportive Supervisors Meet Employees’ Need for Caring: Implications for Work–Family Enrichment and Thriving (2018, methodology): “Emotional support refers to supervisors’ emotional expression of concern towards the way the work impacts on employees’ family and sympathy towards employees’ family and personal life commitments (Hammer et al., 2009).”
Workplace and family support and work–life balance: Implications for individual psychological availability and energy at work (2016, background): “…should test whether other forms of social support, more directly related to the management of the work–life interface, like the recently introduced concept of family supportive supervisor behaviors (Hammer et al., 2009), have a similar or differential positive impact on the study’s variables.”
Abusive supervision and frontline employees' service performance (2012, background): “Given the key role of supervisors in representing the organization (Hammer, Kossek, Yragui, Bodner, & Hanson, 2009 ), the treatment of supervisors is likely to influence their followers' perceptions of their self-worth within the organization.”