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From Social Burden to Support Elicitation: Development and Validation of a New Measure of Workplace Support Elicitation Experiences

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Abstract

Receiving social support is widely considered a positive workplace phenomenon, but what about the employees from whom the support is being sought? Following recent calls from social support scholars, we focus on the “potential support provider” perspective of the social support dynamic and propose that the measure of social burden (Yang et al., Stress and Health, 32(1): 70–83, 2016) currently used to capture this dynamic is significantly limited. In study 1, we refine and expand the measure of social burden by constructing and validating a measure of support elicitation experiences (SEE) that distinguishes between emotionally laden SEE (SEE-E; explicit or implicit requests for support with an emotional valence) and instrumental SEE (SEE-I; explicit requests for work-related support). In study 2, based on conservation of resources theory, we examine how SEE-E and SEE-I differentially relate to work outcomes and explore the potential costs of providing support in response to these behaviors. Results demonstrate that our measure of SEE is an improvement over the social burden measure and support the empirical distinctiveness of emotionally laden (associated with negative outcomes) and instrumental (associated with positive outcomes) support elicitations. In addition, we find some evidence that routinely providing support for both SEE-E and SEE-I carries implications for undesirable workplace behavior. Findings from this research support the notion that there are often differential effects for the kinds of support we elicit from our colleagues and provides researchers with an improved instrument to assess the social support dynamic from the perspective of potential support providers.

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Notes

  1. It should be noted that the SEE-E scale carried over two items from the social burden scale focused on salient affective displays (items 1 and 4 in Table 1).

  2. These five items correspond with abuse items found on the 32-item CWB-C (Spector et al., 2006).

  3. We note that an indirect effect in cross-sectional data does not constitute mediation, although it is consistent with mediation.

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We would like to thank Mike Zickar, Steve Jex, and Caitlin Porter for their helpful comments on earlier versions of the manuscript.

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  1. Department of Psychology, Bowling Green State University, 822 E Merry Ave, Bowling Green, OH, 43403, USA

    Christopher M. Gallagher, Ian M. Hughes & Melissa G. Keith

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Gallagher, C.M., Hughes, I.M. & Keith, M.G. From Social Burden to Support Elicitation: Development and Validation of a New Measure of Workplace Support Elicitation Experiences. J Bus Psychol 37, 675–694 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10869-021-09769-w

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