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Family supportive supervisor behaviors and work engagement: A social information processing perspective

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Abstract

Based on the social information processing theory and attribution theory, the present study examined the relationship between family-supportive supervisor behaviors (FSSB) and employee work engagement, as well as the mediating role of loyalty to supervisor and the moderating role of attribution of intentions for FSSB. We collected two waves of data with a 6-month lag from 310 Chinese employees (age range 20–56, M = 33.32, SD = 7.11). We tested a moderated mediation model for our hypotheses and found that FSSB positively predicted employee work engagement through loyalty to supervisor. Moreover, the positive relationship between FSSB and loyalty to supervisor and the indirect effect of FSSB on work engagement through loyalty to supervisor were stronger for employees with low external attribution of intentions for FSSB (i.e., believing that supervisors’ FSSB is driven by their internal motivation instead of organizational expectations). The present study contributes to understanding potential emotional mechanisms in the relationship between FSSB and work engagement and how attribution might serve as an important boundary condition. Moreover, our findings have practical implications for fostering employee engagement in the workplace.

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Funding

The present research was supported by the Project of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 71802195), the Project of the National Social Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 16CGL044) and MOE (Ministry of Education in China).

Project of Humanities and Social Sciences (18YJC630206). There was no financial interest in the present research.

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Author notes

  1. Yanwei Shi and Julan Xie contributed equally to the study. They should be regarded as joint first authors.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Psychology, Central China Normal University, Wuhan, 430079, China

    Yanwei Shi, Hanying Tang & Hongyu Ma

  2. Key Laboratory of Adolescent Cyberpsychology and Behavior(CCNU), Ministry of Education, Wuhan, 430079, China

    Yanwei Shi, Hanying Tang & Hongyu Ma

  3. Department of Human Resource Management, Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai, 200234, China

    Yanwei Shi

  4. School of Business, Central South University, Changsha, 410083, China

    Julan Xie

  5. Department of Psychology Baruch College and The Graduate Center, City University of New York, New York, NY, USA

    Zhiqing E. Zhou

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  1. Yanwei Shi
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Correspondence to Hanying Tang or Hongyu Ma.

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There are no conflicts of interest. This research involved collecting data from human participants. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study. All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments.

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Shi, Y., Xie, J., Zhou, Z.E. et al. Family supportive supervisor behaviors and work engagement: A social information processing perspective. Curr Psychol 41, 347–359 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-019-00574-6

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