Putting the Behaviors into Family-Supportive Supervision: The Development of a Behavioral Typology

Widely recognized as an essential management practice that can meaningfully shape key employee attitudes and behaviors, family-supportive supervision (“FSS”) represents a form of managerial support aimed at helping employees effectively navigate the work-family interface. Despite the importance of perceived FSS for both individual and organizational outcomes, questions remain regarding the actual behaviors supervisors engage in to provide this targeted family support (or not). Consequently, substantive conceptual (e.g., ambiguity) and operationalization issues (e.g., confounded variance, abstraction) have stemmed from the lack of clarity and parsimony in the study of FSS. To address these limitations, we conducted a multi-phase mixed methods investigation with three unique samples of full-time employees to develop a behavioral typology of FSS behaviors. The resultant typology is distinguished by two dimensions (i.e., valence and effort) and organized into six categories that together span the full spectrum of unsupportive-supportive supervisor behaviors. This behavioral index and typological structure subsequently help to guide the refinement of the conceptualization of FSS and lays the groundwork for the creation of more objective FSS measures—a foundational step necessary for the advancement FSS research and practice.