Effects of Supportive Leadership Behaviors on Employee Satisfaction, Engagement, and Performance: An Experimental Field Investigation

Abstract

We conduct a field experiment in a large corporation to investigate the effects of supportive leadership behaviors on employee satisfaction, engagement, and performance. Treated leaders receive a brief training promoting leadership behaviors that encourage, assure, and value employee efforts. Our experimental design allows us to observe leaders and employees in a subsequent meeting. We find that the leadership training affects the leaders’ supportive behaviors and thereby increases employees’ self-reported satisfaction and engagement during the meeting by 0.28 and 0.18 standard deviations, respectively. The effect on team performance is 0.13 standard deviations but is not significant. This paper was accepted by Marie Claire Villeval, behavioral economics and decision analysis. Funding: This work was supported by Norges Forskningsråd [Grant 325398]. Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.02170 .