Manager-subordinate Relationships Research Articles

Exploring job resources as predictors of employees' effective coping with job stress

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to shed more light on the relative impact of the various workplace resources on employees' effective coping with job stress symptoms, taking into account synergistic and antagonistic effects. The authors used job demands-resources (JD-R) theory as an overarching theoretical framework to test the hypotheses.Design/methodology/approachThe authors used a factorial survey experiment and a within-person design. Data were obtained from a random sample of 97 Greek employees working in public and private organizations. Multilevel modeling regression techniques were used for data analyses. The authors examined the relative effect of various job resources at different levels on employees' ratings of effective coping with job stress symptoms. In parallel, the authors investigated the possible synergistic and antagonistic interactions between the specific job resources.FindingsThe authors found that managers' leadership and humor style, their relationship with subordinates and coworkers’ support had positive effects on employees' coping with job stress. In addition, the authors found that the manager's leadership style interacts with manager–subordinate relationship quality and coworkers’ support as well as the latter interacts with the manager's humor style and manager–subordinate relationship quality. The study model explained 50% of the variance in effective coping with stress ratings.Originality/valueThe study highlights the importance of workplace resources as contextual variables, for the effective coping with stress symptoms at work. It highlights that a combination of workplace resources produces a net effect that was better than would have been expected based solely on the individual performance of these job resources. As such, the research answer calls to attend to the effects of synergistic effects of workplace resources on effective coping with stress symptoms at work.

The effects of workplace resources on employees’ decision to provide instrumental help to their colleagues

PurposeThe purpose of this research is to establish a hierarchy among different workplace resources in terms of their relative contribution to employee decision to provide instrumental help.Design/methodology/approachA within-person survey experiment was conducted and the data were analyzed using multilevel regression. The data are based on a random sample of 94 employees working in medium-sized companies in Crete, Greece.FindingsResults suggest that for employees’ decision to provide instrumental help, some job resources are perceived as more important than others. Workplace resources that are closer to employees (i.e. coworkers’ social support and manager–subordinate relationship) are perceived as more important compared to leadership style and the manager use of humor.Practical implicationsFindings suggest that organizations can successfully improve instrumental helping through interventions primarily aimed at building group-level resources.Originality/valueThe study highlights the importance of workplace resources for employees’ decision to provide instrumental help. However not all job resources are perceived as equally important. Theoretically, the study extends influential resource-based theories.

Perceived Organizational Support, Workplace Loneliness, and Creativity: Mediating Role of Workplace Loneliness, and Moderating Role of Proactive Personality

Purpose: Workplace loneliness is not something we often hear in organizations. Being a pervasive issue and having adverse effects, little attention has been devoted to understanding its relationships. To address the gap, the present study was employed to investigate perceived organization support as antecedent and creativity as a consequence outcome of workplace loneliness among managerial level employees. Proactive personality was used as a moderator to test workplace loneliness relationships with antecedent and outcome for significance. Methodology: The research was conducted by adopting a cross-sectional design, where data was collected in dyads by using two separate questionnaires for manager-subordinate relationships. The sample population (N=348) were individuals in a dyadic relationship working at managerial and subordination levels from the banking, education, manufacturing, and pharmaceutical sectors. By using CFA measurement model was accessed and hierarchical regression analysis was adopted to test the curvilinear relationship between perceived organizational support and workplace loneliness. Hays process macros were used for testing moderating effects. Finding& Conclusion: Results revealed a negative (-) relationship of workplace loneliness with its antecedent and outcome. This study also indicated that high proactive individuals are less likely to exhibit workplace loneliness when support is high. It also indicated that highly proactive individuals in the presence of workplace loneliness represent creative behavior as compared to low proactive individuals.

Distinctly lonely: how loneliness at work varies by status in organizations

PurposeThis paper aims to study the differing pathways to loneliness in managers and their employees. Literature on emotions in organizational life, organizational management and leadership and loneliness are explored to develop and test hypotheses regarding the differential prototypical scripts that can be generative of loneliness in managers and employees.Design/methodology/approachA total of 28 managers and 235 employees from a horticultural company based in Mexico were surveyed, using measures of perceived connection quality, loneliness and meaningful work to test three hypotheses.FindingsData from 28 managers and 235 staff indicate that while loneliness scores do not significantly differ between managers and their subordinates, the predictors of loneliness differ between managers and employees, with emotional connection and mutuality predicting loneliness in employees but not in managers.Originality/valueThis paper adds specification to the literatures on workplace loneliness, the loneliness associated with management roles, emotions in organizational life and emotions and leadership. The findings are discussed in relation to the literature on manager-subordinate relationships.

My Manager Moved! Manager Mobility and Subordinates’ Career Outcomes

How do managers’ moves across jobs affect the subordinates they leave behind? Manager mobility disrupts established manager-subordinate relationships, as subordinates must now learn to work with a replacement. We explore how this relational disruption affects subordinates’ objective career success—specifically, their financial rewards and subsequent promotion chances. We argue that manager mobility may have both positive and negative implications for subordinate outcomes. The loss of an established relationship may reduce subordinates’ performance and managers’ propensity to reward them; on the other hand, relational disruption may make subordinates more willing and able to seek out valuable opportunities elsewhere in the organization. We also argue that these effects are likely to be greatest for those subordinates who had worked with the previous manager for longer. Using eight years of personnel data from the U.S. offices of a Fortune 500 healthcare company, we show how managers’ mobility is associated with a decrease in subordinates’ financial rewards but an increase in their promotion prospects.

Job demands, organizational justice, and emotional exhaustion in prison officers

ABSTRACT Prison officers experience a number of occupational and organizational stressors, and are at considerable risk of burnout. There has been limited research examining the processes by which the demands officers experience impact on their burnout risk. Drawing on the job demands-resources model, we tested distributive justice perceptions as a mediator for the relationship between workload and violence with emotional exhaustion. We further tested whether supervisor-focused interactional justice perceptions would be associated with reduced emotional exhaustion via stress culture (i.e. a perceived ability to discuss stress-related problems with managers). UK prison officers (N = 1792) completed an online survey. Findings indicated that, while workload was associated with emotional exhaustion directly and via distributive justice, experiences of violence was only directly linked with emotional exhaustion. Interactional justice was significantly associated with emotional exhaustion via the ability to discuss stress-related problems, but the association was weak. Findings suggest positive manager-subordinate relationships are not sufficient to meaningfully enhance psychological wellbeing. Instead we highlight the need to manage officers’ workload.

Ethical leadership and quality of leader-subordinate relationship among women working in multinational enterprises in Malaysia, moderating role of employee psychological empowerment

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between ethical leadership and the quality of the manager-subordinate relationship, as well as the moderating effect of female employees’ psychological empowerment on this relationship.Design/methodology/approachThis is quantitative research in which an online questionnaire was distributed to female subordinates from multinational enterprises in Malaysia (n = 120). A partial least square is used for analysis in this research.FindingsThe findings confirm a strong positive correlation between all the seven ethical leadership dimensions and the quality of manager-subordinate relationship (leader member exchange). However, the moderating effect of psychological empowerment was found to be insignificant for two of the seven dimensions of ethical leadership.Originality/valueThis study contributes to highlighting new perspectives of women empowerment. Moreover, it also uncovers psychological factor that influences manager-subordinate relationship using cognitive evaluation theory. The seven dimensions of ethical leadership have not been tested in the past studies (only identified, not tested separately).

Predicting Leader-Member Exchange: Integrating Relational Cognition and Emotion

The role of the manager spans multiple levels of analysis as managers influence their individual subordinates, teams, and sometimes organizations as well as entire industries. When taking a dyadic perspective of management, the most prevalent theoretical framework is Leader-Member Exchange (LMX), which focuses on the quality of reciprocal exchanges within unique manager-subordinate relationships. High-quality LMX relationships are linked to beneficial outcomes for organizations; however, the LMX domain suffers from multiple theoretical and methodological issues, including a lack of dyadic research as well as a lack of focus on relational predictors that serve to develop and sustain high-quality LMX relationships. This work addresses this gap in the literature by drawing upon the multidisciplinary relationship sciences to examine relational cognition and emotion as predictive of both manager and subordinate LMX. We introduce the concept of communal relational motives to the LMX literature and examine its interplay with the emotional tone of the manager-subordinate relationship. We found that manager-subordinate agreement in the strength of their communal motive towards one another is predictive of manager LMX; while the manager-subordinate discrepancy in communal strength is more likely to influence subordinate LMX. However, the accumulated experience of positive emotions in the manager-subordinate relationship was the most important for predicting manager and subordinate LMX. Based on these findings, we discuss future avenues for research on manager-subordinate relationships.

New Managerial Paradigm: Manager–Stakeholder Instead of Manager–Employee

Abstract This paper aims to propose a change of the management paradigm by placing in the foreground the relationship between manager and stakeholder instead of the manager–subordinate relationship. The new managerial paradigm comes as a result of the wide-ranging mutations that have taken place in recent decades at the level of societies, economies and organizations around the world, which have forced the change of traditional managerial approaches. The work emphasizes why is necessary and possible to change the management paradigm in the present context, taking into consideration managerial and organizational arguments, that are based on observations, suggestions and recommendations of numerous specialists. Also, there are highlighted the quantitative and the qualitative differences between managerial paradigm focused on stakeholders and classical managerial paradigm of manager–employee, as well as the main advantages of a company stakeholder-based management system.

My Manager Moved! Manager Mobility and Subordinates’ Career Outcomes

How do managers’ moves across jobs affect the subordinates they leave behind? Manager mobility disrupts established manager-subordinate relationships, as subordinates must now learn to work with a replacement. We explore how this relational disruption affects subordinates’ objective career success – specifically their financial rewards and subsequent promotion chances. We argue that manager mobility may have both positive and negative implications for subordinate outcomes. The absence of an established relationship may reduce subordinates’ performance and managers’ propensity to reward them; on the other hand, relational disruption may make subordinates more willing and able to seek out valuable opportunities elsewhere in the organization. We also argue that these effects are likely to be greatest for those subordinates who performed best under the previous manager. Using eight years of personnel data of employees working in the US offices of a Fortune 500 healthcare company, we show how managers’ mobility leads to a decrease in subordinates’ financial rewards, but an increase in promotion prospects. Contrary to our expectations, these outcomes are little affected by how subordinates performed under their prior manager, with those who were performing well seeing similar changes to those who were performing poorly.

Comparing the role of personal and organisational support on the innovative behaviour of frontline healthcare workers in Australia and the United States

AbstractThis paper empirically uses a street‐level bureaucrat (SLB) lens to compare the impact of personal and organisational support on the innovative behaviour of frontline healthcare workers in Australia and the United States. Survey data came from the 260 U.S. and 220 Australian respondents. The structural equation model shows that organisational (i.e. manager–subordinate relationships) and personal supports (i.e. psychological capital [PsyCap]) significantly influence the innovative behaviour of frontline SLBs in health care. Further, the mediation results show that reciprocal social exchanges provide the foundations for facilitating the growth of healthcare workers’ PsyCap, which then gives them the resilience to be innovative in the workplace. The U.S. respondents perceived stronger organisational support and consequently had a better platform for building PsyCap – providing better work conditions for facilitating innovative behaviour to bourgeon. The paper adds to SLB theory concerning the influence of two variables on SLBs' innovative behaviour, in addition to a meaningful comparison of the U.S. and Australian healthcare workers. If governments and organisations want innovative workers, then the policies must be based on empirical evidence that shows the impact on all stakeholders, including SLBs, because otherwise, irrespective of policy directives, the outcome is low levels of employee wellbeing (which likely results in limited innovative activity).

Cooperation or Conflict? The Nature of the Collaboration of Marketing and Sales Organizational Units

Abstract Research purpose. The marketing and sales activity of a company can involve synergy, and coordinated operations can contribute to the success of the enterprise. However, the operations of the former departments often rely on individual successes, which boost conflicts of interest and hinder collaboration. The main aim of the research described in this paper is to explore the areas and focal points of collaboration and conflict in order to highlight the tools that can contribute to enhancing alignment and effectiveness. A further goal is to examine the relationship between marketing and sales and their appraisal of each other. Design/Methodology/Approach. The empirical research applied three qualitative focus group interviews among marketing and sales employees in different positions at multinational enterprises. Results are analyzed using grounded theory methodology. Findings. The research highlights the process interfaces between marketing and sales activities and results in the identification of the competence and attitude gaps in their cooperation. Marketing is an entire corporate function, although without knowledge of customers and markets and experience of sales it is unable to foster the innovation processes which, along with cost and time management, result in “efficient and effective corporate operations” as the core category of grounded theory. The outcomes presented here are novel in relation to how they highlight that collaboration should be grounded on clearly defined corporate targets and the engagement of employees with these, as well as supportive and reinforcing manager–subordinate relationships. However, the prioritization and appraisal of the departments of organizational units appears to be dependent on the position and information coverage of employees. Having more information increases the latter’s ability to better evaluate other fields of business. In addition to these issues, the explored discrepancies refer mainly to the information transfer process, suggesting that the external and internal accessibility and availability of information to departments is crucial. Information that is accompanied by accurate predictions about market demand and local needs adjustment enables successful innovation and helps create marketable, innovative, well-differentiated, high-quality, valuable products, the availability of (and customer responses to) which is required for the successful performance of a company. The former may be delivered through the contribution of both organizational units. Building and reinforcing human relationships can facilitate these processes. Originality/Value/Practical implications. In comparison to other research on this topic, the present study applies focus group interviews as a novel method to create a deeper and more thorough picture of the related processes. The model which emerges from the analysis of results highlights problems with practical management that can contribute to the development of a more efficient management system. Employees can be trained to decrease the identified discrepancies, while rewarding positive attitudes to collaboration contributes to their alignment.

The changing dynamics of manager-subordinate relationships in organizations

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to establish the key determinants of the effectiveness of the manager–subordinate relationships and identify the different factors contributing to the effectiveness of this relationship in an Indian context. A model analyzing personal and professional need fulfillment of the subordinates has been presented.Design/methodology/approachThe effectiveness of the manager–subordinate relationship was empirically analyzed using impact message inventory- circumplex (IMI-C).Close-ended self-administered survey was used to measure the variables associated with the effectiveness of the manager–subordinate relationship. Total 324 questionnaires were distributed online among employees of mid-sized IT service organizations operating in India, and 138 valid responses were collected.FindingsResults show that managerial relationship effectiveness is influenced by the manager’s affiliation scores, previous work experience and ability to address the personal and professional needs of employees. Further effectiveness of manager–subordinate relationship is enhanced in a friendly workplace where managers are adequately empowered to acknowledge employee needs.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper is empirical in nature and provides a future direction for more research in the area of manager–subordinate relationship in a workplace by exploring more variables.Practical implicationsDerived from an extensive study of current and impending manager – subordinate relationship, the findings may aid many organization and policymakers to develop and refine their people practices to engage human capital with the ulterior aim of having a conducive relationship between the manager and subordinate in the organization.Originality/valueThe present research emphasizes the importance of a healthy relationship between the manager and the subordinate in a digitalized workplace. This study is unique, as it provides insights into the manager–subordinate relationship and the factors influencing the association. The study gives a better understanding of the factors that make the manager–subordinate relationship more effective and fulfilling.

A performance management model addressing human factors in the North West provincial administration

Orientation: The article investigated factors from several perspectives using human resources-related issues of governance, legislation, regulation, organisation, administration and communication, workplace sociology variables pertaining to social and psychological relationships and several other factors that have an impact on the complex matrix of determinants for performance improvement in the public service.Research purpose: This article explored the human factors linked to the performance management (PM) processes and its impact on the effectiveness of service delivery in the North West provincial administration (NWPA). The article isolated the strengths and weaknesses of the system of performance assessment from the human relations perspective, technical usage, the structural–organisational and the strategic perspectives, uniformity, legislative compliance and other possibilities envisaged and emerging.Motivation for the study: The study would deliver a successful and carefully crafted PM model that could be used to remedy the current performance situation through improved and effective communication channels, as well as ongoing feedback, leading to a more productive and motivated workforce. This would ultimately yield improved service delivery for the citizens of the North West Province.Research approach/design and method: To answer the main research questions, sub-questions and objectives of this study, several participants (permanent employees and managers) found in the departments within the NWPA had to respond to diverse instruments of inquiry (questionnaires, interview schedules, expert, operational, strategic and grass-roots opinion, etc.). The study took a sequential mixed-methods approach where interpretivist (qualitative) and positivist (quantitative) approaches were applied as the philosophy and descriptive statistics were used.Main findings: The main findings highlighted all the human factors that mitigated against performance improvement in the NWPA. From the evidence gathered, some departments exhibited problematic manager–subordinate relationships, lack of training, no proper feedback, low staff morale leading to low job satisfaction, lack of leadership as well as broken channels of communication.Practical/managerial implications: The findings revealed that it is important for the NWPA management to undertake the necessary efforts in order to adapt a new strategy and comprehensive model for improved performance, which would ultimately lead towards efficient and effective service delivery in the North West Province.Contribution/value-add: This paper explores the salient human factors to be taken into consideration during performance management in the North West Provincial Administration.

Determinants of turnover among low wage earners in long term care: the role of manager-employee relationships

The demand for Long-Term Care (LTC) is steadily increasing as Baby Boomers age and enter retirement. High turnover rates among employees in LTC creates challenges for supervisors and administrators, and can negatively impact quality of care. This study examines manager-subordinate relationship quality using Leader-Member Exchange Theory (LMX) as an antecedent to turnover among low-wage earners in the LTC environment. Survey data measuring LMX, job satisfaction, and demographic information was collected at time 1, and turnover data was collected 18 months later at time 2. The results reveal that all four LMX dimensions were rated significantly different among subordinates who left versus those who stayed, however, only the LMX dimension of supervisor loyalty was a significant predictor of turnover among low wage earners. Our study adds a more nuanced view of the reasons low-wage employees turnover, and presents implications for clinical managers and LTC organizations more broadly.

Examining Malaysian Leader Characteristics in a Manager-Subordinate Relationship

The paper discusses the findings of the first stage of data collection from a study on the characteristics of leaders in manager-subordinate relationship in Malaysian organizations. The findings are based on in-depth interviews conducted with focus groups involving Malaysian employees, which focused on employee perspectives on key qualities that leaders possess to uphold and maintain superior-subordinate relationship. The adoption of qualitative approach in this phase of data collection process is crucial in deriving leadership behaviors that are essential in the workplace. The identification of these behaviors could help us generate items for the final phase of our data collection process. The research takes into consideration the argument posed by Bass (2008), which has contended that methodological and substantive issues are likely to broaden through the combination of multiple research approaches such as qualitative interview and focus group discussion. The inclusion of eastern perspectives in a western model would bring a holistic description of a communication model. The interviews were conducted with the hope of identifying the themes of leader-characteristics which would help strengthen the relationships between a manager and his or her employees. This would facilitate further understanding of leader characteristics in superior-subordinate relationship. Eight themes emerged from the interviews. Consequently, this paper furthers theoretical contributions to the research on LMX, and expands the literature on superior-subordinate relationship in the workplace. The paper also highlights the limitations of the study for future research. Keywords: Leader characteristic, superior-subordinate relationship, leader-member agreement, leader-member differentiation, dialogue communication

An Emic Perspective on the Trust-control Link in Russia

The question of whether trust complements or substitutes various forms of control has been debated in the literature. We aim to shed light on this debate by adopting an emic perspective on the trust- control link in Russia. We conduct an interpretive qualitative study of how Russian managers and their subordinates in Russian subsidiaries of a Finnish-owned MNC as well as a group of expatriates working in the Russian subsidiaries perceive trust and control. Our emic perspective on trust in Russia suggests that trust and control co-existed in the daily manager-subordinate relationships, complementing and substituting each other. The Russian proverb “trust but verify” captures the shared perceptions of the trust-control link among the interviewed managers and subordinates. On the other hand, the expatriates regarded trust and control as substitutes of each other. Our conceptual model integrates the complementary and substitutive perspectives as well as the affective and cognitive dimensions of trust into an embedded perspective on the trust-control link. The model suggests that trust is imperative for manager-subordinate relationships and provides the foundation in which control is embedded.

Transfer Learning to Infer Social Ties across Heterogeneous Networks

Interpersonal ties are responsible for the structure of social networks and the transmission of information through these networks. Different types of social ties have essentially different influences on people. Awareness of the types of social ties can benefit many applications, such as recommendation and community detection. For example, our close friends tend to move in the same circles that we do, while our classmates may be distributed into different communities. Though a bulk of research has focused on inferring particular types of relationships in a specific social network, few publications systematically study the generalization of the problem of predicting social ties across multiple heterogeneous networks. In this work, we develop a framework referred to as TranFG for classifying the type of social relationships by learning across heterogeneous networks. The framework incorporates social theories into a factor graph model, which effectively improves the accuracy of predicting the types of social relationships in a target network by borrowing knowledge from a different source network. We also present several active learning strategies to further enhance the inferring performance. To scale up the model to handle really large networks, we design a distributed learning algorithm for the proposed model. We evaluate the proposed framework (TranFG) on six different networks and compare with several existing methods. TranFG clearly outperforms the existing methods on multiple metrics. For example, by leveraging information from a coauthor network with labeled advisor-advisee relationships, TranFG is able to obtain an F1-score of 90% (8%--28% improvements over alternative methods) for predicting manager-subordinate relationships in an enterprise email network. The proposed model is efficient. It takes only a few minutes to train the proposed transfer model on large networks containing tens of thousands of nodes.

Out of the Box? How Managing a Subordinate’s Multiple Identities Affects the Quality of a Manager-Subordinate Relationship

Positive manager-subordinate relationships are invaluable to organizations because they enable positive employee attitudes, citizenship behaviors, task performance, and more effective organizations. Yet extant theory provides a limited perspective on the factors that create these types of relationships. We highlight the important role subordinates also play in affecting the resource pool and propose that a subordinate’s multiple identities can provide him or her with access to knowledge and social capital resources that can be utilized for work-based tasks and activities. A manager and a subordinate may prefer similar or different strategies for managing the subordinate’s multiple identities, however, which can affect resource utilization and the quality of the manager-subordinate relationship. Our variance model summarizes our predictions about the effect of managers’ and subordinates’ strategy choices on the quality of manager-subordinate relationships. In doing so we integrate three divergent relationa...

The Dialectical Nature of Impression Management in Knowledge Work

The stage on which impressions are managed is no longer purely a physical one but is increasingly mediated by various communication technologies that offer different affordances. This study examines the interplay of media affordances, impression management, and dialectical tensions in relationships between managers and their subordinates. Based on 91 semi-structured interviews and observations from six project teams operating in the consumer health, insurance, and engineering industries located in Sweden and the United States, we identify and explore three sets of impression management tactics. Our analysis reveals that the actions of managers and subordinates were often in dialectical tension, playing out through multiple media in a tactic–countertactic dynamic that played an important role in shaping manager–subordinate relationships. We discuss how these tactics complement and extend theory on impression management, dialectical tensions, and media use in organizations.