Download Communication Motives, Satisfaction, and Social Support in the

2012 45th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Communication Motives, Satisfaction, and Social Support in the Workplace:
Are Supervisors Effective Support Sources in Employee Networks?
Moyi Jia
Ohio University
[email protected]
Mirit Shoham
Ohio University
[email protected]
Abstract
the need for improved superior-subordinate interaction.
To date, organizational scholars have paid an abundant
amount
of
attention
to
superior-subordinate
communication, yet the relationship between
supervisors’ social support and general employee
satisfaction in the workplace remains unclear.
Therefore, this study intends to explore the correlation
between supervisors’ social support skills and
superior-subordinate
communication
satisfaction.
During this process, employees’ motives to talk with
their employers might be the mediating factor.
In this study we examine the relationship among
supervisors’ social support skills, employees’
communication motives, and supervisor-subordinate
relationship satisfaction. A network approach focuses
on the relational tie between actors, as opposed to
characteristics of the actors themselves. Using a
sample of employees (N=222) from a wide range of
occupations, we found that supervisors’ emotional,
informative, and instrumental social support skills are
positively correlated with employees’ communication
motives of pleasure, affect, inclusion, and relaxation.
While network studies suggest the need to navigate
one’s social web in order to acquire different types of
support from different proximate alters, employees
herein report attaining emotional, informative, and
instrumental support from one singular tie: Their
supervisor at work.
2. Literature Review
2.1. Supervisor-subordinate Communication
Satisfaction
In general, communication satisfaction is
conceptualized as one’s affective response to the
fulfillment of a message exchange process [31, 58]. To
date, scholars have considered communication
satisfaction in three contexts; namely dyads, groups,
and organizations [16, 44]. Through evaluating the
quality of conversation and the relationship among
workplace individuals [44], communication satisfaction
is a crucial factor to accomplish positive organizational
outcomes. Studies have consistently reported that high
communication satisfaction in the workplace
contributes to job satisfaction [70], task performance
[48], productivity [58], occupational commitment [64],
and morale [62].
It is important to consider the organizational
context within which satisfaction arises, rather than
merely addressing individual characteristics or traits
[69]. Network scholars argue that social actors are
embedded in a web of relations that define that actor’s
situation in a social structure [12]. Within such a
structure, the individual actor is simultaneously
provided with opportunities and constraints that
influence behavior, attitudes, etc. Therefore, the social
1. Introduction
According to the American Psychological
Association [59], three quarters of Americans
experience symptoms related to stress in a given
month. Among people who experience stress and
burnout, 77% have physical symptoms and 73% have
psychological symptoms. While these phenomena
might be caused by personal and family problems, it
should be realized that work stress can lead to severe
consequences for workers, including physical,
attitudinal, and emotional exhaustion [39], drug and
alcohol abuse, and low morale [49]. Therefore,
researchers have examined supportive communication
within the workplace and highlight the important role
that social support plays in protecting workers from
job-related stress and burnout [42]. According to a
survey on addiction and mental health [17], the top ten
stressors in the workplace include “no feedback”, “no
appreciation”, and “lack of communication,” indicating
978-0-7695-4525-7/12 $26.00 © 2012 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/HICSS.2012.164
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support and well being through examining supportive
communication [15]. Network scholars in particular
have explored the health-related repercussions of social
relationships, considering social support as a network
resource [e.g. 27, 30]. Social support is “the verbal and
nonverbal behavior that influences how providers and
recipients view themselves, their situations, the other,
and their relationship…and is the principal process
through which individuals coordinate their actions in
support-seeking and support-giving encounters” [1].
Social support literature, while diverse and
multidisciplinary [26], uniformly suggests the benefits
of such communicative interactions for individuals’
physical and psychological health [46].
Although most research about supportive
interaction focuses on the interpersonal context [11, 13,
14], when invoked in the organizational setting, social
support also plays an important role in protecting
workers from job-related stress and burnout [42]. For
example, a study exploring occupational stress found
that schoolteachers who received various forms of
support from their supervisors were less susceptible to
work-related burnout [53]. Moreover, Cromwell and
Kolb [18] suggest that social support within an
organization can improve efficiency, showing how
knowledge transfer was impeded in an organization
due to lack of time as well as lack of managerial
support.
Although social support is an essential component
to achieving relational (and organizational) goals,
scholars have diverse perspectives on classifying types
of social support in various settings [32, 71]. According
to Miller [42], work-related social support may come in
three forms: emotional, informative, and instrumental
support. Emotional support attempts to boost one’s
self-esteem (“I know that you are bright enough to do
well”) , show unconditional regard (“You know I’ll be
proud of you no matter what you do”), or guarantee for
help (“You can always come to me when you have
problems”), among other things. Emotional support
behaviors range from listening to providing advice,
usually in order to help another cope with a life
experience [6]. Informative support aims to reduce
uncertainty and job-related stressors through providing
advice about work (e.g., strategies for time
management), clarifying job descriptions, and giving
suggestions to balance work and life (e.g. suggesting a
good health club for exercise). Finally, instrumental, or
tangible support refers to providing physical or
material assistance (e.g., resources such as technology
and support staff) to cope with a stressful situation.
In this study, we employ Miller’s [42] viewpoint
for three reasons: first, this classification was
developed in an organizational context, rather than
adopted from the interpersonal setting. Second,
network perspective takes into account relationships
amongst actors, as opposed to focusing on the actors
themselves.
In
any
organizational
setting,
the
interrelationships of actors across various functional
roles
contextualize
action.
For
example,
supervisor–subordinate interactions, also known as
supervisory communication, are an important element
contributing to communication and workplace
satisfaction
[7].
Supervisor–subordinate
communication behaviors have been broadly defined
by Jablin [33] as “an exchange of information and
influence among organizational members where one of
those members has official authority to direct and
evaluate other members of organizational activities.”
Researchers have offered compelling arguments that
effective supervisory communication may have a
positive impact on other organizational outcomes, such
as improving employees’ job satisfaction and
organizational commitment [57], and maintaining
fulfilling workplace relationships [35].
One way to evaluate supervisor-subordinate
satisfaction is Leader-Member Exchange Theory
(LMX), which was originally developed to assess the
dyad relationship quality between leaders and members
[55]. Although not intended to examine communication
satisfaction between supervisors and subordinates,
LMX can be used as an effective tool to study this
issue because the exchange between leaders and
members is fundamentally achieved through
communication processes [10]. McCroskey and
Richmond [40] claim that when supervisors are more
assertive and responsive, subordinates will have a
higher evaluation of the supervisors’ credibility and
attractiveness, which may contribute to a positive
attitude toward their communication. Individual
characteristics, such as gender, race, educational
background [34], and workplace diversity [64] may
influence the supervisor-subordinate relationship as
well. In the organizational environment, a variety of
non-material goods can be exchanged in social
interaction [36], which includes information, advice,
and other types of social support [37]. These different
types of social currencies may lead to certain
leader-member relationships [23, 29]. However, there
is still a lack of evidence showing that supervisors’
capability to facilitate these social exchanges, such as
social support skills, can impact supervisor-subordinate
communication quality.
2.2. Social Support in the Organizational
Context
Since the 1980s, a growing body of studies has
attempted to explore the connections between social
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experience and clear understanding of the workplace
context. Support from friends and family is typically
emotional and instrumental, because friends and family
members can not only provide “a shoulder to lean on”
[42], but can also help the individual balance home and
work by freeing him/her from home responsibilities.
Because studies suggest that approximately one half of
one’s support network is comprised of friends, family,
and neighbors [69], it becomes increasingly important
to explore other contexts of support that constitute the
other half, such as one’s work environment.
Scholars
have
found
that
supportive
communication in organizational contexts is related to
reduced uncertainty, increased job satisfaction [43] and
occupational commitment [2]. Allen suggests that
employees’ perception on organizational support is
important, because if they don’t feel they are supported
or valued by their organization, they would be less
likely to develop organizational commitment. Social
support also contributes to decreased job stress and
burnout [49], attitudes toward an immediate supervisor
and the whole organization [6, 54], and emotional
stress in multi-cultural organizations [3].
Social support has been described as an advanced
form of workplace stress intervention [60]. However,
supervisors’ skills to provide support, particularly the
possibility to express care, boost self-esteem, and offer
other types of comforting/emotional messages, has
been understudied. The current study explores
supervisors’ social support skills (as perceived by their
subordinates) in terms of their ability to provide
informational, instrumental, and also emotional support
to employees. Moreover, supervisors’ support skills
may relate to employees’ motive to engage in
communication in the workplace and their overall
satisfaction
with
their
supervisor-subordinate
relationship. Empirical research in interpersonal
contexts suggests that social support is more effective
when it matches the goals of the support recipient.
More specifically, married couples were found to
perceive sensitivity from their respective relational
partners when they received the type of social support
that matched their goals [67]. In other words, an
individual would describe their partner as relationally
sensitive if they sought and were therefore given
emotional support. The existence of nonmatching
support across these married couples affected relational
satisfaction. This optimal matching model of social
support [20, 21] plays a key role in connecting the dots
(or variables) here: While Cutrona and her colleagues
assert that a relational partner is satisfied when he/she
finds social support to attend to a personal goal, here
we similarly argue that in an organizational context,
employees may be satisfied in relation to goals that
they have in communicating with supervisors and the
although House’s [32] four types of social support were
also made within the workplace, Miller has the most
straightforward and up-to-date version. Third,
compared with House [32] and Xu & Burleson [71],
Miller’s argument on supportive types owns an obvious
advantage: clarity and parsimony. House labeled the
fourth type as “appraisal,” which was identified as
evaluation and praise. In addition, Xu and Burleson
divided social support types into esteem, network
(generating social connection and the sense of
belonging), tangible (material assistance, similar to
instrumental), emotional, and informational support.
However, there is little evidence to show the boundary
of “appraisal,” “esteem,” or “network” from emotional
support. Behaviors such as confirming one’s work
performance, boosting one’s esteem, and providing a
sense of involvement should be a part of emotional
support, because these are all comforting behaviors that
attempt to reduce personal difficulties or
disappointments. Therefore, we believe that Miller’s
opinion on types of social support in the
workplace—emotional, informational, and instrumental
support—is the most parsimonious and straightforward.
These three types of support may be offered by
various sources in the workplace. In fact, network
scholars agree that various forms of social support are
sought and received from various forms of relational
ties [68, 69]. Wellman and Gulia examine the support
networks of community members in a Toronto borough
and conclude: “87% of the ties provide at least one
dimension of support. However, only 39% of the ties
provide at least three dimensions. To obtain a wide
range of support, people must actively shop within
their networks for those who specialize in giving this
sort of help to them. They cannot count on most ties
within their networks to give them the kinds of support
they might need.” In another study, Cutrona and her
colleagues [19] found that social support from parents
predicted children’s GPA, yet social support from
friends or romantic partners was not a significant
predictor. Taken together, these studies suggest that
social support is a resource that networks provide;
however, any single tie may only provide one type of
support meaning that individuals require strategic
maneuvering through their social networks to get the
variety of support needed. So who does an individual
turn to when dealing with stress at work?
The three most common sources—supervisors,
co-workers, and friends and family—all provide
potentially stressed workers the support they need to
cope with burnout [42]. Supervisors are more likely to
provide instrumental and informational support, such
as clarifying job expectations to reduce employees’
role ambiguity. Coworkers usually give informational
and emotional support because they have valuable
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escape, relaxation, and control motives were positively
related to Machiavellianism. In addition, affection and
pleasure motives also directly influence employees’
satisfaction
with
supervisors
[66].
The
previously-discussed literature provides rationale for
exploring how supervisors’ social support skills can
relate to employees’ motives to communicate with
them. Thus, the following hypotheses are proposed:
ultimate social support received. Therefore, the next
section addresses communication motives and the role
it can play in the optimal matching of and benefits
reaped from social support at work.
2.3. Interpersonal Communication Motives
(ICM)
Scholars exploring communication motives
suggest that communication is goal-oriented to satisfy
interpersonal needs for affiliation, security, and
ego-achievement [9, 50]. The early motives research
explored media contexts, using Gratification Theory to
explain media selection and effects [41]. Based on
Schutz’s [56] Interpersonal Needs Theory, Rubin,
Perse and Barbato [51] identified six primary motives
for communication: pleasure, affection, inclusion,
escape, relaxation, and control. Pleasure refers to the
need for fun, excitement, and entertainment; affection
is the need to express caring and love; inclusion
reflects the need to participate and maintain
relationships with others; escape focuses on the
avoidance of other activities; relaxation involves the
need to unwind and rest; control is used to maintain
power and influence over others. These motives
influence who we talk to, how we talk, and what we
talk about [28]. In response to the motives described
above, Rubin and Martin [50] later developed the
theory of Interpersonal Communication Motives (ICM)
to expand on the outcomes of such goal driven
communication.
Rubin
and
Rubin
[52]
argue
that
socio-psychological factors such as locus of control
and life-position, are predictors of interpersonal
motives. Paulsel and Mottet [47] examine temperament
traits, such as communication apprehension and
nonverbal immediacy as antecedent factors. Anderson
and Martin [4] investigate how communication
competency skills (assertiveness and responsiveness)
affect interpersonal motives, suggesting through
self-report data that competent communicators are
more likely to talk in response to affection and pleasure
needs, while non-competent communicators talk more
from control-and escape-related motives.
Communication motives have been explored in
various interpersonal contexts, including family
members [9, 25], friends [5], romantic relationships
[45], elders [8], as well as teacher-student interactions
[38, 67] among other relational contexts. However, this
topic has yet to receive enough attention from scholars
who study organizations.
One study examining motives in the
organizational setting indicates that employees’
Machiavellianism was found to have a negative
relationship with the affection motive; however,
H1: Supervisors’ social support skills (employees’
perception) are positively related to employees’
communication motives of pleasure, affection,
inclusion, and relaxation.
As discussed in the previous section, studies
about
supervisor-subordinate
communication
satisfaction have been pervasive. Nevertheless, the link
between supervisors’ social support skills and
employees’ perceived satisfaction needs to be explored,
and may be mediated by employees’ motives to
communicate with supervisors. Therefore, we predict
the following hypotheses:
H2: Employees’ communication motives of pleasure,
affection, inclusion, and relaxation with supervisors are
positively
related
to
supervisor-subordinate
communication satisfaction.
H3: Supervisors’ social support skills are positively
related to supervisor-subordinate communication
satisfaction.
3. Method
3.1. Participants and Procedures
Data was collected via students taking
communication courses at a large Midwestern
university. Students, in exchange for extra credit points,
were asked to distribute an online survey link to a
person they know who is 1) over 18 years of age; and
2) currently employed full-time. The heterogeneous
sample (N=222) was varied in terms of gender
(Male=90, Female=141), age (M=41, SD=11.7), and
educational level (high school 22%, college 58%, and
graduate school 21%). Employees are also from diverse
types of organizations and positions. Nine job
categories, originating from the 2000 Census Job
Classification Guide, include such work-related
positions as “professionals,” “technicians,” “sales
workers,” etc. Organizational level is measured along
three levels: executives (19%), managers (25%), and
general staff (59%). The primary content of the online
survey examined measures of employees’ perspective
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and attitude about their immediate supervisors’ social
support skills, motives to interact with supervisors, and
their relationship quality.
(M=2.34, SD=0.87), and 0.72 for control (M=2.48,
SD=0.84).
Leader-Member Exchange Scale (LMX) was used
to test employees’ relationship satisfaction with their
supervisors [36]. The 12-item inventory includes four
dimensions: affect, loyalty, contribution, and
professional respect. The responses ranged from
1=strongly disagree to 5=strongly agree, to examine
the relationship quality between supervisor and
subordinate, from the subordinate perspective. The
Cronbach’s Alpha in this scale is 0.92 (M=3.78,
SD=0.73).
3.2. Measures
Perceived social support skills. A scale was
adapted from Xu and Burleson’s [71] study about
desired and experienced social support among marital
couples. In that study, authors combined and rewrote
items from several existing measures including the
Inventory of Socially Supportive Behaviors [61], the
Supportive Actions Scale [63], and the Social Support
Behavior Scale [65]. The final instrument by Xu and
Burleson consisted of 35 items that fit into five support
types—emotional, esteem, informative, tangible, and
network. In the current study we used their scale;
however, instead of keeping the original support types,
we re-categorized these items as three types: emotional,
instrumental, and informational support to assess
perceived supervisors’ social support skills. The
re-organized scale shows a high reliability: emotional
support a=0.90 (M=3.59, SD=1.00), instrumental
a=0.92 (M=3.09, SD=1.32), and informative a=0.84
(M=3.30, SD=.85). Four items were deleted because of
their inappropriateness in an organizational setting
(e.g., “Telling you that he/she loves you and feels close
to you,” “Doing laundry or cooking for you while you
are preparing for an important task.”) The final version
of perceived supervisors’ social support skills includes
31 items, with responses ranging from 1=don’t receive
at all to 5=receive a great deal.
Interpersonal Communication Motive Scale
(ICMS). Rubin et al.’s [51] ICMS was employed to
measure the six primary motives for individual
communication: pleasure, affection, inclusion, escape,
relaxation, and control. The scale has 28 items,
assessing employees’ motives in talking with their
supervisor, ranging from 1= not at all like me, to 5=
exactly like me. One concern is the effectiveness of
using this measurement in the organizational setting
since it was developed to address interpersonal
motives. Employees’ motives in talking with
supervisors can be more limited because the possibility
that employees communicate with supervisors from
“affection” and “control” motives, for example, is quite
rare. However, one study [66] has used this scale to
measure employees’ communication motives with
supervisors, showing the feasibility of using the scale
within the organizational context. In this study, the
measurement got a reliability of 0.94 for pleasure
(M=2.81, SD=0.83), 0.83 for affection (M=3.20,
SD=0.75), 0.87 for inclusion (M=2.37, SD=0.86), 0.89
for escape (M=1.81, SD=0.75), 0.90 for relaxation
4. Results
All three hypotheses were supported using
Pearson’s r Correlation. See Table 1 which shows the
correlation for all variables.
4.1. Supervisors’ Social Support Skills and
Communication Motives [H1]
Perceived social support skills of immediate
supervisors (emotional, informative, and instrumental
combined) are positively related to employees’ motives
of pleasure (r=0.42, p<.001), affection (r=0.43,
p<.001), inclusion (r=0.30, p<.001), and relaxation
(r=0.38, p<.001). Hypothesis one was therefore
supported. In addition to the predicted variables, the
escape motive was also significant to a lesser degree
(r=0.17, p<.05), and the control motive was not
significantly related to support skills.
Further tests were run to explore the relationship
between each of the five significant motive types and
each of the three support skill types. Emotional support
was positively correlated with motives of pleasure
(r=0.43, p<.001), affection (r=0.43, p<.00), inclusion
(r=0.24, p<.001), and relaxation (r=0.35, p<.001).
Informational support was positively related to motives
of pleasure (r=0.38, p<.001), affection (r=0.31, p<.001),
inclusion (r=0.24, p<.001), escape (r=0.17, p<.05), and
relaxation (r=.32, p<.001). Instrumental support was
positively related with motives of pleasure (r=0.32,
p<.001), affection (r=0.38, p<.001), inclusion (r=0.30,
p<.001), escape (r=0.19, p<.001), and relaxation
(r=0.33, p<.001 ).
4.2. Communication Motives and Satisfaction
[H2]
Employees’ communication motives of pleasure
(r=0.53, p<.001), affection (r=0.53, p<.001), inclusion
(r=0.31, p<.001), and relaxation (r=0.35, p<.001) were
positively
related
to
supervisor-subordinate
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employees may find most types of social support in one
individual – their supervisor.
This empirical finding suggests important
implications for network scholars. Future research must
explore social support as a network resource, and
uncover other contexts whereby multiple forms of
social support may be found in a singular tie. In
addition, network ties must take into account the
diversity of resources that characterize relations. In
other words, when two ties are connected by multiple
edges, they are described as multiplex in that multiple
types of relations serve to connect them in the social
network. For example, a next-door neighbor may also
be a best friend and simultaneously a math partner and
fellow soccer teammate. This reductionistic approach
to multiplexity is a quantitative count of ties connecting
any two nodes. Amongst the employees sampled
herein, one type of relation is measured and explored:
the supervisor-subordinate interaction at work. This
singular relation may also be defined in terms of
multiplexity, as a qualitative assessment of relational
quality. Employees reap multiple forms of support
from the same alter type: their supervisor. One
important implication of these findings is the critical
need to differentiate quantitative from qualitative
assessments of multiplex ties, especially in studies
exploring the exchange of network resources and the
need to navigate one’s near-peers to acquire specific
resources from specified alters.
Additionally, emotional support has traditionally
been thought of as the byproduct of interaction with
intimate others such as friends and family [42, 69], and
not necessarily within the purview of vertical
organizational relations. Data here suggest that the
organizational landscape does not need to be devoid of
emotions; in fact a supervisors’ ability to emotionally
support their staff is related to their staff’s relational
satisfaction.
In sum, the findings here suggest that employees
can find social support from their supervisors, even
emotional support. One question arises, upon the
confirmation of such results. Cutrona and her
colleagues [22] explored neighborhood stressors and
the lack of support that neighbors feel due to lack of
resources in a given area. Above and beyond
intrapersonal and interpersonal characteristics, they
focus on the context of support (including the resources
available to the community as a whole). Therefore, to
what extent do these employees report receiving social
support from their supervisors not because of any
inherent characteristics of the supervisor him/herself or
the supervisor-subordinate relationship, but rather
because of the resources at hand and the social support
opportunities of the organizational context?
communication satisfaction. Hypothesis two was also
supported. The remaining communication motives of
escape and control did not yield any significant results.
4.3. Supervisors’ Social Support skills and
Communication Satisfaction [H3]
Perceived social support skills of immediate
supervisors (emotional, informative, and instrumental
combined)
were
positively
related
to
supervisor-subordinate communication satisfaction
(r=0.36, p<.001). Hypothesis three was also supported.
Results from further tests show that all types of
social support were positively correlated with
satisfaction individually. Emotional support was found
to have the highest correlation (r=0.43, p<.001),
followed by informative (r=0.29, p<.001), and
instrumental (r=0.25, p<.001) types of social support.
5. Discussion
Employees in disparate organizations, occupying
various roles in divergent job types, report significant
relationships between perceptions of supervisors’
social support skills with their personal communication
motives
and
overall
relational
satisfaction.
Interestingly, employees appear satisfied with
supervisor-subordinate interactions regardless of the
type of social support skills possessed by their
supervisors.
One of the major contributions of this study is the
importance of emotional support from supervisors and
how this behavior can improve the organizational
outcome. We reap various resources from networks
that we belong to. Earlier, it was suggested that
supervisors would be likely to provide instrumental
and informational support, and that more horizontal
relationships such as coworkers and friends and family
would be more oriented towards emotional support for
employees [42]. However, here we find that
supervisors do indeed provide all three types of social
support in various organizational contexts.
Network scholars have long suggested that
various forms of social support are situated across a
network of relations, and it is up to the individual to
seek out the type of support needed from the
appropriate other [18, 53, 69], aptly referred to by
Wellman and Wortley [69] as “different strokes from
different folks.” In attempting to uncover the “network
basis of social support,” Wellman and Gulia [68] argue
that heterogeneous, densely knit networks provide
more resources in terms of the availability of actors
that may provide various forms of social support. One
interesting finding found here suggests that in
organizations this may not be necessary, but instead
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three types of social support (except for the escape
motive, which doesn’t relate to emotional support).
This may suggest that communication motives in an
organizational setting need to be reassessed. One
observation made during data analysis was the lack of
corresponding motives that may lead to informational
social support. Many interactions in the workplace, we
assume, might be information seeking behaviors.
Simply, the typology borrowed from Rubin et al does
not identify a purely informational motive, which
typifies many communication situations. Future
research should re-evaluate the motives scale and
suggest more exhaustive categories that correspond
more explicitly to support types.
In all, this paper contributes to an otherwise
undersupplied body of literature on social support in
the workplace; an increasingly vital topic as employees
continue to face work strain, burnout, etc. Although we
reap various resources from networks that we belong to,
this study demonstrates that social support is within the
purview of the superior-subordinate relationship. Not
only is informational support key to the satisfaction of
workers, but instrumental and emotional types of
support are related to a healthy working environment as
well. Organizational leaders are encouraged to promote
the development and employment of social support in
the workplace to promote a more worker-satisficing
climate.
Although this study furthers our understanding of
social support in the work-environment, it also leads to
several open-ended questions as well. Supervisor’s
ability to provide support for their workers is an
important realization and early step in continuing to
understand and prevent burnout and stress in
organizational life. Future studies must unpack the
causational chain of events to determine whether
motives lead to perceptions of skill, or vice versa.
Among all the social support types, emotional
support from supervisors is found to be the most
important element that enhances supervisorsubordinate
communication
satisfaction
and
relationship quality. Although interaction in the
workplace is usually stereotyped as rational, structured,
strategic behavior [24, 72], when done effectively,
emotional communication between supervisors and
employees can potentially contribute to a positive and
healthy communication environment. This finding
illustrates the relevance of emotionality within
organizational contexts and should encourage future
research to continue exploring the process of emotional
interaction in the workplace.
Moreover, the perceived social support skills of
supervisors seem to be more paramount than the actual
support offered. Employees seek communication with
their supervisors for various reasons, yet five different
communication motives were significantly related to all
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6. References
[13] B. Burleson, Comforting Messages: Features,
Functions, and Outcomes. In J. A. Daly & J. M. Wiemann
(Eds.), Strategic Interpersonal Communication (pp. 135-161).
Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1994.
[1] T. Albrecht, B. Burleson, and D. Goldsmith, Supportive
Communication. In M. L. Knapp & G. R. Miller
(Eds.)., Handbook of Interpersonal Communication (pp.
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