Family-Supportive Supervision around the Globe

Research suggests that suggests that leaders and supervisors’ social support of employees’ needs to jointly carry out work and family demands is important for organizational productivity and employee well-being. In this chapter, we examine the origins of research on the construct of family supportive supervision (FSS), which is the extent to which employees perceive their immediate supervisors as exhibiting attitudes and behaviors that are supportive of their family role demands. We discuss use of this measure in organizational intervention research and in studies around the globe. Implications for future research and practice examined include continuing to improve measurement and construct development using cross-national samples, increasing study of change and intervention effectiveness in many culture contexts, and further examination of gender as moderators of cross-cultural contextual influences.