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

Despite the demonstrable value of perceived family-supportive supervision (“FSS”) for both individual and organizational outcomes, questions remain regarding the behaviors supervisors engage in to provide this targeted family support. Thus, to address related conceptual and operational issues and discern both what family supportive supervision is (conceptually) and looks like in-situ (behaviorally), we develop a behavioral typology of FSS using a multi-study mixed methods design. The resultant behavioral index and typological structure is distinguished by two dimensions and spans the full spectrum of family unsupportive-supportive supervision— a foundational step necessary for the advancement of FSS research and practice.