A balanced view of supervisory family support: Effects on gratitude, indebtedness, and job crafting behaviors

Despite resource-based theories espousing the virtues of supervisory family support (SFS), we question the definitiveness of an oversimplified assumption that receiving SFS is a beneficial, positive experience. We develop a model based on appraisal theories of emotion, with results from two experimental studies and a multi-wave survey study supporting our notion of the need for a more balanced view. First, SFS is positively linked to employees’ feelings of gratitude (a positive emotion) and indebtedness (a negative emotion). Second, gratitude mediates the link between SFS and approach job crafting. Yet—arguing that a key feature of SFS is that it empowers employees to temporarily disengage or withdraw from some work-related tasks—we also find that indebtedness mediates the link between SFS and avoidance job crafting. Third, considering employees’ work-family conflict (WFC) as a contextual factor that moderates the effects of SFS, we find that WFC conditions the indirect effect of SFS on avoidance job crafting via indebtedness. With these insights, our balanced view of SFS offers a more comprehensive assessment of employees’ lived experiences associated with the receipt of SFS.