Supervisors’ need-related behaviors and employees’ functioning: A person-centered investigation

Using a recent tripartite representation of supervisors’ behaviors rooted in Self-Determination Theory (SDT), this person-centered study sought to identify the different configurations (profiles) of supervisors’ need-supportive, need-thwarting, and need-indifferent behaviors as perceived by their subordinates. It also investigated how these supervisory profiles were related to subordinates’ levels of need satisfaction, affective organizational commitment, performance, and burnout. Latent profile analyses were estimated in a sample of 807 employees ( M age = 39.17; 42.7% women) recruited via the Prolific Academic crowdsourcing platform. Our results revealed five distinct profiles of supervisors’ need-related behaviors: (1) globally unfavorable, (2) globally moderately unfavorable and specifically indifferent, (3) globally moderately favorable, (4) globally unfavorable and specifically thwarting, and (5) globally unfavorable and specifically inconsistent. In line with our expectations, these profiles shared distinct associations with all outcomes. Moreover, our results showed that subordinates’ specific perceptions of their supervisor need-related behaviors mattered, beyond their global perception of their supervisor, when predicting employee functioning. These findings underline the importance of considering global and specific levels of need-related behaviors when seeking to understand supervisory profiles and their associations with employee functioning.