Antecedents and consequences of supervisory support: The moderating affects of perceived organizational status of the supervisor

This study investigated the relationships between transformational leadership, perceived supervisory support (PSS), perceptions of the organizational status of one's supervisor, affective commitment to the organization, and affective commitment to one's supervisor. In a sample of 139 respondents, transformational leadership was found to have a statistically significant relationship with PSS. PSS was found to have statistically significant relationship with both affective commitment to the organization and affective commitment to the supervisor, although the relationship was much smaller between PSS and affective commitment to the organization. PSS was hypothesized to function as a mediator of the relationship between transformational leadership and the two targets of affective commitment. Analyses supported the hypothesis that PSS partially mediates the relationship between transformational leadership and affective commitment to the supervisor; however analyses did not find that PSS mediated the relationship between transformational leadership and affective commitment to the organization. In addition, the potential moderating effect of perceptions of the supervisor's organizational status on the relationship between PSS and the two types of affective commitment was studied. Hierarchical linear regression analyses found no interaction or moderating effect of PSS and perceptions of the supervisor's organizational status on affective commitment to the supervisor, but there was an interaction effect on affective commitment to the organization. Finally, the analyses found that affective commitment to one's supervisor mediated the effect of PSS on affective commitment to the organization.