Theoretical Background

Although supervisors play a critical role in providing work-family support to subordinates, the relationship between supervisors’ leadership approach and subordinate perceptions of family supportive supervisor behaviors is not well understood. Yet research on psychosocial work environments and occupational health (Hobfoll 1989, 2002; Johnson and Hall 1996) suggests that supervisors’ leadership styles are likely to influence work-family support and have implications for employee health, performance, and well-being. As our multi-stage model in Fig. 1 shows, we argue that supervisors adopting a transformational leadership style are more likely to exhibit FSSB. In line with the work-home resources model (Ten Brummelhuis and Bakker 2012), we argue that FSSB represents a contextual resource whereby supervisors adopting a transformational leadership style provide different types of social support to help their subordinates meet their work and nonwork-related needs. Supervisors can be conceptualized as a key component of the work environment in which employees are embedded, providing job resources which spillover into the nonwork sphere that buffer stress and demands. As a work-based contextual resource, FSSB has important effects on employee health and job outcomes.

Transformational Leadership and FSSB: A Resource Perspective

The transformational leadership literature suggests that when leaders engage in positive behavior patterns such as providing intellectual stimulation, inspiration about work, and expressing genuine concern about individual employees’ needs, leaders create positive work conditions that enhance employees’ beliefs in their own abilities and motivate them to higher levels of performance and well-being (Arnold et al. 2015). Transformational leaders remind employees their work is meaningful, foster positive emotions, enhance work engagement, and provide role modeling, coaching, and mentoring (Arnold et al. 2007). Occupational health reviews suggest that such leaders create a positive, psychologically supportive, healthy work environment (Arnold 2017) that fosters well-being while reducing stress, negative job rumination, and work-family conflict. Exposure to transformational leaders increases followers’ enthusiasm, energy, and commitment, leading to extra effort and higher performance (Bass 1985).