Perceived Supervisor Support and Work Engagement: Mediating Role of Job-Related Affective Well-Being

Abstract

The present study mainly investigated the mediating role of job-related affective well-being between perceived supervisor support and work engagement among university academic staff. The job-related affective well-being were scored into two subscales, positive emotion and negative emotion. Selected using the simple random technique, a total of 110 academic staff of a public university, mean aged 42.63 years (SD = 8.51) completed a set of survey instrument which consisted of Survey of Perceived Supervisor Support Scale (Shanock & Eisenberger, 2006), Job-related Affective Well-Being Scale (Van Katwyk et al., 2000) and Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (Schaufeli & Bakker, 2003). Results showed that perceived supervisor support and both subscales of job-related affective well-being correlated significantly with work engagement. Findings indicated that both positive emotion and negative emotion of job-related affective well-being partially mediated the relationship between perceived supervisor support and work engagement. Hence, perceived supervisor support influenced the emotional states and in turn influenced work engagement. The findings of this study provide implications for a healthy relationship between supervisor and employee to elicit positive emotion and weaken negative emotion which in turn enhances work engagement for organization’s sustainability.