Substitute and Complementary Effects of Social Support on the Dimensions of Empowerment

The study examines the interactions among the effect of social support provided to an individual by three groups, viz., family, colleagues, and superior, on each dimension of psychological empowerment. On the basis of earlier studies we have considered the following six dimensions of psychological empowerment here: meaning, competence, impact, self-determination at job and organizational levels, and control in non-work domain. We hypothesized that there is substitute effect between family support (support received from family members) and workplace support (support provided by colleagues and superior) and that there is complementary effect between colleague and superior support. We also hypothesized that the interactive effect of all three forms of social support together will be positive. This study was done for 401 women primary school teachers from 54 schools located in the state of West Bengal in India after a pilot survey of 288 respondents for pre-testing the instrument. The teachers rated their psychological empowerment and the family support available to them. Colleague support and superior’s support was rated by the teachers’ colleagues and superior respectively. On an average 2-3 colleagues responded for each teacher, resulting in total 1026 colleague responses. Inter-rater agreement was checked before aggregating colleagues’ responses. Tests for substitute and complementary effects were done in two ways: one, by hierarchical regression analysis after applying the centering procedure and two, using the macro “simple-3way.sps” available with the statistical package SPSS 17. As hypothesized, we found support for substitute and complementary effects. Employees having low colleague support required stronger family support to perceive greater meaning in their work (substitute effect). Similarly, employees having low superior’s support need more family support to have better opinion of their competence, more impact of their work, and higher level of self-determination in organizational context. Our findings also showed that employees with supportive superior perceive more competence to do their work and greater self-determination in the organizational context if given further support by their colleagues, thus showing complementary effect. Interestingly, there is evidence of substitute effect rather than complementary effect for control in non-work domain. We also found that if support from all three groups is high then employees perceive more meaning in their work, greater self-determination in the job context, and better control in non-work domain.