Impact of supervisor training and leadership style on employee assistance program utilization

Abstract

Supervisory referrals are one of the critical aspects of the employee assistance process and are necessary in order to have an effective and successful program. This study examined the impact of supervisory training in the EAP process on the tendency to refer, as well as the influence of leadership style as defined in terms of Consideration or Initiating Structure behaviors. It was hypothesized that supervisors judged high in Consideration would be more likely to refer subordinates to the EAP program than those judged high in Initiating Structure. Further, the two different leadership styles would tend to refer different types of employee performance problems and supervisors participating in an EAP training session would tend to refer more. Lastly, it was hypothesized that leadership style would interact with EAP training to produce different referral rates. The findings indicate that supervisors judged high in Initiating Structure refer more than those high in Consideration and they refer more for interpersonal problems rather than task-oriented performance problems. Training did not have a significant effect on referring behavior for supervisors and no interaction between leadership style and training was found. It was suggested that modification of the supervisory training may aid in encouraging supervisors to utilize the EAP as a management tool as well as compensate for some of the differences found in referring behavior with regard to leadership style.

Notes

This item is only available in print in the UCF Libraries. If this is your thesis or dissertation, you can help us make it available online for use by researchers around the world by downloading and filling out the Internet Distribution Consent Agreement. You may also contact the project coordinator Kerri Bottorff for more information.

Graduation Date

1990

Semester

Fall

Advisor

Wooten, William

Degree

Master of Science (M.S.)

College

College of Arts and Sciences

Department

Psychology

Format

PDF

Pages

75 p.

Language

English

Length of Campus-only Access

None

Access Status

Masters Thesis (Open Access)

Identifier

DP0027721

Subjects

Arts and Sciences -- Dissertations, Academic; Dissertations, Academic -- Arts and Sciences

Accessibility Status

Searchable text

This document is currently not available here.

Share

COinS