Content area
Abstract
This study established a link between the congruity of subordinates' communicator style expectations and experiences and their satisfaction with supervision through an integrated review of literature. The purpose of this study was to examine whether types of congruity, conceptualized as the interaction between communicator style expectations of and experiences with one's supervisor, affected subordinates' satisfaction with supervision. Main effects for expectation and experience were also examined.
The participants (n = 212) were adult students enrolled at a private midwestern college in a nontraditional, accelerated, degree program designed for the working adult. A modified version of the Communicator Style Measure (Norton, 1983) was used to assess subordinates' perceptions of communicator style expectations of and experiences with their supervisors. Satisfaction with supervision was measured using the Job Descriptive Index (Smith, Kendall, & Hulin, 1969). A two factor analysis of variance was used to analyze subordinates' satisfaction with supervision (dependent variable) as a function of subordinates' expectations of and experiences with one's supervisor for each communicator style subconstruct.
The results revealed a significant interaction effect between expectation and experience for 9 of the 11 communicator style subconstructs: friendly, relaxed, attentive, precise, animated/expressive, dramatic, open, dominant, and communicator image. A significant main effect of experience was found for the communicator style subconstructs impression leaving and contentious/argumentative. All other main effects were rendered uninterpretable by significant interaction effects or were not significant.
In general, these findings provided overwhelming evidence that subordinates' communicator style expectations and experiences act together to influence satisfaction with supervision. The significant interaction effects supported the conclusion that types of congruity incorporating communicator style expectations of and experiences with one's supervisor affected subordinates' satisfaction with supervision. Furthermore, depending on the nature of the communicator style subconstruct, satisfaction with supervision was affected by the interaction between expectation and experience in different ways. The dissertation concluded with overall implications and limitations of the study.
