S.O.S Support Of Supervisors - A qualitative study on how middle-level managers perceive support within their organization: A social exchange perspective

Abstract: Support in an organizational context has been a topic of academic discussion for many years. While there is no doubt that organizational support has been researched thoroughly, it seems that the focus always seems to land on the employee-manager perspective. In this thesis, we aim to provide a new and intriguing perspective on support in an organizational context, by using the manager-manager and manager-organization perspectives of middle-management. Because our research has been performed with a phenomenographic methodology, we will not be making any assumptions regarding what results we believe we might see. Instead, through qualitative method, we have conducted a series of semi-structured interviews consisting of questions about organizationally supportive efforts and their effects. Combining our empirical data with Social Exchange Theory and Organizational Support Theory, the hope is that we are able to provide a representative insight into middle-managers' own perception of support in their organization. The results of our research did confirm that supportive efforts made by the organization are highly important for the middle-level managers themselves. We also discovered that the supportive functions seemed to play the biggest role in how the middle-level managers experienced supportive efforts within their organization. Through this thesis we have learnt that the topic of managers and their experienced support needs to be, both academically and theoretically, researched much further so as to gain valuable information that can contribute to the welfare and thriving of managers in the future.