Family-supportive supervisor behaviours: a cross-cultural study

The paper was part of the symposium "Title: International Research on Family-Friendly Supports in Diverse Workplace Contexts" organised by Bianca Stumbitz, Clarice Santos and Suzan Lewis.

Despite the broadening scope of work-family research internationally, findings from the Global North continue to dominate the literature. Findings are often applied to the Global South in a non-critical way, without taking sufficient account of the cultural, socio-economic and political contexts in which working families are embedded in these countries. In addition, the large research literature on family friendly workplace support is based predominantly on formal HR policies in large organizations, providing only partial insights into the highly complex nature of provision and take-up of support in practice. In line with this year’s conference theme, this symposium brings together culturally-sensitive research on family-friendly supports in diverse workplace contexts, with a particular focus on the Global South. The papers focus on qualitative methodologies, and also cover those workers who are often overlooked in research, such as migrant workers and those in low-income/low-skilled employment. They underscore the different dynamics in family-friendly workplace supports across and within national contexts, demonstrate the need for culture- and context-sensitive interventions that leave no one behind, and highlight implications for work-family research more widely.

The organizers will facilitate an overall discussion of the presentations with a particular focus on (i) challenges in carrying out context-sensitive research, (ii) challenges in implementing approaches that provide solutions for improving family-friendly support practices on the ground, (iii) identifying research directions and potential future collaborations.

Paper Abstracts

Despite calls for context sensitive research on work and family over many years, most work-family research has neglected context or attends only to certain limited aspects of it, ignoring the complexity of contextual interconnections.

In the first paper, a multicultural team presents a Cross-cultural Study on Family-supportive Supervisor Behaviours. Family-supportive supervisors are those that empathize with, and actively facilitate, an individual employee’s need to balance demands from the work and non-work spheres. Meta-analyses have shown that family-supportive supervisor behaviours (FSSB), including either emotional and instrumental support towards their subordinates, role modeling behaviour or creative work-family management, have positive effects related to work, non-work and health. However, the theoretical development of FSSB mostly draws on large scale quantitative studies and research stemming from the US, with the implicit assumption that the FSSB construct is universal across cultures. An extensive literature search by the authors revealed that FSSB studies exploring cultural differences are extremely limited. To address that gap, the study adopts a qualitative approach to explore how FSSB is interpreted and experienced in a mix of countries that include the US, China, Brazil and India. It aims to explore multi-level antecedents of FSSB, such as gender role orientation of supervisors, as well as cultural and contextual determinants of FSSB.

The next paper by Lilian Miles, titled Enhancing Women Migrant Workers’ Capability for Sexual and Reproductive Health: the Case of Malaysia, uses the capabilities approach to explore ways of supporting women migrant workers in Malaysia to meet their sexual and reproductive health (SRH) needs. These women are subject to extreme exploitation with few rights and entitlements, and work in harsh conditions in an environment unresponsive to their health and well-being. The approach focuses on the actual living that people manage to achieve (as opposed to the amount of resources available to them) and the emphasis is on securing real opportunities to achieve a set of outcomes which they wish for. Drawing on a case study involving employers, NGOs, unions, healthcare providers, government agencies and women migrant workers in Malaysia, the paper explores how different stakeholders in community, work and family can support and expand these women’s ability to achieve good SRH. It also highlights the challenges in applying the approach.

The final presentation by Ameeta Jaga and Bianca Stumbitz focuses on the Role of Supervisor Support for Breastfeeding Mothers in Low Pay Factory Settings: The Case of Clothing Workers in South Africa. Breastfeeding support at work has been identified as a low-cost measure that can lead to considerable positive outcomes for mother and infant as well as the employer; yet the return to work for mothers is a major barrier to optimal breastfeeding, particularly for women in low-income work. As South Africa has one of the lowest exclusive breastfeeding rates in the world and every fifth child is malnourished, improving breastfeeding continuation rates has become a health and economic imperative. In this qualitative study the authors explore workplace breastfeeding support within the South African clothing industry, which is dominated by women (89%) who are mainly black and poor, and return to work soon after childbirth because of economic necessity. The findings point to a very important relationship between the factory line supervisor and mother for providing support and information to breastfeeding mothers. The authors propose solutions aimed to upskill supervisors to play a key role in facilitating breastfeeding at work and prolonging the breastfeeding duration for working mothers.