Supervisor Meddling: How Supervisor Helping Motives Can Invite Negative Employee Behaviors—And the Moderating Role of Perspective-Taking

Employees’ helping motives—whether to benefit themselves or others (henceforth, self- and other-oriented helping motives)—engender helping among coworkers and positive relational consequences. However, there are reasons to believe that the impact of helping motives of supervisors may be more complex in supervisor–employee relationships, where there is potential for misunderstandings due to differences in role responsibilities and limited interactions. To gain insight into this issue, we integrate interdependence theory and research on perspective-taking to develop and test theoretical predictions regarding the role of supervisor meddling—defined as supervisors interposing themselves obtrusively into work-related affairs of their work unit and employees. Specifically, we theorize that supervisor helping motives may result in lower levels of employee citizenship behavior and higher levels of counterproductive behavior directed toward the supervisor because the helping motives can manifest in supervisor meddling. We further theorize that these deleterious effects of supervisor helping motives may be especially pronounced when both supervisors and employees lack perspective-taking of the benefits and costs of the meddling behavior, respectively, to the other party. Results of two studies largely support our hypotheses. Implications to theory and practice are discussed.