The Impact of Supervisor Supports on the Relationship between Fringe Benefits and Relational Contract: A Moderated Model of Supervisors Supports

Background: Organizations are increasingly confronted with crisis that challenge their social and economic stability. Organizational fringe benefits makes employees able to thrive in the face of adversity. Also, fringe benefits are important component of employers’ compensation and help significant positive determinants of job satisfaction as nonwage job amenities. Even if many fringe benefits have a clear monetary value, many companies usually provide various fringe benefits for their employers to make better outputs. In addition, several fringe benefits contribute to employees status (e.g., the company car, company housing, support leisure activities). The relational contracts will positively motivate emotional laborers to realize authentic attitude of their life, via emotional laborers may serve their customers with a true heart. Therefore, this present study explicitly focuses on investigating the relationship between fringe benefits and relational contracts among social workers in Korea. This study examines the role of supervisor supports as moderators of associations between fringe benefits and relational contracts in the non-profit sector.

Methods: Data were collected from 323 social workers in the non-profit sector (e.g., community center) in Gwangju, South Korea. The research questions are: Do fringe benefits affect relational contracts? 2) Do supervisor supports moderate the effects of fringe benefits on relational contracts? 3) If so, how does this moderating effect differ between them?

Descriptive analyses estimated differences by gender, age, educational level, and organizational careers. In the main analysis, multiple regression analyses were conducted to determine the effect of fringe benefits on relational contracts, considering how the main effects, moderator, and interactions were related to the relational contracts variable. The analyses were conducted using SPSS 23.

Results: This study demonstrates that there are positive relationships between both fringe benefits and relational contract (β= .27, p< .05) and supervisor support and relational contract (β= .45, p< .001). Also, there is an interaction effect on supervisor support and fringe benefits on relational contract (β= -.11, p< .05). These results indicate that supervisor support had moderating effects on the relationships between social workers’ fringe benefits and relational contract outcome. Indeed, when lower level of fringe benefits was coupled with higher level of supervisor support, so the role of supervisor support are more significant on lower level of fringe benefits.

Implication: The findings suggest that social welfare policy implications and targeted assistance for those social workers trying to secure adequate employment with better fringe benefits. Also, examining the effects of differences of fringe benefits and relational contract depending on level of supervisor support in order to improve suggestions on finding ways encourage relational contract among social workers. Primarily, these findings emphasize the importance of supervisory supports in social service agencies with low level of fringe benefits. Finally, this study discusses directions for institutional and managerial tasks, and future research on the same research topics.