Coping with Home Demands: the Relative Influence of Subgroups, Workgroups, and Supervisor Support

Integrating social information processing theory and the faultline literature, we examine the extent to which focal individuals’ levels of coping with home demands (i.e., using social support, limiting avocational activities, and avoiding responsibility) are related to the aggregated levels of coping used by their subgroup members, as well as by non-subgroup members in their workgroups. We predict that subgroup coping, based on the simultaneous alignment of multiple social-identity-related characteristics (i.e., gender, age, marital status, and parental status), more strongly relates to focal individuals’ coping than does workgroup coping, and group effects are stronger when focal individuals perceive higher family supportive supervision. In a sample of 3,640 staff employees in 471 workgroups, we found that, for the coping strategies of using social support and limiting avocational activities, subgroup coping is more positively related to individuals’ coping than is workgroup coping. Family supportive supervision moderates the relationship between subgroup (but not workgroup) coping and individual coping; subgroup coping is more positively related to individual coping when family supportive supervision is higher rather than lower. Further, at a higher level of family supportive supervision, subgroup coping is more positively related to individual coping than is workgroup coping. Results underscore subgroups as a proximal social context that shapes individuals’ coping behaviors, and family supportive supervision as a contextual signal that spurs coping-related information diffusion within subgroups.