Abstract

Although social support provided by supervisors has been recognized as one of the key factors that help employees utilize work-life balance (WLB) programs in their organization and maintain balance between their work and life, the factors that influence supervisors’ willingness to support their subordinates have not yet been sufficiently examined. This article investigated whether supervisors’ positive or negative perceptions of WLB policy and their subordinate’s past performance influenced supervisors’ willingness to accept their subordinates’ work arrangement requests, using data collected from 2,230 Japanese workers. The results showed that when supervisors had a positive perception of WLB policy, it positively influenced their acceptance of their subordinates’ requests, while negative perceptions had a negative impact on acceptance. Further, regardless of what was requested, high performance subordinates received more favorable treatment from their supervisors than low performance counterparts did.

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