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  • Development and Validation ...
    Ford, Robert C.; Guzzo, Renata; Abbott, JeAnna L.; Bowen, John T.

    Journal of leadership & organizational studies, 05/2019, Volume: 26, Issue: 2
    Journal Article

    In an increasingly service-oriented economy, the importance of understanding supervisors’ impact on employees working in a fun work environment continues to grow. While researchers have learned much about the negative outcomes of abusive supervisors, relatively little is known about ebullient supervisors and the beneficial outcomes caused by leaders who create fun work environments for employees. The purpose of this article is to define the concept of an ebullient supervisor and develop and validate a scale to measure the construct of ebullient supervision (ES). A brief overview of the construct is presented along with its anticipated theoretical and empirical relationships with constructs that might be closely related. Construct definitions are developed and items for an ES measure are evaluated using a three-sample validation study. A combined exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis approach was used. This was followed by an analysis of the criterion-related validity. The results show that the ES has convergent validity with other supervisor support measures. One of the distinguishing factors of an ES, however, is that through the supervisor’s actions and behaviors the ebullient supervisor helps create a fun work environment for employees that may have many beneficial outcomes for organizations. Developing a measure of ES allows future researchers to add new insights to the management literature by being able to better investigate the unique benefits of this type of supervision for both organizations and employees.