The Impact of Control Preferences Fit Between Employees and Their Supervisors on Employee Job Satisfaction
The Impact of Control Preferences Fit Between Employees and Their Supervisors on Employee Job Satisfaction

Summary/Abstract: Control preferences differentiate people with regard to their inclination towards a certain division of control in an interdependent situation. Social situations that block one’s capability to exert a preferred type of control can be evaluated as unpleasant and provoke their abandonment. We hypothesized that incompatibility of control preferences between leaders and followers would result in diminished job satisfaction among the followers. Such incompatibility could stem from either discrepancy between leader-follower control preferences (e.g. a discrepant preference for collaboration) or too great a similarity (e.g. a similarly strong preference for domination). In our study, 203 participants rated their own control preferences and the perceived control preferences of their immediate supervisors. The results of polynomial regression with response surface analysis showed that job satisfaction was higher when a follower was aligned with a leader at a high level of collaboration preference rather than at a low level of collaboration preference. Contrary to our expectations, a similarity rather than a dissimilarity in dominance between employees and their leaders predicted higher job satisfaction among employees. Job satisfaction was higher when leaders were perceived as having greater respect for autonomy, regardless of the follower’s reactive autonomy. Finally, job satisfaction increased as both the follower’s proactive autonomy and the leader’s respect for autonomy increased.

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