How do supervisors foster job satisfaction among public sector employees?

Though the role of supervisors in leveraging public sector employees’ job satisfaction has been empirically established, the mechanisms underlying this relationship have not been fully understood. Drawing upon conservation of resources theory, we theorize co-worker support and perceived reasonable workload as a two-phase mediation mechanism to link supervisor support to job satisfaction. Furthermore, based on complementary resources perspective, we propose that tangible job resources enhance the effects of supervisor support and co-worker support on reasonable workload perceived by employees. Results from structural equation modelling analysis with data from the 2019 U.S. Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey support our hypotheses.