Mutual Support in Mixed-Status Relationships

Abstract

The main purpose of this study was to learn more about how support operates in mixed-status pairs. Previous work has found fairly low agreement between recipients and providers on the functions of support exchanged in general relationships. The central question in this study was whether perceptual congruency regarding social support interactions had an impact on key aspects of task relationships between mixed-status partners, including relational certainty, trust, talk about new ideas and performance evaluation. Results of 95 nurse manager-staff nurse dyads showed that those relationships where nurse managers reported giving the most support and staff nurses reported receiving the most support were the relationships with the highest perceived reciprocity, performance ratings and most frequent discussions on innovation.