The Role of the Supervisor in Creating and Maintaining an Emotionally Healthy Workplace

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-1-2021

Publication Title

The Emotional Self at Work in Higher Education

First page number:

246

Last page number:

261

Abstract

Supervisors, be they employed in higher education or in other industries, operate in capacities that allow them to shape organizational cultures within their departments, divisions, colleges, or broader units. Within the higher educational model, this means that supervisors are uniquely placed to counteract negative elements within the culture of academia, which historically has tended to prioritize individual competitive output, with alternative models that may offer improvements to the emotional health and well-being of higher education employees. This chapter seeks to describe the impact of stress on the health of workers, the employment stressors that are unique to higher education, and the processes by which supervisors in higher education can use their positional power to counteract said stressors and improve academic organizational cultures. The chapter includes practical suggestions for supervisors to enhance wellness and decrease emotional harm in scenarios common to the higher education workplace as identified via social media crowdsourcing.

Keywords

Connection power; Mindfulness; Informational power; Titular power; Organizational culture; Expert power; Cultural norms; Reward power; Coercive power

Disciplines

Library and Information Science

Language

English


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