Telework Participation and Employee Attitudes in U.S. Federal Government Agencies: The Moderating Roles of Perceived Supervisor Support and Fairness

A new era of proliferated telework was ushered in by the Covid-19 pandemic and powered by rapid technological advancements in connectivity and network availability. Previous telework research has established significant relationships with employee attitudinal outcomes to include job satisfaction, turnover intention, and organizational commitment. However, most prior studies have examined direct or mediated relationships that overlook the additional complexity and explanatory power of moderating variables. Drawing from social exchange theory and with secondary support from public service motivation theory, this dissertation examines telework from the employee perspective by exploring the moderating role that perceived supervisory support and perceived fairness play on job satisfaction, turnover intention, and organizational commitment. A large sample of U.S. federal agency employees (N=557,778) collected from the 2022 Office of Personnel Management’s Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey provides strong insight into these interactions through a series of regression analyses. Empirical evidence found that perceived supervisory support strengthened the relationship between telework participation and all three dependent variables, while perceived fairness strengthened the relationship between telework participation and turnover intention but weakened the relationship between telework participation and both job satisfaction and organizational commitment. These results provide important theoretical and practical implications for U.S. federal agencies in the post-Covid 19 era.