Measuring primary employment relationship satisfaction in South African supervisory relationships

Employment relationship management is an important responsibility of all supervisors and subordinates. It therefore stands to reason that employment relationship satisfaction levels of subordinates in supervisory relationships, or primary employment relationships, will be strongly influenced by supervisory behaviour in such relationships. Previous research findings suggested that primary employment relationship satisfaction (PERS) can be regarded as a distinct construct that relates to subordinate perceptions of the levels of trust, compliance, fairness and good faith that their immediate supervisors display in their employment relationship. Literature suggests numerous significant relationships between trust, compliance, fairness and good faith and a host of desirable and undesirable organisational behaviour forms. A valid and reliable measure of PERS was thus required to enable further scientific research into the relationship between PERS and other organisational behaviour phenomena. This article subsequently reports on the development of a measure of PERS, and reports findings related to the validity, reliability and generalisability of the measure. The authors concluded that the measure is more than adequately valid and reliable for purposes of measuring PERS of subordinate employees, and made recommendations on the use of the measure in organisational and research environments.