Supervisors as SMEs: The relationship between supervisor job experience and ratings of subordinate skill importance

This study investigated the relationship between supervisor job experience and ratings of the importance of eight skill components for performing subordinates' jobs. When examining these correlations, statistical control was utilized to ensure that supervisor and subordinate characteristics confounded with supervisor job experience were not affecting hypothesized relationships. As predicted, there were statistically significant positive correlations between supervisor job experience and ratings on 6 of the 8 components, Also as predicted, controlling for the characteristics confounded with supervisor job experience made a substantial difference in results; 13 of the 16 correlations using statistical control significantly differed from correlations that did not. This illustrates that future research on SME characteristics should consider controlling variables confounded with the focal characteristic(s) under study in order to more thoroughly understand characteristic-rating relationships. Implications of these findings for research and practice are discussed and suggestions for future research are offered.