Employee perceptions of management relations as influences on job satisfaction and quit intentions Stephen Frenkel & Karin Sanders & Tim Bednall Published online: 3 April 2012 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012 Abstract In this paper we use a relational approach to investigate how employee perceptions of their relationships with three types of managers—senior, line, and human resource managers—are related to employees’ job satisfaction and intention to quit. Based on an employee survey (n 0 1,533), and manager network data (n 0 140) in ten organizations operating in Australia, we found that the extent of agreement between employees’ perceptions of their relations with senior and line management was positively related to these outcome variables. In addition, we found these relationships were strengthened in organizations where HR and line managers reported high-frequency communication between the two groups. Implications of our findings are briefly canvassed. Keywords Senior management . Line management . HR management . Job satisfaction . Intention to quit Strategic human resource management (SHRM) focuses on identifying ways to encourage and harness employee capabilities to the organization’ s strategic goals. Theorizing the relationship between HR (human resources) and performance has led Asia Pac J Manag (2013) 30:7–29 DOI 10.1007/s10490-012-9290-z The research reported in this article was funded by an Australian Research Council Linkage Grant (LP0562132) including support from the Australian Human Resource Institute. Thanks to Paul Gollan, Rebekah East, Paula Saunders, and Suzana Trajkovski who contributed to this project and to Yucheng Eason Zhang for research assistance. S. Frenkel (*) : K. Sanders : T. Bednall Australian School of Business, University of New South Wales, Sydney 2052, Australia e-mail: s.frenkel@unsw.edu.au T. Bednall e-mail: tbednall@gmail.com K. Sanders Faculty of Behavioural Science, Twente University, P.O. Box 217, 7500AE Enschede, Netherlands e-mail: k.sanders@unsw.edu.au e-mail: k.sanders@gw.utwente.nl