Subjects: Psychology >> Management Psychology submitted time 2024-06-05
Abstract： Family and work are essential domains of most adults’ daily lives in the modern era. Family-work conflict is “a form of inter-role conflict in which role pressures from the work and family domains are mutually incompatible in some respects.” Although the negative consequences of family-work conflict have featured prominently in the literature, scholars have insinuated that it may yield positive work behaviors. However, there is little empirical evidence demonstrating the positive results of family-work conflicts and the mechanisms for such functional consequences. To address this theoretical gap, we drew upon the identity maintenance perspective and hypothesized that employees who experience family-work conflict perceive a loss of job performance and desire to maintain work identity, which, in turn, facilitates employees’ work effort and considers reducing family hours.
We conducted three studies to test our hypotheses. In Study 1, a recall experiment was conducted to test the causal effect between family-work conflict and perceived job-performance loss. We recruited 200 participants through Credamo platform. Family-work conflict was manipulated by asking participants to recall their experiences. The results support the causal relationship between family-work conflict and perceived job-performance loss. In Study 2, we confirmed the conclusion through a between-participant scenario experiment. We recruited 232 full-time employees from southern China. When the test was administered, the participants were randomly assigned to one of the two experimental conditions: a high family-work conflict (N = 120) and a low family-work conflict (N = 112). Subsequently, the participants were required to read and describe the scenario and its content, respectively. They then completed the manipulation check of family-work conflict, reported their perceived job-performance loss and work-effort intention, and considered reducing family conflict. In Study 3, we conducted a multi-wave field study with 786 dyadic data points from 100 employees. At Time 1, the employees were asked to report their demographic information. At Time 2, the employees completed three reports daily for 10 consecutive days. In the first report, the employees rated their affectivity, overnight sleep quality, and family-work conflict. The second and third reports focused on perceived job-performance loss, work effort, and reducing family hours.
Confirmatory factor analysis, regression analysis, bootstrapping, and Monte Carlo methods were used for data analysis. The results showed that family-work conflict was positively associated with perceived job-performance loss. Employees’ perceived job-performance loss increases their work efforts and reduces family hours. Gender also moderated the positive effects between family-work conflict and perceived job-performance loss; this relationship was stronger for male employees. Furthermore, family-work conflict has a conditional, positive indirect effect on work effort and considers reduced family hours through perceived job-performance loss, such that the indirect effects are stronger for male employees than for female employees.
This study extends the theory and research on family-work conflict in three ways. First, we complement and extend the family-work conflict research by revealing the positive effects of family-work conflict on employee work behaviors. The existing literature generally emphasizes that family-work conflict is detrimental to work. This study challenged conventional wisdom and provided a more balanced and dialectical understanding of the relationship between family-work conflict and work behavior. Second, we enrich the empirical research on the conditional effect of identity maintenance by providing evidence that gender is a significant factor influencing the process of identity maintenance. Third, we draw upon identity maintenance theory to explore the mechanism of family-work conflict to stimulate employees’ identity maintenance process. We further revealed a new explanatory mechanism of the relationship between employees’ family-work conflict and behavioral outcomes.
Subjects: Psychology >> Management Psychology submitted time 2024-04-08
Abstract： In recent years, employees how to effectively role transition and improve work efficiency have received widespread attention from managers and researchers. Previous research mainly focused on state transition activities during commuting time from the perspective of role transition theory, and researchers found that these activities do help employees transition roles and improve work efficiency, providing useful guidance for management practices. However, a few studies have focused on state transition activities in the workplace, which are widespread and have a significant impact on employees’ daily work efficiency, but existing research knows little about these activities. To fill these research gaps, we integrate role transition theory and resource conservation theory to explore the mechanisms and boundary conditions of workplace state transition activities and attempt to explore how employees can achieve higher work efficiency by engaging in workplace state transition activities./t/nWe conducted a field study of a technology-based company in southern China using experience sampling methods. We collected data using the Positive and Negative Affect Scale, Work engagement Scale, and Work Goal Progress Scale. Firstly, we collected control variables (gender, age, organizational tenure, job category) on the weekend, while asking participants to report on the activities they engaged in during the time between arriving at the office and starting work. We referred to these activities as state transition activities. Secondly, during a two-week daily survey period, participants evaluated their positive and negative emotions at 7:30 a.m., their morning state transition activities, types of state transition activities, and work engagement at 12:30 p.m., their afternoon state transition activities, types of state transition activities, work engagement, work goal progress, and task completion for the whole day at 6:00 p.m. The final sample included 603 usable observations collected from 70 employees. To test the proposed hypotheses, we conducted two-level path-analyses using Mplus 7.0 and performed a Monte Carlo simulation procedure using R software./t/nGiven that individual-level data nested within individuals, we used a multilevel linear model to test our hypotheses. As indirect effect tests involve multiple variables, we used the block variable method to bundle variables and conducted 20,000 Monte Carlo simulations to generate a 95% Monte Carlo confidence interval in R3.5. Based on the results, our research presents three conclusions: (1) At the individual level, the relationship between morning and afternoon work state transition activities time and morning and afternoon work engagement was inverted U-shaped. (2) The effect of work state transition activity on work engagement depended on activities time and activities habituality: when the habituality of role transition activities was high, there was an inverted U-shaped relationship between employees’ morning role transition activities time and job engagement. When the habituality of role transition activities was low, there was an inverted U-shaped relationship between employees’ afternoon role transition activities time and job engagement. (3) The indirect effect of work state transition activities on the work goal progress by influencing work engagement was partly moderated by the chronotype of employees: Morning chronotype employee had a positive impact on the work goal progress through morning work engagement; No matter what kind of employees’ chronotype, afternoon work state transition activities can positively affect the work goal progress through afternoon work engagement./t/nThe current study has several theoretical contributions. First, this study extends the existing literature on state transition activities by exploring a new context of role transitions, analyzing the time spent on state transition activities before entering work and proposing an inverted U-shaped relationship between the time spent on these activities and subsequent work engagement. Second, this study enriches the understanding of the underlying mechanisms of state transition activities. Previous literature mainly explored how employees could better complete role transitions from a role perspective. This study analyzes from a resource perspective, considering both resource transfer and depletion during the activities. By analyzing the time and psychological resources in these activity processes, this study proposes that the habituality and timing of state transition activities jointly affect subsequent work engagement. Habituality refers to the degree to which employees’ state transition activities are habitual behaviors that are triggered and repeated in work situations. Third, previous research has focused on describing the process of employees transitioning from family roles to work roles. However, lunch break is an important part of the workday, and transitioning from non-work state to work state is also required when entering work in the afternoon. To fully describe the role transition process throughout the day, this study analyzes morning and afternoon state transition activities separately, explores how morning and afternoon state transition activities affect morning and afternoon work engagement, and thus impact work efficiency for the day.
Peer Review Status:
Awaiting Review
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： Feeling trusted by supervisors is not only beneficial for employees’ job attitude and performance, but also for organizational effectiveness. Feeling ability-distrusted, defined as “the extent to which a subordinate perceives that their leader evaluates their ability to be untrustworthy”, is a crucial part of trust research. Previous research has revealed that feeling ability-distrusted by supervisors is detrimental to employees’ self-concept. Nevertheless, this prevailing assumption leaves our understandings of trust incomplete. Traditional Chinese management practice (e.g., “Jijiangfa”) has suggested that supervisors’ distrust may encourage employees to exhibit their better self. However, limited attention has been paid to the potential positive influence of employees' feeling ability- distrusted by their supervisors on their self-concept. For example, when employees perceive ability-distrust from their supervisors, they may lose their confidence in their abilities, or, on the other hand, may be motivated to prove their abilities. Thus, an important question is: Does feeling ability-distrusted by supervisors have both positive and negative effects on subordinates’ self-concept, and if so, why? To address this question, drawing from self-evaluation and psychological reactant theories, we examine the effects of feeling ability-distrusted by supervisors on employees’ job self-efficacy and desire to prove their abilities, which in turn influence employee work effort and job performance. Furthermore, we examine the moderating effect of perceived supervisor competence on the relationship between feeling ability-distrusted by supervisors and employees’ job self-efficacy or employees’ desire to prove their abilities. We conducted one experiment and two multi-wave field studies to test our hypothesis. In Study 1, we designed a 2 × 2 experiment, with 4 different scenarios. The scenarios described the interaction at work between a fictional employee named Wang Chen and his supervisor. We recruited 164 undergraduates from a university and assigned participants randomly to each of the scenarios. Each participant read the scenario and took on the role of Wang Chen. Next, participants reported their job self-efficacy, desire to prove their abilities, manipulation check, and demographics. In Study 2, we initially recruited 227 employees and their immediate supervisors from an insurance company in southern China. Employees were asked to report on their feeling ability-distrusted by their supervisors, job self-efficacy, desire to prove abilities, work effort, perceived supervisor competence, and demographics. One week later, supervisors were asked to report their subordinates’ job performance. Before responding to the surveys, participants were informed that the survey data would be confidential and only used for academic research., There were 195 pairs of matched and usable data for our final sample. In Study 3, we surveyed 266 employees and their supervisors across 65 workgroups. The employees reported on feelings of ability-distrust by their supervisors, perceived supervisor competence, and their demographics. One month later, employees were required to assess self-efficacy on the job, desire to prove their abilities and work effort. Supervisors were then invited to rate employees’ job performance. Results showed that when perceived supervisor competence was high, feeling ability-distrusted by supervisors was negatively associated with job self-efficacy, which in turn, decreased employee work effort and task performance. On the other hand, when perceived supervisor competence was low, feeling ability-distrusted by supervisors was positively associated with employee’s desire to prove their abilities, which in turn increased employee work effort and task performance. This study makes several theoretical contributions. First, we contribute to the literature on trust by challenging the consensus that feeling ability-distrusted by supervisors is unequivocally detrimental to employees’ self- concept. Second, we contribute by identifying an important boundary condition for the effects of feeling ability- distrusted by supervisors. From the perspective of perceived credibility of evaluation information, we found that perceived supervisor competence moderated the effects of feeling ability distrusted. Finally, we contribute to the literature on work effort by identifying an important but neglected antecedent of employee work effort. We suggest that beyond leaders’ positive behavior, their negative behaviors (e.g., expressed distrust) may also lead to employees’ increased work effort when employees perceive supervisor competence to be low.
Subjects: Psychology >> Management Psychology submitted time 2021-08-13
Abstract： "
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
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