WORK FAMILY CONFLICT AND ITs WORK AND NON-WORK OUTCOMES: MODERATING ROLE OF GENDER AND SOCIAL SUPPORT

Abstract

The purpose of the present research was to examine the relationship between work family conflict and its directions with work and non-work outcomes. The study also examined the moderating role of social support and gender in relation between work family conflict (i.e., work-interference-with family and family-interference-with work) and outcomes. The research was conducted in two distinct studies; Study I (N= 216) was aimed at addressing the psychometric properties of the instruments in local context and Study II was main study (N= 366) which aimed at testing hypotheses formulated for the present research. The sample for both the studies was drawn purposively from financial institution, telecom and health sector organizations of Rawalpindi and Islamabad. Instruments included Work Family Conflict Scale (Carlson, Kacmar, & Williams, 2000), Perceived Social Support Scale (Caplan, Cobb, French, Harrison, & Pinneau, 1975), General Job Satisfaction Scale (Hackman & Oldham, 1975), Turnover Intention Scale (O’Driscoll & Beehr, 1994), Satisfaction with Life Scale (Diener, Emmons, Larsen, & Griffin, 1985), and ENRICH Marital Satisfaction Subscale (Fowers & Olson, 1993). The results of Study I revealed fair to good model fit for study variables. Reliability estimates also provided fair to satisfactory internal consistency evidences for the instruments used. Results of Study II found that Work family conflict was significantly negatively correlated with Job satisfaction and Marital Satisfaction as an outcome variable. The relationship was negative for Turnover Intention. Work-interference-with family did not correlate with Job Satisfaction and Turnover Intention. Family-interference-with Work was significantly negatively correlated with Marital Satisfaction. Among the work-related sources of support, supervisor support moderated the relation between workinterference- with family and job satisfaction as well as turnover intention. Coworker support also moderated the relation between work-interference-with family and job satisfaction as well as turnover intention. Spousal and friend support did not appear to moderate the relation between family-interference-with work and marital satisfaction as well as family social support also appeared to be nonsignificant moderator between family-interference-with work and marital satisfaction. Gender was a significant moderator between work-interference-with family and turnover intentions. Gender fails to moderate the relation between work-interference-with family and job satisfaction as well as family-interference-with work and marital satisfaction. It was also found out that work-interference-with family is more strongly felt as compare to family-interference-with work. Significant gender differences showed that women feel more of work family conflict as well as family-interference-with work than men, although there was nonsignificant difference on direction of work-interference-with family. The results of the present research are discussed in the light of relevant literature for future implication.