Chan, Xi Wen
Description
Due to evolving gender roles and the rise of non-traditional
families, both men and women face the challenge of balancing work
and family roles in Australia today. Coupled with intensifying
work pressures and the declining quality of home and community
life, the balancing act between work and family consequently
leads to work-family conflict. Research has shown that
work-family conflict is responsible for a variety of negative
individual and organisational...[Show more] outcomes, including lowered job
satisfaction. With the potential costs to organisations that
lowered job satisfaction produces, this study sought to gain a
deeper understanding of the relationship between work-family
conflict and job satisfaction by investigating the role of
self-efficacy in the management of pressures emanating from work
and home. In doing so, the present study recognised the
multi-dimensionality of work-family conflict by assessing
time-based, strain-based, and behaviour-based work-to-family
conflict (WFC), and time-based, strain-based, and behaviour-based
family-to-work conflict (FWC).
Self-efficacy has become a significant topic of investigation
within the work-family literature, primarily because
self-efficacy beliefs are important aspects of human motivation
and behaviour. Accordingly, self-efficacy determines if
individuals are able to persist and cope with adversity and
challenges, such as those relating to work-family conflict.
Despite the importance of domain specificity with regards to
self-efficacy, management scholars continue to treat
self-efficacy as a generalised construct. Therefore, drawing on
the Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) and work-life balance
literature, the current research first sought to empirically
validate the newly-developed work-life balance self-efficacy
(WLBSE) scale using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and
structural equation modelling (SEM). WLBSE, a domain-specific
self-efficacy construct, correspondingly refers to the belief
individuals have in their own abilities to manage work and
non-work responsibilities.
Having validated the five-item WLBSE scale, it was hypothesised
that WLBSE beliefs would fully mediate the relationships between
the six dimensions of work-family conflict and job satisfaction.
In applying the theoretical framework of the SCT, specifically,
the social-cognitive concept of self-efficacy, it is postulated
that building a strong sense of WLBSE would reduce vulnerability
to work-family conflict, which in turn leads to higher job
satisfaction. That is to say, WLBSE is the explanatory variable
that accounts substantively for the underlying causal nature of
the work-family conflict–job satisfaction relationships.
The study adopted a longitudinal design, in which self-reported
data were collected on two occasions 12 months apart through an
online questionnaire. The initial sample consisted of 1,134
respondents from four organisations within Australia. After
performing data screening, CFA and SEM were conducted to test the
research hypotheses. CFA showed that there was better fit for an
eight-factor than a four-factor or one-factor measurement model,
the former of which comprised the six dimensions of work-family
conflict, as well as the uni-dimensional WLBSE and job
satisfaction constructs. Subsequent cross-sectional and
longitudinal tests of the hypothesised structural model showed
that the proposed model was a good fit to the observed data, and
WLBSE was shown to fully mediate the relationships between all
three forms of WFC and job satisfaction.
By incorporating the multi-dimensionality of work-family conflict
and validating the newly-developed WLBSE scale, the study sought
to provide a general framework of the underlying cognitive
mechanisms linking work-family conflict to job satisfaction.
Theoretical implications of the findings for SCT are discussed.
From a practical standpoint, the study offers empirical evidence
that addressing work-family conflict through strengthening WLBSE
can enhance job satisfaction. The limitations and directions for
future research are discussed in the final chapter of this study.
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