The Mediating Effects of Work-Life Balance Self-Efficacy on the Relationships between Work-Family Conflict and Job Satisfaction: A Longitudinal Study

Abstract

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 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.