Examining the influence of climate, supervisor guidance, and behavioral integrity on work–family conflict: A demands and resources approach

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.1883
• Date: 01 May 2014
• Author: Samantha C. Paustian‐Underdahl,Jonathon R. B. Halbesleben
• Published date: 01 May 2014

Examining the influence of climate, supervisor

guidance, and behavioral integrity on work–family

conflict: A demands and resources approach

SAMANTHA C. PAUSTIAN-UNDERDAHL*AND JONATHON R. B. HALBESLEBEN

Department of Management and Marketing, Culverhouse College of Commerce and Business Administration, The

University Of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, U.S.A.

Summary In this study, we assess a multilevel approach to work interference with family (WIF) by examining the influence of

unit-level work–family climate, as well as the importance of supervisors’spoken guidance and their behavioral

integrity in helping employees process social information about work–family issues. We propose that there are two

important ways in which supervisors may influence their subordinates’WIF—through their spoken guidance regard-

ing managing work–family conflict and through their behavioral integrity—employee perceptions of the degree to

which supervisors’spoken work–family guidance aligns with their behaviors to help employees manage work and

family on the job. Results from a sample of 628 employees of a health system, using path analytic tests of moderated

mediation, provide support for the mediated effect of family-supportive climate on employee work–family conflict

(through supervisory work–family guidance) and for a second-stage moderation in which the effect of guidance on

WIF is stronger (weaker) when employees perceive high (low) levels of supervisor work–family behavioral integrity.

We discuss the implications of these findings for the study of family-supportive work environments and work–family

conflict.Limitations of this study and directions for future research are also presented. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley &

Sons, Ltd.

Keywords: work–family conflict; behavioral integrity; supervisor guidance

Work interference with family (WIF)—a type of work–family conflict in which work demands reduce an

individual’s ability to meet demands from the family domain (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985; Netemeyer, Boles,

& McMurrian, 1996)—remains an important concern for employees and employers. Studies have consistently

shown that work demands are more likely to interfere negatively with employees’family lives than vice versa

(e.g., Burke & Greenglass, 1999; Leiter & Durup, 1996). For instance, Frone, Russell, and Cooper (1992)

found that work interfering with family was reported three times more often than family interfering with work.

Additionally, research has highlighted the harmful effects of WIF for individuals and their employing

organizations (Allen, Herst, Bruck, & Sutton, 2000; Frone, 2003; Greenhaus & Parasuraman, 1999; Kossek

& Ozeki, 1998), suggesting that research on potential means of preventing such conflict is still greatly needed

(Eby, Casper, Lockwood, Bordeaux, & Brinley, 2005).

Research has begun to reveal the positive effects that social information provided by employees’family-support-

ive organizations and supervisors can have on employees’work–family conflict (e.g., Allen, 2001; Kossek, Pichler,

Bodner, & Hammer, 2011; Thompson, Beauvais, & Lyness, 1999). Yet, much of this research has not examined the

multilevel nature of this process. Hammer, Kossek, Zimmerman, and Daniels (2007) proposed a multilevel model

whereby WIF is influenced through the more distal organizational work–family climate—the shared assumptions,

beliefs, and values regarding the extent to which a work unit believes their organization supports and values the

integration of employees’work and family lives—as well as through more proximal supervisor influences on

*Correspondence to: Samantha C. Paustian-Underdahl, Department of Management and Marketing, Culverhouse College of Commerce and

Business Administration, The University Of Alabama, 361 Stadium Drive, Box 870225, Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-0225, U.S.A.

E-mail: spaustian@cba.ua.edu

Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Received 28 September 2012

Revised 03 June 2013, Accepted 17 June 2013

Journal of Organizational Behavior, J. Organiz. Behav. 35, 447–463 (2014)

Published online 26 July 2013 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/job.1883

Research Article

employees. Such a model was examined by Major, Fletcher, Davis, and Germano (2008) who found that a family-

supportive organizational culture related to employees’WIF through the quality of supervisor–employee exchanges.

Yet, there has been a call in the literature for researchers to go beyond looking at the quality of supervisor–employee

exchanges, to more closely examine the importance of employees’perceptions of their supervisors’word–deed

alignment (Leroy et al., 2012; Simons, 2002, 2008). Indeed, researchers found that 20 percent of U.S. employees view

managers as failing to behave in a manner consistent with their words, concluding that “management must walk-the-talk”

(Bates, 2002, p. 12). Thus, in the current study, we aim to test a multilevel model of this process by examining the effect of

work–family climate on employees’WIF through the effects of supervisors’family-supportive spoken guidance, as

moderated by perceptions of supervisors’work–family word–deed alignment.

We position this research within the theoretical frameworks of the job demands–resources (JD–R) model (Bakker,

Demerouti, De Boer, & Schaufeli, 2003; Demerouti, Bakker, Nachreiner, & Schaufeli, 2001), as well as social

information processing (SIP) theory (Salancik & Pfeffer, 1978). When employees perceive their work–family

climates and supervisors to be supportive of their work–family needs, these sources of social information should

act as job resources enabling employees to reduce their WIF. SIP theory proposes that information that makes

uncertain situations more clear plays an important role in how we shape our attitudes and perceptions (Salancik

& Pfeffer, 1978). Thus, information regarding how to handle work–family conflict should become clearer when

supervisors provide employees with family-supportive guidance that is consistent with their work–family behaviors.

However, if supervisors do not behave in a way that aligns with their spoken work–family guidance, we believe that

this inconsistency can act as a job demand, making the management of work–family conflict more difficult.

Our study extends the emerging research that examines the influence of social information about the family

supportiveness of organizations on employee WIF in many ways (e.g., Bhave, Kramer, & Glomb, 2010). First,

Bhave et al. (2010) focused on social information from coworkers in shaping WIF perceptions. While coworkers

play an important role in the work environment, supervisors have a very large role, arguably an even larger role than

coworkers, in impacting stressors such as WIF (Beehr, Bowling, & Bennett, 2010; Halbesleben, 2006; Kelloway,

Sivathan, Francis, & Barling, 2005). Further, whereas Bhave et al. (2010) relied on group-level WIF as a proxy

for social information about work–family issues (assuming that those who experienced WIF communicated, either

directly or indirectly, about their experiences), we examine indirect (work–family climate) and direct sources of

social information (supervisor’s spoken work–family guidance and behavioral integrity). Additionally, this study

advances literature that has often confounded two distinct methods of supervisors’family supportiveness—

supervisor’s work–family words and their work–family behaviors (Hammer, Kossek, Yragui, Bodner, & Hanson,

2009). Thus, in the current study, we go beyond examining perceptions of supervisors’work–family words, to also

study how closely employees believe their supervisor’s words align with their work–family behaviors and how this

alignment impacts employees’WIF.

We also extend the behavioral integrity literature (Dineen, Lewicki, & Tomlinson, 2006; Simons, 2002) by

introducing a new construct—work–family behavioral integrity (WFBI) to the literature. Recent studies of

behavioral integrity have begun to emphasize the importance that context-specific behavioral integrity plays in

guiding employee behaviors (e.g., safety; Leroy et al., 2012; Simons, Tomlinson, & Leroy, 2011). We extend this

research into the work–family arena in order to contribute to the understanding of the ways that supervisors can

impact employees’navigation of work and family roles (Hammer et al., 2007). Finally, we answer a call in the

literature to examine multiple levels of family supportiveness within an organization by studying how unit-level

climate and individual-level supervisor guidance and WFBI relate to employees’WIF (Hammer et al., 2007).

Current study

The JD–R model proposes that work characteristics can be classified into two general categories (i.e., job demands

and job resources; Bakker et al., 2003; Demerouti et al., 2001). Job demands refer to those physical, psychosocial, or

organizational aspects of the job that are associated with certain physiological and/or psychological costs. Examples

448 S. C. PAUSTIAN-UNDERDAHL ET AL.

Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Organiz. Behav. 35, 447–463 (2014)

DOI: 10.1002/job