Work–Family Conflict’s Association With the Work Attitudes of Job Involvement, Job Satisfaction, and Organizational Commitment Among Southern Prison Staff

• Date: 01 October 2021
• Author: Linda D. Keena,Eric G. Lambert,Matthew C. Leone,Samuel G. Vickovic,David May,Weston Morrow,Stacy H. Haynes
• Published date: 01 October 2021
• DOI: 10.1177/08874034211003235
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/08874034211003235

Criminal Justice Policy Review

2021, Vol. 32(8) 865 –889

© The Author(s) 2021

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DOI: 10.1177/08874034211003235

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Article

Work–Family Conflict’s

Association With the Work

Attitudes of Job Involvement,

Job Satisfaction, and

Organizational Commitment

Among Southern Prison Staff

Eric G. Lambert1, Weston Morrow1,

Samuel G. Vickovic2, Matthew C. Leone1,

Linda D. Keena3, Stacy H. Haynes4, and David May4

Abstract

Prisons depend on their employees, and staffing a prison is expensive. Approximately

80% of a prison’s budget is for staff wages and benefits. Prisons are not generally

viewed as desirable places to work, thus recruiting and retaining correctional officers

can be difficult. Work-related stress can negatively affect staff members’ home

lives, and home stress can make an employee distracted and endangered at work.

Time-, strain-, behavior-, and family-based work–family conflicts were hypothesized

to impact three work attitudes (job involvement, job satisfaction, and organizational

commitment) negatively. Time-based conflict had no significant effects on any of the

work attitudes. Strain-based conflict had significant negative effects on job satisfaction

and organizational commitment but not job involvement. Behavior-based conflict had

significant negative effects on all three work attitudes. Contrary to our hypotheses,

family-based conflict had significant positive effects on all three. Work–family conflict

is a significant work attitude-associated stressor for correctional staff; therefore,

policy recommendations to address it are made.

1University of Nevada, Reno, USA

2California State University, Long Beach, USA

3The University of Mississippi, University, USA

4Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, USA

Corresponding Author:

Eric G. Lambert, Department of Criminal Justice, University of Nevada, Reno, 1664 North Virginia

Street, Reno, NV 89557, USA.

Email: ericlambert@unr.edu

1003235CJPXXX10.1177/08874034211003235Criminal Justice Policy ReviewLambert et al.

research-article2021

866 Criminal Justice Policy Review 32(8)

Keywords

work–family conflict, job involvement, job satisfaction, organizational commitment,

correctional staff

Correctional staff are an important and expensive resource for prisons, as they are

responsible for myriad essential tasks for the prison to operate successfully. Most

prisons devote between 70% and 80% of their operating budgets to staffing (Kincade,

2018). The relationship between correctional staff and their respective institution is

reciprocal: staff affect the prison, and the prison’s work environment affects its staff.

The desire to enhance facility operations and to improve job experience for staff has

led to increased research on the antecedents of the three work attitudes of job

involvement, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment (Lambert et al., 2007,

2019).

A growing body of empirical literature has explored how different workplace vari-

ables affect job involvement, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment among

prison staff. One notable workplace variable that has received growing attention in the

literature is work–family conflict. Work–family conflict occurs when home and work

domains spill over into one another, resulting in conflict in one or both domains

(Lambert et al., 2006; Vickovic & Morrow, 2020). The major types of work–family

conflict that have been identified are time-based conflict, strain-based conflict, behav-

ior-based conflict, and family-based conflict. Relatively few studies have examined

how work–family conflict is related to different job attitudes; thus, there is a growing

need for additional research for a number of important reasons.

Although past studies have explored the relationship between work–family conflict

and different workplace variables, such research has generally been confined to

regions in the Midwest and Southwest United States and central China. Replication of

the limited past research is necessary to investigate the reliability of these relationships

in different contexts and conditions. Research in different types of prisons is necessary

to assess whether past findings apply to all prisons in general (i.e., universal in effects)

or vary across different types of prisons and regions (i.e., contextual/situational in

effects). This study explored work–family conflict at an unusual U.S. Southern prison

that held more than 4,400 sentenced adult male medium/maximum security offenders.

It was an unusual prison because the majority of staff supervising the 4,400 male

inmates were women, including correctional officers, of which about 75% were

women. In most high security prisons holding male offenders, the majority of staff are

men. In addition, no single published study has explored the effects of the four types

of work–family conflict on the three work attitudes of correctional staff. Examining

the effects of time-, strain-, behavior-, and family-based work–family conflict on job

involvement, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment will provide one of the

most comprehensive studies on these relationships. This study, therefore, was con-

ducted to explore the effects of the four types of work–family conflict on the three

work attitudes among staff at an unusual Southern prison.