Work‐life support practices and customer satisfaction: The role of TMT composition and country culture

• Published date: 01 January 2018
• Date: 01 January 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/hrm.21833
• Author: Julie A. Cogin,Karin Sanders,Ian O. Williamson

HR SCIENCE FORUM

Work-life support practices and customer satisfaction:

The role of TMT composition and country culture

Julie A. Cogin

1

| Karin Sanders

2

| Ian O. Williamson

3

1

Australian Graduate School of Management,

University of New South Wales, Sydney,

Australia 2052

2

School of Management, University of New

South Wales, Australia 2052

3

Rutherford House, Victoria Business School,

University of Wellington, Wellington, New

Zealand 6140

Correspondence

Julie A. Cogin, Professor, Australian Graduate

School of Management, University of New

South Wales, UNSW Sydney, NSW 2052,

Australia.

Email: julie.cogin@agsm.edu.au.

Despite the growing prevalence of work-life support (WLS) practices in companies, there is a

lack of theoretical and empirical clarity on their benefits to organizational performance. It is

also unclear if the organizational performance effects of WLS practices vary based on an orga-

nization's internal and external environments. The dual objective of this paper is to investigate

whether WLS practices relate to customer-focused outcomes and, if so, under which conditions

WLS practices yield benefits. Drawing on contingency theory, we examine how the boundary

conditions of internal firm characteristics (e.g., percentage of top management team [TMT]

members with children) and external environmental factors (e.g., gender egalitarianism of the

country) moderate the relationship between WLS practices and customer satisfaction. We shed

light on these issues by examining multisource, longitudinal data collected over three years

from a multinational corporation operating in 27 countries. The results show that both percent-

age of TMT members with children and gender egalitarianism of the country strengthen the

relationship between WLS practices and customer satisfaction. The findings provide insights

into the circumstances when WLS practices provide performance benefits for firms and the

translatability of these benefits from one country to another.

KEYWORDS

customer satisfaction, gender egalitarianism, human resource management, upper-echelon

perspective, work-family

1|INTRODUCTION

The past two decades have seen dramatic shifts in the composition

of the global workforce. Over this time, a greater number of women

with children have joined the workforce, the proportion of dual-

career couples has increased, single-parent households have risen,

and an aging population has resulted in growing numbers of employ-

ees with elder-care responsibilities (Butts, Casper & Yang, 2012;

Wood & de Menezes, 2010). Along with these demographic shifts,

employees are experiencing increased work-life conflict as they strug-

gle to balance their work and nonwork commitments (Allen, Herst,

Bruck, & Sutton, 2000). In response to these trends, a growing num-

ber of organizations have invested in work-life support (WLS) prac-

tices that provide employees with flexibility to help them to manage

their various responsibilities (Kailasapathy, Kraimer, & Metz, 2014;

Piszczek & Berg, 2014). While the attributes of WLS initiatives differ

across firms, WLS practices often include flexible work schedules,

teleworking, job sharing, working from home, leave of absence or gap

leave, and dependent care programs (Butts et al., 2012).

Given the increased availability of WLS practices, a growing body

of research has examined the outcomes associated with these prac-

tices. To date, the majority of this research has examined the influ-

ence of WLS practices on employee outcomes. In general, these

results show that WLS practices can generate positive job attitudes,

increased organizational commitment, and reduced employee turn-

over intentions (see meta-analyses by Butts et al., 2012; Kossek,

Pichler, Bodner, & Hammer, 2011; and a review article by Kelly et al.,

2008). Research investigating the effects of WLS practices on individ-

ual outcomes has examined different boundary conditions, such as

family-friendly organization perceptions, work-to-family conflict

(Butts et al., 2013), supervisor characteristics (Hammer, Kossek,

Bodner, & Crain, 2013), and attitudes of employees' spouse/partner

(Wayne, Casper, Matthews, & Allen, 2013). Analyses of these bound-

ary conditions provide an understanding of what companies need to

DOI: 10.1002/hrm.21833

Hum Resour Manage. 2018;57:279–291. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/hrm © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 279