Turning the tables Mitigating effects of proactive personality on the relationships between work-to-family conflict and work- and nonwork-related outcomes

• Published in: Career development international Vol. 18; no. 5; pp. 503 - 520
• Main Authors: P. Lau, Victor, Yee Wong, Yin, W.C. Chow, Cheris
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Bradford Emerald Group Publishing Limited 01.01.2013
• Subjects: Coping; Families & family life; Family owned businesses; Family Role; Heterogeneity; Hypotheses; Individual Differences; Job Satisfaction; Life Satisfaction; Literature Reviews; Low level; Meta Analysis; Parents; Personality; Personality tests; Personality traits; Role Conflict; Social networks; Stress; Students; Studies; Tables; Teenagers; Work life balance
• ISSN: 1362-0436; 1758-6003
• DOI: 10.1108/CDI-01-2012-0020

Purpose - Drawing on proactive coping theory, the authors aimed to test the mitigating effects of proactive personality on the relationships between work-to-family conflict and both work-related outcomes (i.e. career satisfaction and social network) and nonwork-related outcomes (i.e. life satisfaction and personal growth). Design/methodology/approach - To increase the heterogeneity of sample, undergraduate students in a private university were randomly invited and then requested to invite any one of their parents, who had a full time job currently, to participate in the study. Sample size was 204, with a response rate of 75.56 percent. Findings - As predicted, results showed that, for those who had a high level of proactive personality, the influences of work-to-family conflict on both work- and nonwork-related outcomes were all significantly mitigated, as compared with those who had a low level of proactive personality. Originality/value - In this paper, the authors initiated a new insight into work-family interface research by advocating that individuals may "transfer" or reallocate their resources across the work and family domains. They labeled this phenomenon as work-family reallocation, which was supposedly to be differentiated from the prevailing concepts of either work-family conflict or work-family facilitation.