The role of work-family conflict and job role identification in moderated mediating the relationship between perceived supervisor support and employee proactive behaviors

Abstract

In recent years, the outbreak and persistence of COVID-19 has greatly changed the way people work, and encouraging employees to work online from home has become a new form of work for organizations responding to the epidemic. Based on the W-HR model, this paper explored supervisor support as a situational resource in the context of online office, aiming to verify the changes in work-family status caused by individuals facing the background of supervisor support, and then relate employees’ proactive behavior. Meanwhile, the predicted moderating effect of job role identification on supervisor support and work-family conflict was verified by considering the role identification generated in the positive interaction between employees and supervisors as individual resources. In this study, 555 employees from enterprises in the provinces of Jiangsu and Guangdong were selected as the research participants, and data were recovered at two time nodes. The results show that: (1) Perceived supervisor support significantly relates employee proactive behavior. (2) Work-family conflict mediates the relationship between perceived supervisor support and employee proactive behavior. (3) Job role identification has a significant moderating effect on the relationship between perceived supervisor support and work-family conflict, and high level of job role identification moderated the mediating effect of work-family conflict on perceived supervisor support and employee proactive behavior significantly. This paper expands the research perspective of employee proactive behavior. It can be used as a reference for enterprises to formulate strategies to improve employee proactive behavior in the process of digital reform.

The Role of Person-Organization and Person-Job Fit in Enhancing Transfer of Learning in Shanghai’s Financial Enterprises

“…Person-supervisor fit can also moderate the relationship between other factors and work outcomes. Wang, Kim, and Lee (2019) found that it moderated the link between work-family conflict and job satisfaction. Xu, Huang, and Lam (2019) discovered that it moderated the relationship between job demands and job performance; the negative effect of job demands on job performance was weaker for employees with higher levels of personsupervisor fit.…”

Work engagement, emotional exhaustion, and OCB-civic virtue among nurses: a multilevel analysis of emotional supervisor support

“…Emotional support includes consideration, caring, and boost behaviors (Pohl and Galletta, 2017). Emotional supervisor support is an important work situational resource (Wang, 2022).…”

The double-edged sword effect of telecommuting on employees’ work engagement: evidence from China during COVID-19

“…Conversely, when perceived supervisor support is low, the consumption of resources such as time, energy, and emotions by employees cannot be replenished in a timely manner. This is not conducive to getting employees out of the time and role stress dilemma, but rather reinforces the negative effects of work–family conflict ( Wang, 2022 ). Therefore, the following hypothesis was proposed:…”

“…Conversely, when perceived supervisor support is low, the consumption of resources such as time, energy, and emotions by employees cannot be replenished in a timely manner. This is not conducive to getting employees out of the time and role stress dilemma, but rather reinforces the negative effects of workfamily conflict (Wang, 2022). Therefore, the following hypothesis was proposed: H3: Perceived supervisor support moderates the negative relationship between telecommuting and work-family conflict, therefore, such a negative relationship weakens when employees' perceived supervisor support is higher.…”