A Within-Individual Approach to Understand Family-Work Enrichment and Leader Behaviors

Abstract

The literature to date has predominantly adopted a between- individual perspective to understand family-work enrichment, assuming that some individuals have a high level of family-work enrichment, while others have a low level of family-work enrichment. However, it is possible that individuals vary in their levels of family- work enrichment from one day to another. Thus, to provide a complete picture of how and why gains from the family domain improve functioning in the work domain, we used a within- individual perspective to understand family-work enrichment. Drawing from self-determination theory, our results showed that daily positive events satisfy leader needs, and in turn such needs satisfaction boosts leaders’ prosocial motivation, increasing their consideration leader behaviors at work. The results also suggest that the positive relationship between positive family events and family needs satisfaction is stronger for leaders who live with children than those who do not live with children. We discuss the implications for theory and practice.