Calibrating the Kaleidoscope of Career: The Impact of Family-to-work Conflict on Surface Acting

Abstract

Along with the advent of communication technology and the changing nature of families and careers, employees are increasingly interrupted by family events at the workplace. How do these events influence their emotions and interactions with coworkers? Building on the conservation of resources theory, we developed a model explicating how family-to-work conflict increased employees’ negative emotions, which in turn facilitated their surface acting toward coworkers. We further proposed that the kaleidoscope career (i.e., authenticity, balance, and challenge) moderated this mediation relationship such that when employees had a kaleidoscope of career with higher authenticity, lower balance, and lower challenge, family-to-work conflict had a weaker impact on surface acting toward coworkers via negative emotions. Data from an experience sampling study with 116 employees across ten days (n = 892) and a follow-up experiment with 594 employees provided strong support for our hypotheses. This study offers theoretical and empirical implications on career, work-family conflict, and emotional labor literatures.