Abstract
Fierce competition coupled with an increasing presence of dual-earning couples and blurred boundaries between work and family, increasingly render work–family lives of employees important. In this context, one strategy to enable employees achieve greater work–family interface is via Family Supportive Supervisor Behaviors (FSSBs), defined as supervisors’ informal discretion to implement family-friendly policies at work. Inspired by the growth in research on FSSBs, the over-arching goal of this study is to explore (a) the triggers of FSSBs from an organizational context perspective and (b) the role of FSSBs as a mechanism to translate the impact of organizational context on subordinates’ overall health and work–family balance satisfaction. Furthermore, we expand our model by integrating the (c) role of supervisors’ and subordinates’ elderly care responsibilities as an individual boundary condition to explain how the FSSBs unfold and for whom they are most effective. Using the Work–Home Resources model (i.e., W-HR model; Ten Brummelhuis & Bakker, 2012), we test our hypotheses with matched data of subordinates and their supervisors collected in El Salvador and Peru. Our model was largely supported. Findings point to the importance of organizational and supervisor support as well as the importance of involvement with elder-care responsibilities in driving FSSBs and enhancing employee perceptions of health and their work–family balance satisfaction.
Highlights
Yasin Rofcanin and Mireia Las Heras contributed to this work.In today’s work environments, characterized by intense competition and constant pressure to be accessible, employees experience intensifying work–family issues and problems (Kossek, Pichler, Bodner, & Hammer, 2011; Straub, 2012)
Drawing on one of the tenets of the Work–Home Resource (W-HR) model that employees equipped with resources generate further personal resources, boost hypotheses from the J-DR theory (Bakker & Demerouti, 2017), we propose that supervisors who are more involved with elderly care are more likely to exhibit Family Supportive Supervisor Behaviors (FSSBs), boosting the impact of positive organizational support (POS) on FSSBs while buffering the impact of unsupportive work–family culture on FSSBs
We argue that supervisors who are involved in elderly care responsibilities and who work in supportive organizations, are likely to exhibit more FSSBs
Summary
Yasin Rofcanin and Mireia Las Heras contributed to this work. In today’s work environments, characterized by intense competition and constant pressure to be accessible, employees experience intensifying work–family issues and problems (Kossek, Pichler, Bodner, & Hammer, 2011; Straub, 2012). The buffer hypothesis from the JD-R theory states that the costs associated with high hindering work demands are likely to be buffered with sufficient personal resources that the employees have, because these resources enable efficient coping with taxing work conditions (Bakker, Demerouti, & Euwema, 2005; Bakker & Demerouti, 2017) Juggling with their own elderly caregiving responsibilities in a demanding work environment (i.e., high elderly care responsibilities in an unsupportive work–family culture), these supervisors are more likely to understand and acknowledge the family-oriented needs of their subordinates. The positive association between FSSBs and the subordinates’ outcomes (overall health and satisfaction with work–family balance) will be moderated by their elderly care responsibilities, such that these associations will be stronger for subordinates with higher levels of elderly care involvement
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