Work–family Conflict, Family–work Conflict and Intention to Leave the Organization: Evidences Across Five Industry Sectors in India

Abstract

With the attrition rates across different industry sectors likely to rise to up to a global high of 20 per cent by 2017 in India, organizations are finding it harder to understand its antecedents and thus devise and employ new strategies aimed at retaining their employees. Very few studies have tried to understand the dynamics of work–family conflict and its relationship with turnover intention in a collectivistic society like India. This research study is aimed at understanding the strength of relationship between employees’ work–family conflict and family–work conflict and their intention to leave the organization. The total 150 sample respondents comprised of 30 employees each from five different industry sectors—banking, IT (software development), IT-enabled services, insurance and telecom. Data were collected using Carlson’s measure of work–family conflict and Mobley’s turnover intention scale. Results revealed that time-based and strain-based conflict showed the highest correlations with turnover intention, with variations across different industry sectors. Multiple regression model predicted R square of 0.403, explaining 40.3 per cent of variance in turnover intention (dependent variable), by work–family conflict and family–work conflict (independent variables). Family–work conflict contributed more to turnover intention, than work–family conflict. Interesting relationships between different demographic factors and variables under study are discussed.