The Relationships Between Work -Family Conflicts, Individual Cultural Orientation, Efficacy Beliefs and Work-Related Outcomes in China and United States

Abstract

Previous research on work-family conflict has mainly focused on the influence of the conflict on work-related outcomes in North American Samples. Relatively few studies have systematically examined whether work-family conflict affects individuals in developing economies in the similar way as it does in North America. As opposite to the effort to demonstrate the impacts of work-family conflict, limited research has revealed the processes by how work-family conflict affects individuals. Using a field survey of 440 employees from banking and financial sectors in US and China, I examined the moderating effects of work-related self-efficacy and collective efficacy on the relationships between work-interfering-with-family, family-interfering-with-work, work-related attitudes, and organizational withdrawal intentions. Hierarchical moderated multiple regressions and graphical probing of the interactions revealed that task-related efficacy beliefs were better moderated the effects of work-interfering-with-family, but not family-interfering-with-work, on outcome variables. Individuals' cultural-related orientation, namely, allocentrism and idiocentrism, did not moderate the effect of the interactive terms of efficacy and work-family conflicts on outcome variables. Measures of goodness-of-fit for the measurement model using Analysis of Moment Structure (AMOS) maximum likelihood estimation procedure indicated a satisfactory fit to the data and supported the equivalence of the constructs across countries. Chow test furthered revealed no significant cross-national differences in observed relationships, except that work-interfering-with-family had more negative effect on commitment among American samples whereas family-interfering-with-work had more negative effect among Chinese respondents. Further T-test revealed that family-interfering-with-work was more positively associated with work withdrawal perceptions than work-interfering-with-family. However, work-interfering-with-family was not significantly different from family-interfering-with-work regarding its relationship with job withdrawal intentions. The implications of these findings for future research on work-family conflict are discussed.