The present study explores how political skill affects an employee's coping behavior in response to Work Interfering with Family (WIF) conflict. Applying Conservation of Resource theory, we argue that politically skilled individuals are more cognizant of the social embeddedness of WIF, and because of cross-domain resource (e.g. time, attention, energy) depletion, lack the resources to cope with its effects. As such, they leverage their political skill to more effectively turnover from the organization than less politically skilled individuals by detaching their identity and lowering their affective commitment to their organization. We tested the hypotheses using a sample of 181 individuals from a retail firm, and results support the hypothesized model. First, a test of indirect effects confirmed that affective commitment partially mediated the link between WIF and voluntary turnover (measured six months later). Second, a moderated-mediation test revealed, as hypothesized, that affective commitment only functioned as a mediator for individual with high levels of political skill. Implications for practice and directions for future research are discussed.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.