General mental ability, conscientiousness, and the work–family interface: A test of mediating pathways

Abstract

This study proposed a model in which employee general mental ability (GMA) and conscientiousness are linked to work–family conflict and enrichment through their relationship with occupational prestige and coping styles. We evaluated this model in a sample of 709 working adults from the National Survey of Midlife Development II in the United States. Results indicate that, through occupational prestige and subsequent psychological job demands and financial well‐being, GMA was related to work‐to‐family conflict (WFC) and family‐to‐work conflict (FWC). GMA was also related to work‐to‐family enrichment (WFE) but not family‐to‐work enrichment (FWE) through occupational prestige and autonomy. In contrast, conscientiousness did not influence work–family outcomes through occupational prestige. Additionally, GMA and conscientiousness were both related to WFE/FWE through problem coping, whereas conscientiousness was related to FWC through avoidance coping. Examining the relative effects of GMA and conscientiousness, we found that the indirect effects of GMA through occupational prestige were stronger than those of conscientiousness, whereas the indirect effects of conscientiousness through problem coping were stronger than those of GMA. We discuss our findings in terms of the mechanisms through which stable individual differences may exert influences on work–family outcomes.

Work–family enrichment: an integrative review

“…Likewise, job resources of autonomy and task significance lead to job satisfaction, which is found to be beneficial for WFE (Chen et al, 2017). Additionally, Huang et al (2019) found that occupational prestige influenced WFE through an increase in autonomy. In the family domain, family support generates feelings of family satisfaction resulting in FWE (Siu et al, 2015).…”

“…Butler et al, 2005;Mauno and Rantanen, 2013;Presti and Mauno, 2016), decision latitude (Grzywacz and Marks, 2000), autonomy (e.g. Grzywacz and Butler, 2005;Rastogi et al, 2016;Salehi et al, 2015;Voydanoff, 2004) and skill discretion (Baral and Bhargava, 2011a;Butler et al, 2005;Carlson et al, 2011a, b) (2) Increase in skill level/variety (Baral and Bhargava, 2011a;Butler et al, 2005), learning opportunities (Voydanoff, 2004), meaningful work (Voydanoff, 2004), respect, occupational prestige (Huang et al, 2019;Voydanoff, 2004), job security (Carlson et al, 2011a, b), time adequacy (Lingard et al, 2010) (3) Reduction in work demands (Butler et al, 2005;Jain and Nair, 2019), workload (Ghislieri et al, 2017a, b), work time pressure (Brosch and Binnewies, 2018;Voydanoff, 2004), organization time demands (Wayne et al, 2006)…”

“…(1) Increase in core self-evaluations (CSE) (Bhargava and Baral, 2009;Karatepe and Demir, 2014;Michel and Clark, 2013;Salehi et al, 2015) and general mental ability (Huang et al, 2019) (2) Increase in extraversion (Grzywacz and Marks, 2000;Salehi et al, 2015;Wayne et al, 2004), agreeableness (Michel and Clark, 2013;Wayne et al, 2004) and positive affect (PA) (Michel and Clark, 2013;Yanchus et al, 2010) (3) Decrease in neuroticism (Aryee et al, 2005;Wayne et al, 2004) and conscientiousness (Huang et al, 2019;Michel and Clark, 2013) (4) Increase in coping strategies (Huang et al, 2019;Mauno et al, 2012;Mauno and Rantanen, 2013), and free hours (Hill, 2005) (5) Increase in job involvement/engagement (e.g. Aryee et al, 2005;Clark et al, 2014;Rastogi and Chaudhary, 2018), work identity (Wayne et al, 2006), vigor at work (Moazami-Goodarzi et al, 2015) (6) Increase in family involvement (Aryee et al, 2005;Kwan and Mao, 2011), family identity Wayne et al, 2006) 6.1.4 Inter-relationships between the antecedents of work-family enrichment.…”

“…On the other hand, CSE augments work engagement that triggers both WFE and FWE (Karatepe and Demir, 2014). General mental ability and conscientiousness enhance problem-coping abilities, which further increases both WFE and FWE (Huang et al, 2019).…”

The effect of optimism on the work-family interface and psychological health of Indian police

“…Further, practical recommendations concentrate on organizational work-family initiatives which show mixed results (Ollier-malaterre, 2010). As personal dispositions entail subjective assessment and reactions to situations (Friede and Ryan, 2005), they represent a sense of personal agency that helps navigate through the work-family interface (Haines et al, 2013;Huang et al, 2019). Thus, studying personality dispositions and the work-family experiences not only provides a better understanding of these relationships but also offer supplementary ways to deal with the interface (Allen et al, 2012;Michel and Clark, 2013).…”