The Effect of Leader-Member Exchange on Work-Family Balance: The Mediating Role of Work Flexibility-ability and Moderating Role of Work Flexibility-willingness

Abstract

Abstract:

The fact that once widely supported flexible work arrangement is increasingly questioned has attracted the attention of academia. In order to explore the functional mechanism of work flexibility to work-family balance (WFB), this research introduces leader-member exchange (LMX) to explore the intermediary variable and regulating variable of work flexibility on the relationship between LMX and WFB. For this purpose, 20 employees from 13 enterprises are individually interviewed and a questionnaire survey is made to 280 employees (for prediction) and 862 employees (for formal test) respectively. Based on the ecological balance of nature theory, this research sorts out five structures: defense, conversion, feedback, compensation and adjustment and meanwhile develops a localization inventory; then it uses hierarchical regression modeling to find that LMX has a significant positive effect on work flexibility; finally, it applies structural equation modeling to verify that job autonomy and a sharing atmosphere in work flexibility form a partial mediator between LMX and WFB and that work flexibility-willingness has positive moderating effects on the relationship of job autonomy and WFB. The conclusions above provide a theoretic foundation for the work-family balance in the future.

Key words: work-family balance, leader-member exchange, work flexibility, work flexibility-ability, work flexibility-willingness

Lin Xueying, Wang Yongli, Hao Yujie, Li Huijing. The Effect of Leader-Member Exchange on Work-Family Balance: The Mediating Role of Work Flexibility-ability and Moderating Role of Work Flexibility-willingness[J]. , 2016, 28(2): 138-148.

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