A Resource Perspective Linking Personality Traits and Work-Family Conflict and Enrichment: Examination of the Indirect Effect Through Resource Development

Abstract

Challenging the prior research viewing employees as passive beings who respond to work-family conflict, this dissertation studies employees as active agents who shape their experience of work-family conflict and enrichment through developing resources based on their attentional efforts. Specifically, drawing on Conservation of Resources Theory, this dissertation proposes and tests a resource-based process model that explain the indirect effect of key resources (conscientiousness, extraversion, and agreeableness) on work-family conflict and work-family enrichment through differential resource development processes (human capital development, social capital development, and altruistic development). The results show support that agreeableness is associated with work-family conflict and enrichment through its unique effect on altruistic capital development. The indirect effect of conscientiousness on work-family conflict and enrichment operates through human capital development and altruistic capital development. Extraversion is associated with work-family conflict and enrichment through all three types of resource development. Moreover, the supplementary analysis using a longitudinal mediation design reveals a pattern of reverse causality—the positive relationship between conscientiousness and human capital development is attributable to the indirect effect through work-family enrichment.