The Bright and Dark Sides of Resources for Cross-Role Interrupting Behaviors and Work-Family Conflict: Preliminary...

Using boundary management and conservation of resources theories, we examined how job resources (i.e., job autonomy and goal-oriented leadership) and a work-related personal resource (i.e., personal initiative at work) relate to cross-role interrupting behaviors-i.e., interrupting the work (or non-work) role to attend to competing non-work (or work) demands-and how, in turn, they correlate with work-family conflict. Furthermore, we examined differences in the proposed nomological network between workers adopting traditional and remote ways of working. Using a multigroup structural equation modelling approach on a sample of 968 employees from an Italian telecommunications company, we found that: (a) job autonomy was positively related to both work interrupting non-work behaviors and to non-work interrupting work behaviors, (b) goal-oriented leadership was negatively related to non-work interrupting work behaviors, (c) personal initiative at work was positively related to work interrupting non-work behaviors and, finally, (d) cross-role interrupting behaviors were positively related to work-family conflict. Additionally, our findings revealed previously undocumented results; (a) mediating patterns in how resources relate, through cross-role interrupting behaviors, to work-family conflict and (b) non-invariant associations among job autonomy, cross-role interrupting behaviors and work-family conflict across traditional and remote workers. The limitations and theoretical and practical implications of the present study are discussed.