Work-Family Boundary Fit and Employee Well-Being: The Mediating Role of Work-Family Conflict

This study explores how the consistency between work-family boundary preferences and boundary enactment affects employee well-being by applying polynomial regression and response surface analysis. Using two-wave data from 420 employees in consulting firms in China, recruited via snowball sampling, bootstrapping was conducted to examine whether reduced work-family conflict mediates this relationship. The results show that consistency between preferences and enactment is positively related to job satisfaction and depression-enthusiasm well-being but has no significant effect on anxiety-comfort well-being. Anxiety-comfort and depression-enthusiasm well-being are higher when both preferences and enactment are high compared to when both are low. Work-family conflict plays a mediating role in this relationship. This research adds to the boundary management literature by highlighting the importance of aligning work-family boundary preferences with enactment. The findings suggest that organizations can improve employee well-being by supporting boundary management practices that match individual preferences.