A MODEL OF WORK-LIFE CONFLICT AND QUALITY OF EMPLOYEE-ORGANIZATION RELATIONSHIPS: TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP, PROCEDURAL JUSTICE, AND FAMILY-SUPPORTIVE WORKPLACE INITIATIVES

Abstract

Good relationship management between organizations and their strategic employee publics contributes to organizational effectiveness. This dissertation built and tested a new model of employee-organization relationships by introducing time-based and strain-based work-life conflict as variables leading to employee-organization relationship outcomes, and by investigating the possible effects of transformational leadership, organizational procedural justice, and family-supportive workplace initiatives upon employees' perceived work-life conflict and relationships with their employers.

This dissertation is an example of multilevel research in which all the theoretical constructs were conceptualized at the individual level, but data were gathered by conducting a survey of 396 employees in 44 U.S. organizations. The multilevel structure of collected data was addressed by using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) as the major analytical method.

The findings suggested that the amount of time-based work-life conflict employees perceived significantly predicted their perceived quality of relationships with their employers. The lower the level of time-based work-life conflict that employees perceived, the better the quality of employee-organization relationships they had. When immediate supervisors respected their subordinates as individuals with unique characters and needs and treated them differently but fairly, employees perceived high levels of trust, commitment, satisfaction, and control mutuality. In addition, employees who perceived that they were treated fairly by their organizations developed quality relationships with their employers. This dissertation also identified fair formal procedures used to make work-life policies and decisions as a significant antecedent leading to high trust, commitment, satisfaction, and control mutuality that employees perceived. Moreover, the extent to which organizations administered fair procedures for work-life conflict-related policies and decisions greatly affected employees' perceptions of the time-based and strain-based interferences between work and nonwork. Lastly, it was revealed that time-based work-life conflict partially mediated the association between quality of employee-organization relationships and procedural justice referencing work-life policies, decisions, and procedures. Interpretations and implications of the findings, the limitations of the dissertation, and directions for future research were discussed.