My sweet-hard boss: How do paternalistic managers influence employees’ work-family and family-work conflict?

Abstract

Paternalistic Leadership (PL) is endorsed especially by employees who score high on collectivism and power distance and is found to be negatively associated with Work-Family Conflict (WFC) and Family-Work Conflict (FWC) in many studies. However, the psychological mechanisms underlying these relationships have been the focus of few studies. We propose that PL is positively related to psychosocial and career support, and affective and job dependence; psychosocial and career support, and affective dependence, in turn, decrease employees’ WFC and FWC while job dependence increases them. Data were collected from 730 employees in Turkey and analyzed with Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). PL was positively associated with all of the mediating variables. The relationships of PL with WFC and FWC were fully mediated by psychosocial support; however, career support did not mediate the relationship between PL and WFC. Unexpectedly, affective dependence was positively associated with WFC and FWC. PL was also positively associated with WFC via its positive effect on job dependence. Results suggest that both affective and job dependence enhanced by PL increase employees’ WFC and FWC for different reasons. Moreover, although paternalistic managers provide career support, the main psychological mechanism that mediates the relationships of PL with WFC and FWC is psychosocial support.