Does leadership matter? Leadership styles, family supportive supervisor behaviour and work interference with family conflict

Abstract

Based on transformational leadership and social support theories, we examined the direct effects of transformational and transactional leadership on work interference with family (WIF) conflict and family supportive supervisor behaviour (FSSB) as mediator. Using organisational support theory, we examined perceived organisational support (POS) as a moderator. Survey data were collected from 368 managers in Sri Lanka. The results show that transactional and transformational leadership positively relate to FSSB and transformational leadership negatively relates to WIF conflict. In addition, transformational leadership augments the effect of transactional leadership on FSSB. While FSSB mediates the effect of transactional leadership on WIF conflict, it only partially mediates the effect of transformational leadership on WIF conflict. However, the negative relationship reported between transformational leadership and WIF conflict changes into a positive relationship when FSSB is introduced as a mediator. This suggests that transformational leadership has a positive and negative impact on WIF conflict simultaneously. Finally, contrary to expectations, POS does not moderate the effect of FSSB on WIF conflict.

Keywords:

• Transformational leadership
• work interference with family conflict
• family supportive supervisor behaviour
• perceived organisational support
• structural equation modelling