Employee embeddedness as a moderator of the relationship between work and family conflict and leaving intention

Abstract

This paper examines whether on-the-job embeddedness moderates the impact of work and family conflict on leaving intention. Drawing on conservation of resources theory, the paper investigates the buffering effect of the three on-the-job embeddedness components (fit, links and sacrifice). Contrary to predictions, in this sample of white-collar manufacturing employees on-the-job fit embeddedness had no effect on the relationship between work and family conflict and leaving intention. As predicted, on-the-job link embeddedness weakened the effect and on-the-job sacrifice embeddedness strengthened the effect of work and life conflict on leaving intention. The results suggest that organisations can reduce turnover intention during times of work and life conflict by developing employee on-the-job link embeddedness.

Keywords:

• Work and family conflict
• job embeddedness
• turnover
• retention
• conservation of resources

Acknowledgements

I acknowledge the contribution of Julie Warnes, Shruti Sardeshmukh, the reviewers and editor.