Is exercise good for all? Time- and strain-based work–family conflict and its impacts

ABSTRACT

While many people believe that exercise can relieve stress and enrich well-being, it is unclear whether this relationship always holds when employees suffer from work–family conflict (WFC). Drawing on the transactional theory of stress and conservation of resources theory, we examine how exercise moderates the impact of time- and strain-based WFC on employees’ vitality at work and, subsequently, employees’ subjective well-being. With data collected in multiple waves from a sample in China (N = 243), we found that when employees experienced time-based WFC, strong adherence to exercise did not benefit their vitality as weak adherence to exercise did. However, when employees experienced strain-based work interference with family demands, strong (rather than weak) adherence to exercise benefited their vitality. In addition, the moderating effect of exercise on the relationship between WFC and vitality transited to affect employee job satisfaction.

KEYWORDS:

• Work–family conflict
• vitality
• exercise
• job satisfaction

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data described in this article are openly available in the Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/wvneh

Open Scholarship

This article has earned the Center for Open Science badges for Open Data, Open Materials and Preregistered. The data and materials are openly accessible at https://osf.io/wvneh.

Additional information

Funding

In accordance with Taylor & Francis policy and our ethical obligation as researchers, we are reporting that the data collection conducted by the fourth author was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (A study on the mechanisms of the impact of status competition-based faultlines on team innovative performance, Grant No. 71772057).

Notes on contributors

Hongguo Wei

Hongguo Wei is an Assistant Professor of Management at Robert Morris University, Moon Township, PA, USA. She received her Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior at Case Western Reserve University. Her research interests focus on leadership, compassion, emotions, workplace relationships, and ethical behavior. Her work has appeared in the Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Journal of Business Ethics, Management and Organization Review, Journal of Management Education, Frontiers in Psychology, and Human Resource Development Quarterly.

Bingqing Wu

Bingqing Wu is an Assistant Professor of Management at the University of Wisconsin, Parkside. She received her Ph.D. in Business Administration from the University of Illinois, Chicago. Her research interests include leadership, creativity, and ambivalence. Her research has appeared in the Journal of Organizational Behavior, Journal of Business and Psychology, Journal of General Management, and Journal of International Selection and Assessment.

Haesang Park

Haesang Park is an Assistant Professor in HRM at Roosevelt University, Chicago, IL, USA. She received her Ph.D. in Human Resource Management and Organizational Behavior at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Her research focuses on how leadership and culture influence employees’ performance and productive and counter-productive extra-role behaviors using multi-level analysis and meta-analysis. Her research has been published in the Journal of Management, Journal of Business Ethics, and Small Group Research.

Chuanjun Deng

Chuanjun Deng is an Associate Professor of Business School at the Henan University, Kaifeng, China. He received his Ph.D. in Human Resource Management from the Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China. His research interests include team faultlines, diversity, and creativity.