When embeddedness hurts: the moderating effects of job embeddedness on the relationships between work-to-family conflict and voluntary turnover, emotional exhaustion, guilt, and hostility

Abstract

Theory and research have focused mainly on negative aspects of work-to-family conflict (WFC) and positive aspects of job embeddedness on a range of outcomes. However, due to the lack of research integrating these constructs, less is known what happens when working parents high on embeddedness face WFC. This study uses the conservation of resources theory to examine moderating effects of on-the-job embeddedness between the relationships of WFC and four outcomes: voluntary turnover, emotional exhaustion, guilt, and hostility. Data were derived from 724 working mothers in Japan at three points in time over a 14‐month time period. Results show that while respondents high on on-the-job embeddedness facing WFC had lower voluntary turnover, they reported more emotional exhaustion, guilt, and hostility. The findings contribute to the literature by linking WFC to specific emotion-related outcomes and by providing evidence of the “dark side” of job embeddedness.

Keywords:

• Job embeddedness
• voluntary turnover
• emotional exhaustion
• guilt
• hostility
• work-family conflict

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Mathew Todres and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on this paper. This study was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science KAKENHI grant 20H01535

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.