Work/family conflict and employee creativity: The importance of employee perceptions of managerial and organizational support for work-life issues

Work/family conflict has been an increasingly popular topic for researchers and practitioners due to the myriad of changes in both the work and nonwork settings. Work/family conflict has been associated with a number of personal and organizational outcomes. The purpose of this study was to determine the relationships between work/family conflict, managerial support for work-life balance, family-supportive organizational perceptions, and employee creativity. A diverse group of 104 clerical staff and front line employees from a large social services organization were included in this study. Direct reports completed self-report measures for work/family conflict, managerial support for work-life balance, and family-supportive organizational perceptions. Supervisors completed ratings of employee creativity for their respective direct reports. It was hypothesized that work/family conflict would be inversely related to employee creativity. No relationship was found between work/family conflict and employee creativity. As predicted, both managerial support for work-life balance (r = .31, p < .05) and family-supportive organizational perceptions (r = .19, p < .05) were significantly positively correlated with employee creativity. Managerial support for work-life balance and family-supportive organizational perceptions were not found to be moderators of the relationship between work/family conflict and employee creativity. Theoretical findings underscore the positive association between such organizational contextual variables as managerial support for work-life balance and family-supportive organizational perceptions with employee creativity. Organizational practitioners interested in enhancing employee creativity can benefit from these results by understanding how contextual variables such as managerial support for work-life issues and family-supportive organizational perceptions are related to employee creativity. Similarly, organizational practitioners interested in demonstrating the value of work/family contextual variables can benefit from the positive association found with employee creativity.