The Antecedents And Outcomes Of Family-Supportive Supervisor Behaviors ——An Empirical Study Based On Family Context And Hospitality Industry Context

Work domain and family domain are always the most important domains in individual life.Since the interpersonal relationship,behavior rules,and role responsibility in these two domains are different,individuals generally confront with a problem of how to allocate their limited personal resources,such as time,energies,and emotions,to balance their work life and family life.With the rapid development of social economy and social civilization,family structures and the lifestyle of individuals have changed tremendously.In families,an increasing number of parents engage in full-time jobs.For individuals,more and more individuals pursue high-quality life.This exacerbates the challenge that individuals face when balancing their work and family life.In fact,the work-family balance problem is especially significant for front-line service employees in service industry.In service industry,such as hotel organizations,front-line service employees are often required to work in irregular time and to express positive emotions(such as politeness,warmth,and smiling)to satisfy customers,even if these emotions conflict with their deep feelings.As a result,front-line service employees often experience high levels of stress that threatens their ability to balance work and family life,which ultimately undermines their passion and motivation to deliver high-quality customer service.Considering that the service quality of front-line service employees plays a key role in the success of service organizations,it is necessary for organizations and managers to provide support for these employees to balance their work and family life.Given that,a considerable body of research has identified family-supportive supervisor behaviors as an important strategy to promote employee work-family balance,and devoted increasing attention to investigating the antecedents and outcomes of family-supportive supervisor behaviors.In spite of the current promising findings,there are three important unrevealed issues in this field.First,current research in the antecedents of family-supportive supervisor behaviors focuses more on individual personality and contextual factors in organizations,leaving the effect of family-related antecedents undiscovered.Second,although previous research has demonstrated the significant impact of family-supportive supervisor behaviors on employee work-family interface management,we know little about its influential mechanism.Third,it is unfortunate that little research light has been shed on the effect of family-supportive supervisor behaviors on front-line employees in the context of service industry.Moreover,few research has investigated the family-related outcomes and work-related outcomes of family-supportive supervisor behaviors in an integrated framework.In this study,I developed a theoretical framework based on the social cognitive theory and work/family border theory to investigate the family-related antecedents and both the family-related outcomes and the family-related outcomes of family-supportive supervisor behaviors in the context of hospitality industry.Two studies were conducted in this study.In study one,I investigated the effect of parents' family mentoring on family-supportive supervisor behaviors.Analyzing time-lagged data from 153 frontline service employees and their supervisors in Chinese hotels,I found a positive relationship between parents' family mentoring and family-supportive supervisor behaviors.Moreover,the results indicated that supervisors' work-family balance acted as a significant mediator in this relationship.Further,supervisors' identification with their parents strengthened the positive effect of parents' family mentoring on supervisors' work-family balance.In study two,I explored the influential mechanism of family-supportive supervisor behaviors on employee work-family balance,and its ultimate impact on front-line service employees' family outcomes and service outcomes.Using a time-lagged fourwave data from 215 supervisor-subordinate dyads in five Chinese hotels,I found that family-supportive supervisor behaviors can enhance front-line service employees'work-family balance by boosting their family-related personal learning.In addition,employee family centrality strengthens the positive influence of family-supportive supervisor behaviors on employee family-related personal learning.The increased work-family balance can further improve front-line service employees' family outcomes(including family performance and family satisfaction)and service outcomes(including in-role service performance and proactive customer service performance).Consequently,I concluded that employee family-related personal learning and workfamily balance sequentially mediate the impact of family-supportive supervisor behaviors on front-line service employees'family outcomes(including family performance and family satisfaction)and service outcomes(including in-role service performance and proactive customer service performance).This research makes several theoretical contributions to current literature.First,this research adds to the family-supportive supervisor behaviors literature by extending its antecedents to family-related factor and empirically demonstrating the positive relationship between parents' family-related mentoring and family-supportive supervisor behaviors.Second,this study helps to open the "black box" underlying the impacts of parents' family-related mentoring on family-supportive supervisor behaviors.Specifically,this study reveals the mediating effect of supervisors' work-family balance as well as the moderating role of supervisors' identification with parents in the influential process of parents' family-related mentoring.Third,this research contributes by offering a new perspective for understanding the underlying mechanism between family-supportive supervisor behaviors and employee work-family balance.Fourth,this research extends the current family-supportive supervisor behaviors research by applying it to service context and investigating its effects on front-line service employees'service outcomes,including in-role service performance and proactive customer service performance.Finaly,this research contributes by empirically demonstrating that family-supportive supervisor behaviors can exert significant impact on both employee family outcomes and service outcomes.