Family-to-work Enrichment:the Effects Of Family Social Capital On Employees' Career Advancement And Job Performance

Work and family are two central life domains for most employed adults in contemporary society.Past studies mainly examined the negative relationship between work and family,whereas recently some studies begin to pay attention to the positive relationship between them.The theory of work-family enrichment proposed that work and family are not always enemies,but can also be allies.Work-family enrichment has two directions: work-to-family enrichment(WFE)and family-to-work enrichment(FWE).Most studies examining work-family enrichment focused on work-to-family enrichment,but relatively few studies focused on family-to-work enrichment.This study aims to investigate family's enrichment effect on work.Social capital is one of the five antecedents of work-family enrichment,according to theory of work-family enrichment.But there are few studies exploring how social capital plays enrichment effect on individuals work and family.Social capital theory suggests that there are three dimensions of social capital: structural social capital,cognitive social capital and relational social capital.As on source of social capital,family social capital also has three dimensions: structural family social capital(SFSC),cognitive family social capital(CFSC)and relational family social capital(RFSC).Based on theory of work-family enrichment and social capital theory,this study developed a framework about how employees' structural,cognitive and relational family social capital affect their family-to-work enrichment and in turn their career advancement(CA)and job performance(JP).This study hypothesized that family-to-work enrichment mediates the positive relationships between structural,cognitive and relational family social capital and career advancement and job performance.In addition,this study hypothesized that perceptions of organizational politics(POP)moderates the relationships between structural,cognitive and relational family social capital and familyto-work enrichment,for the reason that employees have different emotions and behaviors when perceiving different level of organizational politics.This study hypothesized that the structural family social capital – family-to-work enrichment,cognitive family social capital – family-to-work enrichment,and relational family social capital – family-to-work enrichment relationships will be stronger when perceptions of organizational politics are lower(vice versa).Based on a sample of 252 full-time employees working in public institutions and government departments in Heilongjiang Province.This study used SPSS 22.0 to conduct data analyses.The study found that structural family social capital,cognitive family social capital and relational family social capital are all significantly positive related to familyto-work enrichment.Family-to-work enrichment is significantly positive related to career advancement,but is not related to job performance.Family-to-work enrichment mediates the positive relationships between structural family social capital,cognitive family social capital,relational family social capital and career advancement.Family-to-work enrichment does not mediate the relationships between three dimensions of family social capital and job performance.Results further showed that the effects of structural family social capital and cognitive family social capital on family-to-work enrichment are more pronounced for employees who have less perceptions of organizational politic,while the moderation effect was not found for the process related to relational family social capital.Findings of this study provide several theoretical contributions for organizational behavior research.Firstly,this study enriches the understanding about the antecedents of work-family enrichment.Secondly,this study further explores the role of family instrumental support on family-to-work enrichment.Thirdly,this study associates the research of family social capital with the interplay between work and family.Finally,this study highlights one's perceptions of organizational politics as a moderator to the benefits of family social capital.This study offers some practical implications by suggesting that employees can help themselves get improvement in career life by searching resources from family social capital.To facilitate employees to pursue personal development and achieve career advancement,organizations should avoid organizational politics.