The Impacts Of Family-to-Work Conflict On Surface Acting Toward Coworkers

With the rise of communication technology and changes in family and work dynamics,employees are increasingly experiencing interruptions from their family while at work.How do these family-to-work conflicts influence employees’ work emotions and interactions with coworkers?Building on the conservation of resources theory,this dissertation introduced negative emotions and kaleidoscope career values as a mediator and a moderator,respectively,and developed a cross-level moderated mediation model to explicate how,why,and under what conditions family-to-work conflict influenced employees’ surface acting toward coworkers.Therefore,this dissertation sought to test the research hypotheses through a mixedmethod design,with Study 1 using an empirical sampling method to collect longitudinal data for full model testing and Study 2 using an experimental method to further test the causal relationships between the variables.Study 1 was an experience sampling study in which daily diary surveys were conducted to 116 full-time employees from diverse occupational backgrounds for 10 consecutive workdays.Study 2 was an experimental study in which 594 full-time employees were recruited to participate in the 2(familyto-work conflict:high vs.low)by 3(kaleidoscope career values:authenticity,balance,challenge)between-subjects experiment in a fictitious work context.The data collected from the two empirical studies were statistically analyzed and hypothesis tested by using the software R.The results showed that family-to-work conflict has a significantly positive impact on surface acting toward coworkers,and that negative emotions play a partially mediating role.In addition,the kaleidoscope career values moderate the relationship between family-to-work conflict and negative emotions,and the mediating effect of negative emotions between family-to-work conflict and surface acting toward coworkers.Specifically,when employees have a kaleidoscope of career that emphasizes lower authenticity,higher balance,and higher challenge,family-to-work conflict has a stronger effect on surface acting toward coworkers via negative emotions.This dissertation enriches the theoretical and empirical implications of the literature on career value,work-family conflict,and emotional labor,and provides insights for management practice.