Work Support and Family Support as Predictors of Work-to-family Enrichment and Family-to-work Enrichment

Abstract

Of late, the relationship between work–family enrichment and support has started gaining some attention within the organizational behaviour literature. However, support emerging from the family front has often been neglected in previous studies. The purpose of our research is to empirically estimate the role of both work support (WS) and family support (FS) as predictors of work-to-family enrichment (WFE) and family-to-work enrichment (FWE) among sales employees in Indian organizations. Data were collected through structured questionnaires from 330 employees belonging to firms from some of the major sectors of Indian industry, namely manufacturing, IT, FMCG, pharmaceuticals and financial services. The study first validated the support scale in the Indian context using exploratory factor analyses (EFA) and confirmatory factor analyses (CFA). Further, structural equation modelling (SEM) using AMOS (version 20) was used to test the model. Results supported the 20-item work support and family support scale measuring work and family support in the Indian set-up. Further, results of SEM suggested that work as well as family support significantly predicts work-to-family enrichment as well as family-to-work enrichment. The study signals the importance of ensuring a supportive organizational environment for an effective workforce. This not only can help in enriching one’s work life, but also can impact one’s family life as well. The same phenomenon also applies to family front; a supportive family results in an improved enrichment in work domain. This study contributes to work–family literature by addressing role of support—both work and family—as predictors of WFE and FEW, which has rarely been studied in the Indian context.