Work Family Conflicts: Do Personality Traits Make Difference

in Job Stress and Life Stress among Employees?

Sarwat Sultan & Fatima Khakwani

Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan

ABSTRACT
A recent change in workforce demographics indicating an increase of female participation, work-family conflict (WFC) and its impact on
job productivity and overall life satisfaction has led the attention of researchers to investigate the WFC more comprehensively. Indeed,
literature has provided the evidences for negative effects of WFC on job and life related outcomes. Thus, the current study was planned to
explore the moderating role of personality traits between the relationship of WFC and job stress and life stress. 713 employees working
in different banks of District Multan provided data on Work-Family Conflict Scale, Job stress Scale, Life Stress Scale, and Big Five
Personality Traits Questionnaire. Results demonstrated significant negative impact of WFC on job stress and life stress; WFC was found
positively connected with extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness while negatively linked to neuroticism. Findings further
suggested that personality traits moderated the effect of WFC on job and life stress.
Key words: Job stress, life stress, personality traits, work-family conflict
INTRODUCTION
During recent years, there is a circumstantial concern shown by many organizational managers, social experts, researchers, and general
public over the conflict that how much work and family roles have become interweave increasingly. WFC as a conflict that occurs between
two roles (family and job) wherein family affairs and work affairs contravene with each other in some domains (Frone, 2003; Grzywacz &
Marks, 2000).The definition proposed that the two domains work-to-family interference (WFI) and family-to-work interference (FWI) can
hinder in both directions. Examining the findings, we proposed a hypothesized model depicting WFC as predictor of job stress. The
profound model also postulates a prediction about the association of WFC with family and life-related stress. The present study
hypothesized that work family conflict will be negatively related with job and life stress. Specifically paying attention to the personality as
another factor affecting job stress, the big five models of personality established on five dimensions is very popular and desegregated in
literature to work-family conflict successfully. This review of these studies led us to develop a model for path analyses between WFC and its
outcomes to job and life stress along with moderating role of personality traits (Greenhaus & Beutell,1985)

OBJECTIVES
HYPOTHESES
To check the
To see the correlation of
relationship of personality traits
WFC with with job stress and
personality traits life stress

To analyze the
mediating role of Personality traits of Conscientiousness
personality traits in Work Force Conflict will be positively agreeableness and extroversion are
Personality traits will mediate the
the relationship of correlated with extroversion and neuroticism negatively correlated with job stress and life
relationship of WFC with job stress and life
WFC with job while negatively correlated with stress while negatively neuroticism and
stress
stress and life agreeableness and Conscientiousness openness to experience are positively
stress correlated with job stress and life stress.

PARTICIPANTS INSTRUMENTS METHODOLOGY PROCEDURE

36.4%
single Prior to collecting the data on measures from
61.2% nurses, permission from the Ch. Pervaiz Elahi
having Institute of Cardiology, Multan and positive
more than 63.6% consents from nurses were obtained.
one year married Big Five
Work-Family The Stress in The Life Stress
job Personality Traits
Conflict scale. General (SIG) Scale Scale
experience Inventory Participants provided responses on a booklet
713 bank consisting of four questionnaires measuring work
employees • Constructed by • constructed by Stanton, • constructed by • constructed by family conflict, job stress, life stress, and
38.8% Kopelman, Greenhaus Balzer, Smith, Parra, Parasuraman et al. Rammstedt, & John personality traits along with general demographic
having less and Connolly (1983) and Ironson (2001) (1992) (2007) information.
than one 52% •A 12-items scale • consisted of 15 items • consisted of 10 items • Consisted of 10 items
year of graduate responding on a 5-point responding on responding
.07 on a 5-point responding on a 5-point
banking Likert scale showing Yes/No/? options likert scale varying likert scale showing All the participants were confirmed the
experience "strongly disagree" (1) "Almost never" (1) to "strongly disagree" (1) confidentiality of their responses. Collected data
48% post to "strongly agree" (5). "Almost all the time (5). to "strongly agree" (5). were then analyzed using SPSS-20 and AMOS-
graduate 21 at 0.05 level of significance.

RESULTS
Table 1 Table 2
Descriptive Statistics and Correlations among Study Variables The Summary of Fit Indices Statistics for the Measurement Model of All Study Variables

M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Measures Overall χ2 ML p Normed BSB p CFI SRMR RMSEA

χ2
1 Work Family Conflict 47.8 8.12 1 CONCLUSION
2 Job Stress 12.2 2.4 .66** 1 Work Family Conflict 49.28 .001 3.17 .002 .944 .049 .037 In conclusion, this study provided the evidences for the moderating role of
3 Life Stress 34.6 7.6 .53** .64** 1 Job Stress 38.51 .008 2.31 .001 .917 .037 .039 personality traits between WFC and job stress and life stress. A summary of
4 Extraversion 5.4 3.3 -.33** -.41** -.37* 1 review of the literature has already affirmed that issue of work-family conflict
Life Stress 28.77 .006 2.88 .006 .982 .038 .034 occurs when individuals experience conflicts between their expected roles at
5 Agreeableness 4.1 1.7 -.44** -.24* -.31 .35** 1
workplace and demanding roles at home in one time. To handle these work-family
6 Conscientiousness 6.4 2.6 -.26* -.31** -.28* .32** .43** 1
Extraversion 30.20 .011 2.57 .004 .948 .028 .040 conflicts, it is imperative to understand the aspect of personality traits that
7 Neuroticism 5.7 3.1 .57** .43** .58** -.36** -.26* -.27* 1
Agreeableness 31.78 .007 3.00 .001 .973 .039 .046 employees possess at working places. Thus the current study has demonstrated
8 Openness to 6.5 2.2 -.19* -.17* -.22* .18* .21* .29* -.11*
that extrovert, agreeableness, and conscientiousness personality traits can
Experience Conscientiousness 27.85 .003 2.76 .006 .948 .025 .035
moderate the severity of negative impact of WFC on job stress and life stress.
Table 3 Neuroticism 34.95 .005 3.02 .011 .959 .047 .052 Neurotic personality of any employee may increase the degree of WFC. However,
The Summary of Fit Indices Statistics for the Full Structural Equation Model (SEM) Analyses openness to experience is not the risk factor for the hypothesized relationship.

Openness to 41.14 .015 4.31 .013 .973 .038 .049

Overall χ2 ML p Normed BSB p CFI SRMR RMSEA with 95% Experience
χ2 CI and P Close

77.28 .001 4.62 .001 .936 .024 .032

In Table 3, maximum likelihood and Bollen-Stine bootstrap chi-squares were found significant.
The value of normed chi-square is not according to acceptable range (between 2-3). This might
be due to the large sample size and the non-normality of the data. However, all other conditions
of goodness of fit supported the present hypothesized model. Thus, the proposed model fits the
data adequately.
The confirmatory factor analyses (Table 2) indicated overall adequate and acceptable fit to
the collected data because all variables in measurement model have reasonable fits on all
specified conditions. Therefore, measurement model of this study is acceptable. The initial
confirmatory factor analyses showed all variables satisfactory loaded in the model with
standardized factor greater than .55 on their underlying factor. Moreover, factor loads of all
measured variables on the latent variable were also found statistically significant (p < .001 REFERENCES
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-.46*, -.35*, -.36*, 47**,16* Job Stress Life Stress -.37*, -.32*, -.39*, .43*, .10*