The Effects of Congruence between Work-to-Family Conflict on Organizational Citizenship Behavior: An Empirical Study in China

Excellent employees are those who take on extra responsibilities and commitments at work. Hence, employees must pay attention to out-of-role activities that can help the company perform better. When a person takes on more responsibilities than he can handle, they will have to deal with the issue of work-family balance. This paper examines how the consistency of WFC affects employees’ organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) using the Resource Conservation Theory. This study uses empirical research methodologies to assess 417 employees as a sample. (1) When the matches of work-to-family conflict (WFC) and family-to-work conflict (FWC) are consistent, the employee self-control resource depletion level is lower, and OCB is higher in the “high-high” consistency matching state. (2) The “low-high” match had a higher OCB than the “high-low” match when the WFC and FWC matches were inconsistent. (3) In the process of WFC affecting OCB, the depletion of self-control resources acts as a mediating factor. (4) Emotional intelligence plays a moderating role in the whole model. The lower the emotional intelligence was, the stronger the positive relationship between the consistency of WFC, FWC, and self-control resource depletion was.