Work-Family Conflict and Depressive Symptoms Among Chinese Employees: Cross-Level Interaction of Organizational Justice Climate and Family Flexibility
Year: 2020
Type: article
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: This study aims to examine how organizational and family factors protect employees from depressive symptoms induced by work-family conflict. With a cross-sectional design, a total of 2184 Chinese employees from 76 departments completed measures of work-family conflict, organizational justice, family flexibility, and depressive symptoms. The results showed that work-family conflict including work-to-family conflict and family-to-work conflict was positively associated with depressive symptoms. In cross-level analysis, organizational justice climate weakened the adverse effect of work-family conflict on depressive symptoms and the buffering effects of procedural and distributive justice climate in the association between work-family conflict and depressive symptoms depended on family flexibility. Specifically, compared with employees with high family flexibility, procedural and distributive justice climate had a stronger buffering effect for employees with low family flexibility. These results indicate that organization and family could compensate each other to mitigate the effect of work-family conflict on employees' depressive symptoms. Cultivating justice climate in organization and enhancing family flexibility might be an effective way to reduce employees' depressive symptoms.
Authors: Mingjie Zhou, Jinfeng Zhang, Fugui Li, Chen Chen
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $2,429
OpenAlex ID: W3088699732