Reporting good news but not bad: the dual effect of employee stewardship behavior on work–family interface
Abstract
Purpose
Stewardship behavior is an important embodiment of the spirit of employee ownership, which is critical to the sustainability of companies, especially under the influence of the COVID-19 epidemic. Most previous studies have focused on how to motivate employees’ stewardship behavior, but little is known about how stewardship behavior affects employees themselves. The purpose of this study is to explore how employee stewardship behavior affects their work-family interface based on the conservation of resources (COR) theory.
Design/methodology/approach
In this study, structural equation modeling was conducted using two-wave survey data from 323 employees through three internet companies in Southern China.
Findings
Results reveal that engaging in stewardship behavior is positively correlated with both positive emotion and emotional exhaustion. Positive emotion and emotional exhaustion, in turn, mediate the effects of stewardship behavior on work–home interface. Family motivation influences the strength of the relationships between positive emotion or emotional exhaustion and work–family interface, that is, high family motivation strengthens the positive association between positive emotion and work–family enrichment and weakens the positive association between emotional exhaustion and work–family conflict.
Practical implications
This study suggests that managers should give employees more support and care to ease the worries of engaging in stewardship behavior. Also, organizations should recruit employees with high family motivation, which can reduce the negative effects of stewardship behavior on work–-family interface.
Originality/value
Based on an actor’s perspective, this study examines both the positive and negative effects of stewardship behavior on employees themselves, thereby increasing understanding of the dual effect of stewardship behavior. In addition, this study further elucidates the mechanisms that moderate the positive and negative effects of individual family motivation on their engagement in stewardship behavior within the COR theory.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Funding: This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No. 72072061, and by the Guangdong Youth Planning Office of Philosophy and Social Science, project code GD23YGL33.
Conflict of interest: There is no conflict of interest among authors.
Ethical approval: This study was approved by the institutional review board of South China University of Technology. The questionnaires were filled in anonymously, and the authors promise that personal information about the participates will be kept confidentially.
Data availability statement: The data sets used and analyzed in the current study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Citation
Wang, M., Qian, C., Kiani, A. and Xu, G. (2024), "Reporting good news but not bad: the dual effect of employee stewardship behavior on work–family interface", Chinese Management Studies, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/CMS-08-2023-0370
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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