Personality as a Determinant of Work-Family Conflict

Purpose: Extant literature reported that the perceptible experience of work-family conflict (W-F conflict) is determined by any of work/family role-specific characteristics. This study is done under the premise that the perception on the occurrence of W-F conflict is influenced by person-specific personality characteristics. Authors have used big five personality dimensions as the independent variables and bi-directional nature of W-F conflict as dependent variable. It was hypothesized that extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness and openness positively predict W-F conflict and neuroticism negatively predicts W-F conflict. Design/methodology/approach: A self-reported questionnaire consisting of items borrowed from published literature was used to collect data. This study comprised of 205 IT/ITES (Information technology/Information technology enabled services) employees working in Chennai city. The cross sectional data was collected using snow-ball sampling technique. Findings: Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to predict W-F Conflict by the personality dimension (The measurement model in this study is found to have good model fitness; CFI =.969; NFI =.929; RMSEA =.058; CMIN = 1.682 and TLI =.941). Results suggest that the personality dimensions such as extraversion, conscientiousness, openness to experience, and agreeableness predict W-F Conflict. Neuroticism does not appear to support our hypothesis which is contrary to predictions by extant literature.-1037-Journal of Industrial Engineering and Management