Work-Family Conflict and Depressive Symptoms Among Chinese Employees: Cross-Level Interaction of Organizational Justice Climate and Family Flexibility

Mingjie Zhou, Jinfeng Zhang, Fugui Li and Chen Chen
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Mingjie Zhou: CAS Key Laboratory of Mental Health, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China
Jinfeng Zhang: School of Public Affairs, Chongqing University, Chongqing 400044, China
Fugui Li: CAS Key Laboratory of Mental Health, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China
Chen Chen: Department of Social and Behavioural Sciences, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong 999077, China

IJERPH, 2020, vol. 17, issue 19, 1-17

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.

Keywords: work-family conflict; depressive symptoms; organizational justice climate; family flexibility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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