A Study On Managers’ Work-family Conflict:From A Cognitive Transactional Theory Perspective

Work-family balance is the core subject of enterprise’s family ethics. Work-family balance may be influenced directly by the organization situation and management differences. Based on the perspective of cognitive transactional theory, it is necessary to give an emprical research on managers’ work-family conflict, its form, forming mechanism and influence on organizational behaviors in the Chinese enterprises’ context.Focus on managers’ work-family conflict, this paper builds an integrated theoretical framework based on stress coping’s cognitive transactional theory. The research builds the influence path from perceptions of organizational politics and psychological capital to work-family conflict and tries to explain the influence effects. Thus, it identifies active coping as a mediator to explore the mechanisms between perceptions of organizational politics, psychological capital and work-family conflict. This paper gives a further analysis to reveal the behavioral results of work-family conflict and its correlation between the antecedents and the outcomes.A questionnaire survey is taken to select datas from two different periods. It obtains 450 valid sample datas from married enterprises’ managers. Using the statistical software SPSS18.0 and AMOS18.0, it has carried on the variance analysis, correlation analysis and structural equation analysis in order to examine the theoretical model and research hypothesis.This paper has the following findings: As an implicit interpersonal stressor in Chinese organizational working context, perceptions of organizational politics is one of the important antecedents resulting in managers’ work-family conflict. As an important cognitive psychological resource, psychological capital can reduce managers’ family-work conflict. Managers’ active coping when facing work stress can effectively decrease bi-directional work-family conflict. Active coping mediates the relationship between perceptions of organizational politics and managers’ family-work conflict. It also mediates the relationship between psychological capital and managers’ bi-directional work-family conflict. Managers’ bi-directional work-family conflict can influence their behaiviors. Work-family conflict and family-work conflict cause managers’ exit, negletct and silent behaviors. Family-work conflict can also restrain managers’ voice and loyalty behaviors. Managers’ bi-directional work-family conflict takes as a mediation role between perceptions of organizational politics, psychological capital and destructive behaviors.Based on the cognitive transactional theory, the research conclusions give a new perspective to explain how the work-family confict appear. It expands the results of antecedents of work-family conflict and finds out the path and effects that perceptions of organizational politics and psychological capital influence on managers’ work-family conflict. Then, this research leads coping strategies of psychology study into the study of work-family conflict and reveals its mediating mechanism between perceptions of organizational politics, psychological capital and work-family conflict. After that, the research explores work-family conflict influence on managers’ behavior and the intergrated theoretical model has been examined. The result further clarified the important role of work-family conflict on managers’ work behavior. Enterprises should improve the organizational political climate, the managers’ abilities of coping stress and the level of their psychological resources so to facilitate managers’ work-family balance and harmony.