Work status congruence, work-related attitudes, and satisfaction with worklife balance of services employees in Malaysia / Muhamad Khalil Bin Omar
This study tested whether the relationship between work status congruence and work-related attitudes (i.e., job satisfaction and affective commitment) is mediated by satisfaction with work-life balance. The study also examined the extent to which job satisfaction mediates the relationships betwee...
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Summary: | This study tested whether the relationship between work status congruence and
work-related attitudes (i.e., job satisfaction and affective commitment) is mediated by
satisfaction with work-life balance. The study also examined the extent to which job
satisfaction mediates the relationships between work status congruence and affective
commitment, as well as between satisfaction with work-life balance and affective
commitment. All measures were adopted from the work of past authors. The items were
altered slightly to reflect the references to all non-standard work arrangements (e.g.
part-time, temporary, and contract) and life domains apart from family only (e.g.
leisure, study, recreation, travel, social, community, and hobbies).
This study was conducted using the survey method and 893 services employees
in Malaysia participated in this study. The IBM SPSS Statistics 18.0 was used to
perform the item-total correlations analysis, exploratory factor analysis (EFA),
reliability test, correlation analysis, independent samples t-test and one-way analysis of
variance (ANOVA). The IBM SPSS AMOS 18.0 was also used to test the hypotheses of
this study. The SEM analysis showed that work status congruence had direct and
indirect effects (i.e. via the mediating role of satisfaction with work-life balance) on
employees’ work-related attitudes (i.e. job satisfaction and affective commitment).
At the same time, work status congruence and satisfaction with work-life
balance were found to have direct and indirect effects (i.e. via the mediating role of job
satisfaction) on employees’ affective commitment. The findings suggested that the
employees’ congruent preferences for work status, schedule, shift and hours could
influence their affective commitment through the mediating roles of their satisfaction
with their work-life balance and their overall jobs. In other words, this study affirmed
that when employees were working on their preferred work staffing and scheduling
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arrangements, they would be satisfied with the balance between their work and nonwork
interactions, in terms of their overall jobs; in turn they would be affectively
committed towards their organisations.
This study is the first in Malaysia to highlight the importance of work status
congruence in positively predicting employees’ satisfaction with work-life balance and
simultaneously operationalised it among both standard and non-standard employees.
Further, extending the applicability of the discrepancy theory conceptualised as workstatus
congruence in overcoming the discrepant findings in previous under-developed
studies of work-life balance, this study also extended conception of work-family
balance by verifying the satisfaction with work-life balance as the mediating mechanism
in the relationship between work-status congruence and work-related attitudes.
Furthermore, this study attested a unitary measurement of satisfaction with
work-life balance, thus, contributed towards the body of knowledge of work-life
balance that lacks theoretical studies and conclusive measurement. Therefore, this study
provided empirical evidences for both researchers and managers to make references in
terms of the importance of employees’ congruent preferences of work-life balance
policies, such as non-standard staffing and scheduling arrangements in determining
employees’ work-life balance, job satisfaction and affective commitment. Taken
together, this study proved that non-standard employment is not a sub-standard
employment as long as its implementation is in accordance to employees’ preferences. |
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