When work–life balance fails to boost organizational citizenship behaviors: the moderating role of leader–member exchange

Abstract

Purpose

Supporting employees’ work–life balance (WLB) has been a standard human resource management practice, thus the concern is now shifted toward its outcomes. The present study predicts that while WLB can boost organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs), this positive effect may depend on the quality of leader–member exchange (LMX) relationships. The study seeks evidence to clarify how the WLB–OCBs relationship can be moderated by the LMX quality.

Design/methodology/approach

A sample of 216 frontline employees in New Zealand was used to test two moderation models using SPSS, AMOS and PROCESS macro.

Findings

WLB was found to have substantial effects on OCBs-individual (OCBs-I) and OCBs-organization (OCBs-O) if the quality of LMX was high. Under low LMX quality, however, WLB failed to boost OCBs-I and OCBs-O. Thus, the influence of WLB on OCBs seems to be conditional on the leader–subordinate relationship as a boundary factor.

Practical implications

Supporting low-LMX-quality employees to balance their work–life roles seems insufficient to push OCBs. Managers and organizations need to improve the quality of leader–subordinate relationships to unblock the desired effects of WLB toward OCBs, and, ultimately, organizational effectiveness and performance.

Originality/value

The findings extend the research stream around the boundary impact of LMX relationships on the employees’ WLB – OCBs link in which the OCBs construct was especially examined in terms of OCBs-I and OCBs-O.

Citation

Nguyen, V.L. and Haar, J. (2024), "When work–life balance fails to boost organizational citizenship behaviors: the moderating role of leader–member exchange", Evidence-based HRM, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/EBHRM-02-2024-0043