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The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to examine whether polychronicity, an individual difference variable that involves a preference for multitasking, moderates the relationships between work-family conflict (WFC) and two work criteria, job satisfaction and work engagement; second, to examine two measures of polychronicity (the multitasking preference inventory (MPI) and the inventory of polychronic values (IPV)) and investigate whether polychronicity moderates the relationships between WFC and work criteria differently when measured by the MPI or the IPV.

The study’s sample included 257 respondents from the Amazon Mechanical Turk service who completed an online survey. Multiple regression analyses were conducted to test whether polychronicity moderated the relationships between WFC and two work criteria, job satisfaction and work engagement.

Polychronicity was found to significantly moderate the relationship between the work engagement and WFC. Follow-up analyses indicated that those who were lower in polychronicity had a significant decrease in work engagement as WFC increased, whereas those who were higher in polychronicity had relatively the same work engagement level regardless of changes in WFC. The results suggest that individuals higher in polychronicity have more personal resources and may be more resilient than those lower in polychronicity when it comes to not letting conflicts between their work and family lives affect how engaged they feel in their work.

This study extends the application of polychronicity to new domains of WFC and work engagement. The current study also contributed to the literature by investigating two measures of polychronicity (MPI and IPV) and finding that the MPI significantly moderated the relationship between WFC and work engagement, but the IPV did not. These findings indicate that there are important differences between the MPI and the IPV, and additional research is needed in comparing these two polychronicity measures.