What the Person Brings to the Table: Personality, Coping, and Work-Family Conflict

Employees (N = 291) of various industries and companies were surveyed to study how individual factors (coping and personality) affect work-family conflict: strain-based work-to-family conflict (S-WFC), time-based work-to-family conflict (T-WFC), strain-based family-to-work conflict (S-FWC), and time-based family-to-work conflict (T-FWC). As expected, passive coping was related to significantly higher levels of S-WFC, S-FWC, and T-FWC. Unexpectedly, active coping was related to higher levels of S-WFC. As hypothesized, social support coping was negatively related to work-family conflict, but only for T-WFC. Venting was positively related to S-WFC. As predicted, neuroticism was positively related to S-WFC, T-WFC, and S-FWC. Passive coping mediated the positive relationship between neuroticism and S-FWC. Neither internal locus of control nor extraversion was related to work-family conflict. Implications and suggestions for further research are discussed.