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Explaining Helping Behavior in the Workplace: The Interactive Effect of Family-to-Work Conflict and Islamic Work Ethic

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Abstract

Drawing from conservation of resources theory, this study investigates the interactive effect of employees’ family-to-work conflict and Islamic work ethic on their helping behavior, theorizing that the negative relationship between family-to-work conflict and helping behavior is buffered by Islamic ethical values. Data from Pakistan reveal empirical support for this effect. Organizations whose employees suffer resource depletion at work because of family obligations can still enjoy productive helping behaviors within their ranks, to the extent that they support relevant work ethics.

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Notes

  1. Previous OCB research on the role of family-to-work conflict had relied on COR theory (e.g., Beham 2011; Hammer et al. 2016), but COR theory applications to the study of Islamic work ethics are scarce.

  2. Because the two independent variables (family-to-work conflict and Islamic work ethic) were measured by the same respondent, we undertook a confirmatory factor analysis to check for discriminant validity. We found a strongly significant difference in the Chi square values of the constrained model in which the correlation between the two constructs was set to equal 1, versus the unconstrained model in which the correlation between the constructs was set free (Δχ2(1) = 251.29, p < .001), in support of discriminant validity (Anderson and Gerbing 1988).

  3. Because of the nested nature of the data, we checked whether it was appropriate to apply hierarchical linear modeling to test our hypotheses, by calculating the interclass coefficients for the family-to-work conflict variable, which arguably might be influenced by group-level phenomena. This was not the case for our sample. Rather, the ICC(1) value was lower than the recommended .25 cut-off value for large group effects (Murphy and Myors 1998), so no substantial variance in this variable could be attributed to group membership. Moreover, the ICC(2) value was lower than the recommended .70 cut-off value (Lebreton and Senter 2008), indicating limited reliability for the group means of the family-to-work conflict variable.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Goodman School of Business, Brock University, St. Catharines, ON, L2S 3A1, Canada

    Dirk De Clercq

  2. Alberta School of Business, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, T6G 2R6, Canada

    Zahid Rahman

  3. Faculty of Management Sciences, Riphah International University, Lahore, Pakistan

    Inam Ul Haq

  4. Small Business Research Centre, Kingston University, Kingston-Upon-Thames, UK

    Dirk De Clercq

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  1. Dirk De Clercq
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De Clercq, D., Rahman, Z. & Haq, I.U. Explaining Helping Behavior in the Workplace: The Interactive Effect of Family-to-Work Conflict and Islamic Work Ethic. J Bus Ethics 155, 1167–1177 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-017-3541-3

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