Introduction

Employees’ innovations are critical to the growth and even the survival of their organization. However, not all employee creative ideas can be incorporated into formal channels of organizational innovation behavior due to path dependency, current strategic choices, and validated institutional and resource governance (Demir & Knights, 2021). When their personal innovation ideas conflict with their organization’s formal innovation strategy and when employees believe that these ideas are likely to succeed, employees may engage in underground innovation behavior (Criscuolo et al., 2014). These underground innovations, known as employee bootlegging behavior, are defined as employee-initiated behaviors that are not formally supported by their organization and that senior management are generally unaware of but aim to generate innovations to benefit the organization (Criscuolo et al., 2014). Study shows that employee bootlegging behavior occurs in more than 80% of companies (Augsdorfer, 2012). In addition, the purpose of employee bootlegging behavior is consistent with formal channel innovation behavior, i.e., they are both intended to contribute to the organization’s innovation capacity, and thus the former is an important complement to the latter (Mainemelis & Sakellariou, 2023). Therefore, more research on the antecedents of employee bootlegging behavior is needed to better manage and utilize it (Zhang et al., 2023a).

However, there is very limited understanding of the antecedents of employee bootlegging behavior (Zhang et al.,2023a), and in particular the role of family support leadership has not yet been explored. So far, the limited studies on the antecedents of employee bootlegging behavior have focused on leadership. The existing literature has demonstrated that ethical leadership (Li et al., 2021), temporal leadership (Li & Ye, 2021), paradoxical leadership (Jia et al., 2021), coaching leadership (Li et al., 2022a), differential leadership (Wu et al., 2022), leader humor (Zhang et al., 2023a), and leader humility (Qu et al., 2023) significantly influence employee bootlegging behavior. Although these studies clarify the antecedents of leadership, they focus on employee work support leadership and neglect family support leadership, severely hindering a comprehensive and in-depth understanding of the subject. The impact of family support leadership on employee bootlegging behavior is particularly important because family-related factors play an important role in employee behavioral decisions (Li et al., 2021). In the post-pandemic era, telecommuting has become the “new normal,” exacerbating the convergence and even disruption of work-family relationships (Bell et al., 2023). Therefore, the impact of family support leadership behaviors, especially family supportive supervisor behavior (FSSB), the most typical behavior, on the attitudes and behaviors of employees becomes even more important (Kossek et al., 2023). Meanwhile, FSSB is closely related to employees’ work–home resources (W-HRs; Rofcanin et al., 2018), W-HR model is the theory based on the transformation of an individual’s W-HRs (Ten Brummelhuis & Bakker, 2012), and telecommuters have a greater need for and easier access to FSSB (Chambel et al., 2023). Moreover, Telecommuters are far from their leaders and coworkers and have the advantage of work flexibility (Allen et al., 2015; Gohoungodji et al., 2023), all of which contribute to their implementation of covert and strategically autonomous bootlegging behavior. Therefore, in order to advance the understanding of the antecedents of family support leadership, we focus on FSSB based on the telecommuting context and W-HR model to explore in detail whether, how, and when FSSB has an impact on employee bootlegging behavior, with the aim of filling the gaps in the existing literature.

Specifically, FSSB refers to supervisor behaviors that support employees in fulfilling their family responsibilities (Hammer et al., 2009). First, since FSSB was proposed, scholars have established a solid literature base for its importance (Crain & Stevens, 2018). It has been demonstrated that FSSB promotes pro-organizational behaviors, such as organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and voices (Bagger & Li, 2014; Hammer et al., 2016; Pan, 2018; Li et al., 2022b; Yin et al., 2023). As employee bootlegging behavior is also pro-organizational (Criscuolo et al., 2014), these studies provide promising initial support for a link between FSSB and employee bootlegging behavior. Second, FSSB is crucial for employees to implement bootlegging behavior. As employees implementing bootlegging behavior are more likely to produce radical innovation results (Mainemelis, 2010), this is more likely to cost them additional resources. For example, employees proactively use family and leisure time to implement bootlegging behavior (Masoudnia & Szwejczewski, 2012; Davis et al., 2013). Correspondingly, employees who receive the FSSB are able to achieve work-family balance (i.e., better handling of non-work responsibilities) and devote more time and attention to radical creative activities such as bootlegging behavior, which require them to spend significant additional resources (McKersie et al., 2019). Meanwhile, when telecommuting, employees’ work–home interfaces are integrated or even conflictual, increasing the need for FSSB to address work–home relationships (Chambel et al., 2023). As a result, employees who receive the FSSB will have more time and energy to devote to bootlegging behavior. In particular, the positive effects of FSSB on bootlegging behavior may be more pronounced for Chinese employees. This is because those in a collectivist cultural context, such as Chinese employees, whose work–family relationship is more ambiguous, are more in need of FSSB (Shi et al., 2022) and are more willing to engage in bootlegging behavior to benefit their organization. Third, the above inferences follow the W-HR model (Ten Brummelhuis & Bakker, 2012), which suggests that FSSB is an important contextual resource that helps employees manage family responsibilities and helps employees generate more resources in the work domain, facilitating their implementation of bootlegging behavior.

Moreover, we propose that thriving at work (defined as “the psychological state in which individuals experience both a sense of vitality and a sense of learning at work” [Spreitzer et al., 2005, p. 538]) mediates the relationship between FSSB and employee bootlegging behavior. First, FSSB is highly correlated with thriving. Leadership and interpersonal support play an important facilitating role in thriving (Goh et al., 2022). FSSB positively influences thriving through work–family enrichment (Russo et al., 2018). This may be more pronounced for telecommuters, who have a greater need for FSSB to better manage their work–family relationships (Chambel et al., 2023). Second, thriving can explain downstream employee bootlegging behavior. Thriving employees not only have the knowledge and energy required for bootlegging behavior but also the perseverance. This is because “thriving… allows individuals to gauge whether what they are doing and how they are doing it is helping them to develop in a positive direction” (Spreitzer et al., 2005, p. 537). Third, research thriving is driven by the W-HR model. According to the W-HR model, as a contextual resource, FSSB can influence thriving, an important personal resource for employees (Gerbasi et al., 2015; Hildenbrand et al., 2018; Okros & Virga, 2023), which in turn facilitates employee work behaviors (e.g., bootlegging) (Ten Brummelhuis & Bakker, 2012). Finally, it is important to focus on thriving. Thriving is a key mediator connecting leadership with employee extra-role behaviors (Goh et al., 2022). In particular, scholars emphasize the sustainability role of thriving in the sustainability of employees’ work behavior (e.g., Prem et al., 2017; Zhou et al., 2023). Innovative activities need to be relatively long-lasting, in particular, bootlegging behavior as a covert innovative behavior (Criscuolo et al., 2014) that requires even more sustainability. However, little is known about the impact of thriving on employee bootlegging behavior.

Finally, the high costs of implementing FSSB make it critical to identify boundary conditions to encourage more employee bootlegging behavior through FSSB. Employees with different personality traits differ in the importance they place on FSSB. In this study, we focus on the moderating role of proactive personality. Proactive personality refers to the tendency of an individual to implement actions that affect the environment (Bateman & Crant, 1993) and is viewed as a key employee resource (Nielsen et al., 2023). The W-HR model emphasizes that key resources not only help employees utilize contextual resources to increase personal resources but also that elevated personal resources contribute to positive employee work outcomes (Ten Brummelhuis & Bakker, 2012). Employees with proactive personalities value returns on investment and resources (Nielsen et al., 2023). Thus, when they are provided FSSB, a significant contextual resource, their beliefs of realizing future gains and returns increases, which represents an opportunity for increased thriving. Based on the W-HR model, we further infer that proactive personality determines the effectiveness of the indirect effect of FSSB on employee bootlegging behavior through thriving.

This study aimed to advance the theory and practice of the antecedents of employee bootlegging behavior, particularly those relating to family support leadership, in the context of telecommuting. Applying the W-HR model as a theoretical foundation, we constructed and tested a moderated mediator model (Fig. 1) for this purpose. Our study makes theoretical and practical contributions to the current literature in several ways. First, by exploring the impact of FSSB, an important and typical type of family support leadership, on employee bootlegging behavior, this study not only adds to the antecedents of the employee bootlegging behavior but also responds to the call for increasing the number of studies on the beneficial outcomes of FSSB for employees (Kossek et al., 2023). Second, it reveals and clarifies the black box of how and when FSSB affects employee bootlegging behavior, providing additional and detailed recommendations for improving employee bootlegging behavior. Third, it contributes to filling the gap on the important but scarce literature on FSSB and thriving at work in the increasingly prevalent telecommuting context in the post-pandemic era. Fourth, by highlighting the role of FSSB in facilitating telecommuters’ bootlegging behavior, this study provides theoretical and practical insights into resolving the challenges associated with telecommuting. This is particularly notable because telecommuting poses a threat to employees’ formal innovation behavior, which is crucial for organizational growth and even survival (Brucks & Levav, 2022).

Fig. 1
figure 1

Proposed theoretical model

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Theoretical background

W-HR Model

Our study uses the W-HR model as the theoretical basis (Ten Brummelhuis & Bakker, 2012) to explain whether, how, and when FSSB affects employee bootlegging behavior. The W-HR model integrates the resource loss and gain concepts of the conservation of resources theory into the work–home relationship (Ten Brummelhuis & Bakker, 2012). First, the resource gain spiral of the W-HR model posits that contextual resources gained in the home domain lead to the generation of more resources in the work domain, resulting in beneficial work outcomes (Ten Brummelhuis & Bakker, 2012). Therefore, we base Hypothesis 1 (H1) on the resource gain spiral principle of the W-HR model. Second, according to the W-HR model, contextual resources acquired by individuals in the home domain can be related to attitudes and behaviors in the work domain by acquiring various types of personal resources (e.g., knowledge, skills, mood, and focus) (Ten Brummelhuis & Bakker, 2012). That is, personal resources influence the relationship between the work and home domains. Therefore, we propose Hypotheses 2 (H2) and 3 (H3) based on the role of personal resources in the W-HR model. Finally, the W-HR model emphasizes the importance of key resources, including personality traits such as optimism and intensity of goal pursuit. Key resources determine the effectiveness of an individual’s use of family contextual resources to generate personal resources, which determines the effectiveness of influencing downstream work outcomes. Thus, key resources are moderators between family contextual and personal resources (Ten Brummelhuis & Bakker, 2012). Based on the contingency role of key resources in the W-HR model, we formulate Hypotheses 4 (H4) and 5 (H5).

Hypotheses

FSSB and employee bootlegging behavior

FSSB is defined as supervisors’ behavior that supports employees in fulfilling their family responsibilities, including four dimensions: instrumental support (the resources and services provided by supervisors to help employees manage work and family responsibilities), role modeling (supervisors acting as role models in reconciling work–family balance), creative work–family management (flexible arrangement of work by supervisors to help employees balance work–family responsibilities), and emotional support (supervisors’ concern and consideration of subordinates’ work–family emotions and ensuring timely communication with them) (Hammer et al., 2009).

Since the concept and role of FSSB was introduced (Thomas & Ganster, 1995), scholars have examined its effects on employee health, work–family relationships, and the work domain (Crain & Stevens, 2018). In terms of employee health, FSSB facilitates employee stress relief (Hammer et al., 2013) and improves sleep quality (Ererdi et al., 2023). Meanwhile, in the work–family domain, FSSB helps employees reduce work–family conflict (Yu et al., 2022), realize work–family enrichment (Russo et al., 2018), and enhance family performance (Rofcanin et al., 2018). At the work level, FSSB is strongly associated with employees’ positive affect (Rofcanin et al., 2018), job satisfaction (Hammer et al., 2021), work engagement (Shi et al., 2022), turnover or withdrawal (Ellis et al., 2023), and job performance (Erdogan et al., 2022). In particular, FSSB positively affects employees’ creativity (McKersie et al., 2019; Ererdi et al., 2023), prosocial motivation (Bosch et al., 2018), OCB (Bagger & Li, 2014; Hammer et al., 2016; Pan, 2018), and voices (Li et al., 2022b; Yin et al., 2023).

Employee bootlegging behavior, like OCB and voices, is also a pro-organizational employee behavior. Thus, we argue that FSSB has a significant positive effect on bootlegging behavior. First, by saving family resources due to FSSB, employees exhibit higher family and job performance (Rofcanin et al., 2018; Erdogan et al., 2022), reducing their family and job stress and motivating them to engage in bootlegging behavior. Second, FSSB makes an important contribution to employee creativity (McKersie et al., 2019; Ererdi et al., 2023). Creativity is the foundation of all innovative activities (Zhang & Bartol, 2010), and highly creative employees have a higher sense of self-efficacy and willingness to break the norms of existing innovation pathways (Ng & Yam, 2019). Such employees are more likely to engage in bootlegging behavior. Finally, FSSB improves employees’ job satisfaction (Hammer et al., 2021) and fosters prosocial motivation (Bosch et al., 2018). This is particularly important to implement employee bootlegging behavior. Unlike formal innovation, bootlegging behavior is an innovation activity that employees perform privately and requires a significant amount of their private resources (Criscuolo et al., 2014), therefore, it is critical for them to have strong motivation. When employees are satisfied with their jobs and have high prosocial motivation, their willingness and motivation to engage in bootlegging behavior is increased. The above inference is consistent with the core idea of the resource gain spiral principle of the W-HR model (Ten Brummelhuis & Bakker, 2012), which suggests that FSSB serves as an important contextual resource (Chambel et al., 2023) for employees, especially telecommuters. It helps them better manage their work–family relationships and increase job satisfaction and pro-organizational motivation while safeguarding their work and family performance, allowing them to invest more resources in bootlegging behavior. Therefore, we propose the following hypothesis:

H1

FSSB is positively related to employee bootlegging behavior.

Mediating role of thriving at work

The underlying mechanism of how FSSB affects employee bootlegging behavior is unclear. We suggest that this effect is because FSSB shapes employees’ thriving, which drives them to implement bootlegging behavior. Thriving reflects a combined perceived state of learning and vitality in individuals. Learning implies that individuals are improving their knowledge and competence at work, and vitality refers to the positive state in which individuals feel fully active at work. Learning and vitality interact to achieve a state of individual thriving (Spreitzer et al., 2005). As thriving is a combined perception of an individual’s learning and vitality, scholars view thriving as an important personal resource for employees (Gerbasi et al., 2015; Hildenbrand et al., 2018; Okros & Virga, 2023).

The W-HR model suggests that family contextual resources increase employees’ personal resources (Ten Brummelhuis & Bakker, 2012). As mentioned previously, FSSB is not only a family leadership behavior but also an important contextual resource for employees in the telecommuting context (Chambel et al., 2023). In fact, A recent review suggests that leadership has a significant impact on employee thriving; in particular, workplace relationships are key to thriving (Goh et al., 2022). In the telecommuting context, FSSB is a key contextual resource for employees and a form of leadership that improves employee–supervisor relationships. Therefore, we argue that FSSB positively influences thriving. Specifically, employees’ FSSB increases the quality of interactions with their supervisors, leading to higher supervisory trust, respect, and affective commitment to them (Rofcanin et al., 2018), which are significant predictors of thriving (Walumbwa et al., 2018).

Furthermore, FSSB can reduce employees’ energy consumption in family life by providing experience and knowledge on family management. Employees who receive the FSSB spend more energy on their work (Rofcanin et al., 2018), thereby promoting vitality. Moreover, they can obtain more resources while decreasing the consumption of resources for family responsibilities. This will enable them to have more energy to expand their social networks with supervisors and coworkers, which is an important way for employees to learn (Russo et al., 2018). This is aligned with the resource gain spiral principle of the W-HR model (Ten Brummelhuis & Bakker, 2012), which suggests that employees who engage in FSSB will utilize their learning for greater gain. As a result, employees will experience an increase in learning and vitality (i.e., thriving). Overall, employees who receive the FSSB experience higher levels of supervisor trust, respect, affective commitment to their supervisors, and an expansion of their social networks, which contributes to their thriving. Therefore, we propose the following hypothesis:

H2

FSSB is positively related to thriving at work.

Further, based on the W-HR model, employees with more personal resources are more willing to challenge existing job demands than employees without such resources (Ten Brummelhuis & Bakker, 2012). Studies have revealed that thriving significantly predicts employee pro-organizational behaviors, such as proactive behavior, OCB, and voices (Goh et al., 2022; Liu & Zhou, 2024). Hence, we suggest that FSSB-induced changes in thriving may affect downstream employee bootlegging behavior. Thriving increases employee creativity, which provides a better basis for employees to implement bootlegging behavior. First, Learning and vitality are key psychological indicators for employee creativity, which is the basis of all innovative activities (Wallace et al., 2016). Employees acquire knowledge through learning, and can better stimulate creative thinking and present higher creativity with more knowledge. Second, employees with vitality have positive emotions at work, which promote employees’ competence and cognitive resources, thus enhancing employee creativity (Wallace et al., 2016; Zhang et al., 2023b; Zhou et al., 2023). Thus, thriving motivates employees to engage in bootlegging behavior.

Finally, thriving increases employees’ intrinsic motivation, psychological resilience, and determination to defend creative ideas. In turn, employees are motivated to implement bootlegging behavior. Thriving, especially vitality, is closely related to employees’ intrinsic motivation (Wallace et al., 2016), which is a key driver of employee innovative activities (Liu et al., 2016; Su & Zhang, 2022). As the characteristics of employee bootlegging behavior violate the organization’s formal innovation process (Criscuolo et al., 2014), it carries a higher risk of uncertainty and incurring blocking of creative ideas relative to formal innovation channels. As learning improves employees’ knowledge and skills, they gain higher confidence in their ideas, which alleviates the psychological pressure on them to engage in bootlegging behavior. In addition, high-vitality employees have the psychological resilience to cope with uncertain behavior (Zhou et al., 2023) and are determined to defend their creative ideas (Wang et al., 2019). In summary, thriving provides the underlying ability and motivation for employees to engage in bootlegging behavior.

Combined with the above analyses, and the W-HR model reveal that contextual resources can develop employees’ personal resources to facilitate positive work outcomes (Ten Brummelhuis & Bakker, 2012). Further, thriving is often a key mediator connecting leadership and employee extra-role behaviors (Goh et al., 2022). Therefore, we argue that, in the telecommuting context, FSSB can indirectly promote employee bootlegging behavior by shaping thriving. Based on H1 and the above analysis, we hypothesize the following:

H3

Thriving at work partially mediates the positive relationship between FSSB and employee bootlegging behavior.

Moderating role of proactive personality

The above discussion of FSSB facilitating thriving in the telecommuting context is based on the premise that all employees have the same value or need for FSSB. In fact, thriving is also influenced by employee traits (Porath et al., 2012). Further, the W-HR model suggests that key resources help employees use contextual resources effectively to increase personal resources (Ten Brummelhuis & Bakker, 2012). Therefore, we emphasize and attempt to analyze the moderating role of proactive personality in the relationship between FSSB and thriving. Proactive personality refers to the tendency of an individual to perform actions that affect the environment (Bateman & Crant, 1993), which is a key resource for employees (Nielsen et al., 2023). Consistent with the direction of FSSB positively influencing thriving, employees with proactive personalities actively invest resources to promote their thriving (Porath et al., 2012; Goh et al., 2022). However, individual resources are limited and employees need to spend more resources on family matters during telecommuting. Therefore, employees with proactive personalities are more likely to thrive after receiving FSSB.

Moreover, as mentioned above, FSSB is an important contextual resource for telecommuters (Chambel et al., 2023), and thriving is a personal resource (Gerbasi et al., 2015; Hildenbrand et al., 2018; Okros & Virga, 2023). Based on the role of key resources in the W-HR model (Ten Brummelhuis & Bakker, 2012), we believe that as a key employee resource, proactive personality helps increase their valuation and utilization of FSSB, promoting thriving. Specifically, employees with proactive personalities are particularly sensitive to returns or gains on resource investments, and their sense of organizational support is a key indicator influencing their evaluation of return on resource investment (Nielsen et al., 2023). Correspondingly, FSSB is related to employees’ sense of organizational support in three ways. First, FSSB represents organizational support for employees, which is closely related to their perceived organizational support (Walsh & Kabat-Farr, 2022). Second, FSSB promotes employees’ perceived development opportunities (e.g., career promotability; Rofcanin et al., 2018), which are highly positively correlated with their perceptions of organizational support (Kurtessis et al., 2017). Finally, these ways apply equally to telecommuters, because the consistency of human resource management practices with the signals sent by leadership behaviors is important for employees’ attitudinal and behavioral responses (Coun et al., 2022). Therefore, FSSB’s support for employees in the telecommuting context plays an even more important role in shaping employees’ sense of organizational support. In summary, as a contextual resource, FSSB increases the sense of organizational support among employees with proactive personalities, motivating them to perceive an accelerated return on their resource investment and thus to exhibit higher levels of thriving.

In contrast, employees with low proactive personality neither proactively realize thriving nor place a high value on returns on resource investment (Nielsen et al., 2023). Even if FSSB is provided, it does not increase their beliefs about accelerating or efficiently realizing their returns on resource investment, which does not increase their thriving. Therefore, we propose the following hypothesis:

H4

Proactive personality positively moderates the relationship between FSSB and thriving at work, such that the relationship becomes stronger (weaker) when employees have a higher (lower) proactive personality.

Further, combining H3, H4, and the W-HR model suggests that key resources help employees use contextual resources more effectively to increase personal resources, facilitating work outcomes (Ten Brummelhuis & Bakker, 2012). Therefore, we propose a moderated mediation hypothesis as follows:

H5

Proactive personality positively moderates the mediating effect of thriving at work on the relationship between FSSB and employee bootlegging behavior, such that when proactive personality is higher (lower), the mediating effect of thriving at work on the relationship between FSSB and employee bootlegging behavior is stronger (weaker).

Methods

Sample and procedure

Telecommuters are more likely to receive FSSB (Chambel et al., 2023). Consistent with this observation, in our pre-study, a number of telecommuters pointed out that their supervisors use videoconferences or workgroup information exchange groups to care about their family matters and relationships, affecting their own experiences of work–family balance. Meanwhile, as mentioned earlier, telecommuters are more likely to engage in bootlegging behavior. In addition, as employees working in industries such as information transmission, software and information technology services require higher R&D capabilities and are more inclined to engage in bootlegging behavior. Therefore, we recruited telecommuters working full-time in these industries as participants.

In order to ensure suitable participants, on one hand, to identify participants as telecommuters, we added a question item to the basic information of the questionnaire asking participants to fill in the main location where they telecommute. On the other hand, we used the snowball method for offline and Wenjuanxing (www.sojump.com, a professional online research platform in China, similar to MTurk) for online. For the offline survey, we prioritized finding employees who had confirmed their eligibility as participants and invited them to recommend other potential research subjects based on our participant criteria. For the online survey, we filled in that participants needed to be telecommuters and employees working in R&D when registering for the survey. We used a standard three-phase data research methodology with one-month intervals and numbered the participants using the last six digits of their mobile phone numbers as their identity code. In addition, to incentivize as many participants as possible to complete the three data collection phases, we offered them 3 RMB (approximately $0.41), 5 RMB (approximately $0.69), and 8 RMB (approximately $1.10) for each valid participant in each phase of data collection, respectively.

At Time 1 (T1, April 10–April 19, 2023), we distributed 380 questionnaires and invited participants to complete the FSSB and proactive personality questionnaires, obtaining 357 valid questionnaires. We invited employees to complete the thriving at work scale at Time 2 (T2, May 8–May 19, 2023) and obtained 312 usable results. At Time 3 (T3, June 12–June 20, 2023), we invited the above employees to complete the bootlegging behavior questionnaire, obtaining 277 valid questionnaires. The overall demographic information of the 277 valid participants was 61.7% and 38.3% for male and female participants, respectively. 77.3% of the employees were married. Most of the participants were 30–49 years old (72.1%); most of them were bachelor’s degree holders (70.6%); their tenure in their current company was concentrated at 4–10 years (56.5%); and their family (including children) had mainly 3–5 members (88.4%).

Measures

All variables in this study were measured using extensively empirically tested scales, and a translation-back-translation procedure was used to convert the English questions into Chinese. Five-point Likert scales, ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree), was used for all variables.

FSSB

FSSB was measured using a four-item short scale (FSSB-SF, Hammer et al., 2013). A sample item is “My supervisor demonstrates effective behaviors in how to juggle work and non-work issues.” Factor loadings for the four items ranged from 0.73 to 0.87. The Cronbach’s alpha was 0.81, average variance extraction (AVE) was 0.66, and composite reliability (CR) was 0.88, indicating high reliability and convergent validity.

Proactive personality

Ten items were used to measure employees’ proactive personality (Seibert et al., 1999). A sample item is “I excel at identifying opportunities.” The factor loadings for all items ranged from 0.67 to 0.92. The Cronbach’s alpha was 0.77, AVE was 0.68, and CR was 0.95, indicating high reliability and convergent validity.

Thriving at work

Ten items were used to measure thriving at work (Porath et al., 2012). Example items are “I see myself continually improving” and “I feel alert and awake.” The factor loadings of the 10 items ranged from 0.69 to 0.85. The Cronbach’s alpha was 0.78, AVE was 0.59, and CR was 0.94, indicating high reliability and convergent validity.

Employee bootlegging behavior

We used five items to measure employee bootlegging behavior (Criscuolo et al., 2014). An example is “I have the flexibility to work my way around my official work plan, digging into new potentially valuable business opportunities.” The factor loadings for the five items ranged from 0.75 to 0.88. The Cronbach’s alpha was 0.74, AVE was 0.66, and CR was 0.91, indicating high reliability and convergent validity.

Control variables

Based on the W-HR model and the literature related to employee bootlegging behavior and FSSB (Ten Brummelhuis & Bakker, 2012; Yin et al., 2023; Zhang et al., 2023a), we controlled for age, marital status, family numbers, gender, education level, and tenure. First, older employees are more likely to be disturbed by family matters, and the marital status and family numbers of telecommuters affect family responsibilities (Allen et al., 2015). Second, in China, females may be required to take on more family matters than males (Zhang et al., 2020). All of the above can affect the importance telecommuters place on FSSB and interfere with their ability to engage in bootlegging behavior. Third, telecommuters with higher levels of education and longer tenure may be more able and willing to engage in bootlegging behavior to benefit their organization. Finally, telecommuting provides employees with more autonomy (Allen et al., 2015), and because job autonomy positively affects employee bootlegging behavior (Eicher, 2020), we included job autonomy as a control variable and used nine items in the T3 measure (Morgeson & Humphrey, 2006). A sample item is “The job allows me to plan how I do my work”, and the Cronbach’s alpha of this measure was 0.81.

Analyses and results

Common method variance

In this study, we used a standard three-phase data collection to minimize common method variance (CMV). Further, we performed two additional test measures. First, we performed Harman’s single factor test using SPSS 22.0, which revealed that the cumulative variance explained by the percentage of the first factor was 24.19%, which is less than the 50% criterion. Second, we used Mplus 7.4 to control for the effects of an unmeasured latent methods factor. The results are presented in Table 1. The results indicate that relative to the four-factor baseline model used in this study, the amount of change in the fitted indices of the five-factor model with the addition of CMV is small, indicating that the CMV is small and negligible.

Table 1 Results of confirmatory factor analysis
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Confirmatory factor analysis

Mplus 7.4 was used to perform confirmatory factor analysis to verify the appropriateness of the proposed research model. Table 1 indicates that the four-factor model proposed in this study has the best results for each of the fit indices (χ2 / df = 2.73, CFI = 0.91, TLI = 0.92, SRMR = 0.06, RMSEA = 0.06), indicating that the measurement model has good internal structure validity.

Descriptive statistics and correlation analysis

The means, standard deviations, and correlation coefficients of all variables are presented in Table 2. The square root of the AVE of the core variables in this study is greater than its correlation coefficient with other variables, indicating that they have good discriminant validity. Furthermore, the results reveal that FSSB is positively correlated with employee bootlegging behavior (r = 0.24, p < 0.01). In addition, thriving at work has a significant positive correlation with FSSB (r = 0.42, p < 0.01) and employee bootlegging behavior (r = 0.29, p < 0.01). The above results initially validate the relationship between the core variables, providing a good basis for formal hypotheses testing.

Table 2 Descriptive statistics and correlations
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Hypotheses testing

Although all variables are based on the individual level, there may be some data nesting due to the inclusion of supervisor–subordinate matching. Thus, there may be multiple employees corresponding to one supervisor. As Mplus has the advantage of handling data nesting (Muthén & Muthén, 1998), all hypotheses were tested using hierarchical regression analysis with Mplus 7.4. Further, we followed the recommendation of scholars and used the command “TYPE = COMPLEX; ESTIMATOR = MLR” in Mplus 7.4 to eliminate the effects of data nesting (Wu & Kwok, 2012).

The results of the analyses of H1 to H4 are presented in Table 3. First, from Model 6, there is a significant positive effect of FSSB on employee bootlegging behavior (β = 0.22, p < 0.01), supporting H1. Second, Model 2 presents the results of the regression analysis between FSSB and thriving at work, indicating a significant positive relationship between them (β = 0.37, p < 0.01), supporting H2. According to Model 6 (β = 0.22, p < 0.01), the regression coefficient of FSSB with employee bootlegging behavior was significant but the coefficient was reduced by adding thriving at work in Model 8 (β = 0.19, p < 0.01). Third, to test H3, i.e., the partial mediating role of thriving at work in the relationship between FSSB and employee bootlegging behavior. Thriving at work significantly and positively affects employee bootlegging behavior in Model 8 (β = 0.27, p < 0.01), suggesting that thriving at work plays a partial mediating role, that is, H3 is tentatively established. To more comprehensively analyze the mediating effect of thriving at work, we additionally conducted the bootstrapping test. The results reveal that the indirect effect value of FSSB on employee bootlegging behavior through thriving at work is 0.14, and the 95% confidence interval is [0.08, 0.17], which excludes 0, further supporting H3.

Fourth, for H4, we tested the positive moderating effect of proactive personality on the relationship between FSSB and thriving at work. To avoid the interference of multicollinearity, we decentralized FSSB and proactive personality and constructed their interaction. Meanwhile, the results of regression analyses showed that, relative to Model 3, the inclusion of FSSB × proactive personality in Model 4 presented a significant positive effect with thriving at work (β = 0.18, p < 0.01), suggesting that H4 is supported. To further test the moderating effect of proactive personality, we plotted the moderating effect, as depicted in Fig. 2, using the mean of proactive personality plus or minus one standard deviation as the level of the high and low moderator, respectively. The results in Fig. 2 indicate that the positive effect of FSSB on thriving at work is stronger when employees’ proactive personality is high (β = 0.42, p < 0.05). However, the positive effect of FSSB on thriving at work is weaker when proactive personality is low (β = 0.15, n.s.), supporting H4.

Table 3 Hierarchical regression analysis with Mplus
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Fig. 2
figure 2

The moderating effect of proactive personality on the relationship between FSSB and thriving at work

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Finally, for H5, the moderated mediating effect of proactive personality was tested. As H1 and H4 are supported and Model 7 suggests that thriving at work positively affects employee bootlegging behavior (β = 0.31, p < 0.01), we performed the Monte Carlo mediation test using Mplus 7.4 (Table 4). Table 4 indicates that when proactive personality is higher, the effect of FSSB on employee bootlegging behavior through thriving at work is significant (β = 0.19, p < 0.01), and the confidence interval is [0.06, 0.15], excluding 0. This indicates that the moderated mediating effect of thriving at work is significant when proactive personality is higher. When proactive personality is lower, the indirect effect of thriving at work is 0.06, and the confidence interval is [− 0.03, 0.09], including 0. This indicates that the moderated mediating effect of thriving at work is not significant. In addition, the difference between higher and lower proactive personality was 0.13, and the confidence interval did not include 0, indicating a significant difference in the indirect effect between the two groups. In conclusion, as proactive personality increases, the indirect effect of FSSB on employee bootlegging behavior through thriving at work increases such that proactive personality positively moderates the mediating effect of thriving at work in the relationship between FSSB and employee bootlegging behavior, supporting H5.

Table 4 Monte Carlo mediation test results
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Discussion and conclusion

Theoretical implications

The results of this study have several theoretical implications. First, the study complements and expands research on the antecedents of employee bootlegging behavior and the pro-organizational behavior outcomes of FSSB. Leadership has been an important antecedent and research hotspot of employee bootlegging behavior since it was proposed. However, scholars have only studied workplace-centered leadership. By focusing on and introducing FSSB, the most typical family leadership behavior (Kossek et al., 2023), into the emerging and growing field of research on employee bootlegging behavior, we complement and expand the literature on the antecedents of employee bootlegging behavior, particularly the role of family supportive leadership. This provides a new direction for research on the antecedents of employee bootlegging behavior. Moreover, although the role of FSSB in facilitating employees’ pro-organizational behaviors has received wide attention from scholars (e.g., Bagger & Li, 2014; Hammer et al., 2016; Pan, 2018; Li et al., 2022b; Yin et al., 2023), only some have investigated FSSB in the telecommuting context (Chambel et al., 2023) and have neglected the role of FSSB in employee bootlegging behavior. This study responds to the call to conduct research on more beneficial outcomes of FSSB for employees by bridging that research gap (Kossek et al., 2023).

Second, our study sheds light on the black box of how FSSB promotes bootlegging behavior among telecommuters. It constructs and tests the mediating role of thriving at work, and the results of the study support our hypotheses. In particular, although thriving at work is often used as a key mediating mechanism between leadership and extra-role behaviors and has been empirically validated (Goh et al., 2022), it has not yet been identified in the literature as a mechanism linking FSSB to the emerging research area of employee bootlegging behavior. Our study provides a comprehensive understanding of thriving at work as a mediating mechanism by bridging this gap. Moreover, employees who thrive at work can sustainably perform innovative activities (Prem et al., 2017; Zhou et al., 2023). As bootlegging behavior is an innovative activity performed by employees in secret (Criscuolo et al., 2014), it is vital for them to implement bootlegging behavior sustainably to achieve the desired outcomes (e.g., higher innovation performance). Thus, the revelation of thriving at work as a mediator in the relationship between FSSB and employee bootlegging behavior contributes to a better understanding of the key driving mechanisms of employees’ implementation of bootlegging behavior.

Third, the study clarifies the boundary conditions under which an organization can obtain a higher degree of thriving at work from FSSB and downstream employee bootlegging behavior. In telecommuting contexts, employees face severe work–family relationship reconciliation problems (Bell et al., 2023), Fortunately, FSSB can help solve these problems (Chambel et al., 2023). Therefore, it is crucial to identify the contingency factors for better utilization of FSSB. We use proactive personality as a moderator, and the results reveal that proactive personality strengthens the positive relationship between FSSB and thriving at work, thereby promoting employee bootlegging behavior. The reason for this may be that FSSB is an important contextual resource for employees to deal with work and family relationships in the telecommuting context (Chambel et al., 2023). Thus, it can inspire proactive personality employees to value and utilize it.

Fourth, this study deepens our understanding of FSSB and thriving at work in the telecommuting context. FSSB is recognized as a resource that helps employees deal with work and family issues (Hammer et al., 2009; Crain & Stevens, 2018). As telecommuting becomes more common in the post-pandemic era (Bell et al., 2023), telecommuters face conflicts between work and family (Allen et al., 2015), thus increasing the need for FSSB in managing their work–family relationships. Unfortunately, little scholarly attention has been paid to the role of FSSB in the telecommuting context (Chambel et al., 2023). We remedied this problem to an extent by examining the relationship between FSSB and employee bootlegging behavior in the telecommuting context. In addition, although thriving at work is not entirely confined to the workplace and is likely to drive employees toward self-development outside the workplace, the literature on thriving at work is mainly in the context of traditional workplaces. It is essential to study it outside of employees’ workplace (Goh et al., 2022). In response to this call, we examined the role of thriving at work in the telecommuting context. In particular, this study compensates for the neglect of important family-related factors in social interactions in the antecedents of thriving at work (Ren et al., 2022) and the scarcity of literature on thriving at work in the telecommuting context (Porath et al., 2022) by examining FSSB in the telecommuting context.

Practical implications

Our study also has several practical implications for organizations, managers, and employees. First, organizations and managers need to focus on fostering FSSB and employee bootlegging behavior in the telecommuting context. Telecommuting poses certain challenges to employees’ formal innovation behaviors (Brucks & Levav, 2022). Fortunately, we found that FSSB promotes bootlegging behavior for telecommuters. Considering that employee innovation is crucial for the growth and survival of an organization, as well as the fact that employees’ bootlegging behavior is an important complement to their formal innovation behavior (Mainemelis & Sakellariou, 2023). Therefore, the findings of this study provide some ideas on subsequently addressing the threats to formal innovation behaviors in the telecommuting context through the positive role of FSSB in stimulating bootlegging behavior of telecommuters. Moreover, FSSB in the telecommuting context is regarded by employees as an important contextual resource (Chambel et al., 2023) and can be trained and developed. For example, support, transform, achieve, and results (i.e., STAR), can be used, and supervisors should follow curriculums to learn strategies to support employees’ family lives and their training results should be tracked (detailed STAR intervention materials can be found at www.WorkFamilyHealthNetwork.org; Hammer et al., 2016). Therefore, in the telecommuting context, FSSB can be used as a resource provision measure for organizations.

Second, managers need to pay attention to telecommuters’ thriving at work and take advantage of opportunities that it can facilitate telecommuters’ bootlegging behavior. Thriving at work has received extensive attention in academia and practice (Goh et al., 2022). Given the critical importance of innovation for organizational development and the role of thriving at work as a key psychological indicator of employee creativity and innovative activity (Wallace et al., 2016), we confirm that thriving at work promotes telecommuters’ bootlegging behavior. Therefore, managers need to use telecommuters’ thriving at work as an important opportunity to nurture bootlegging behavior. However, as mentioned above, the literature has given little attention to thriving at work in the telecommuting context. Correspondingly, our findings suggest that implementing FSSB can promote telecommuters’ thriving at work.

Finally, organizations and managers should promote FSSB based on telecommuters’ proactive personality. The purpose of implementing FSSB is to help employees manage work–family relationships to achieve their desired work outcomes (Crain & Stevens, 2018). However, there are high costs associated with fostering and developing FSSB. Organizations and managers need to better understand the boundary conditions for implementing FSSB for beneficial work outcomes. We found that telecommuters with proactive personalities achieve high degrees of thriving at work and bootlegging behavior through FSSB. Thus, organizations should focus on the differences in employees’ proactive personalities when recruiting and implementing telecommuting. In particular, telecommuters with high proactive personalities can be prioritized when implementing FSSB when there is a need to inspire and leverage the bootlegging behavior of telecommuters.

Limitations and future research

There are some limitations of our study. First, the study sample only included Chinese employees, but there are differences in employees’ attitudes and behavioral responses in different cultural contexts. To expand the adaptability of the results, future studies can be conducted in other countries or cultures. Meanwhile, it is important to note that all data in this paper are derived from employee self-reports, which inevitably results in common method variance. Although the common method bias in this paper is not serious, we encourage future research to adopt a multi-source approach to data collection. In addition, it is important to note that the findings in this paper are inevitably affected by non-response bias. We encourage scholars to consider the existence of non-response bias and provide more comprehensive reduction measures. Second, in order to obtain better external validity for the results of this paper, we did not target employees in one or several firms that are more prone to employee bootlegging behavior. In fact, restricting employees to a specific few firms allow for better access to employee-supervisor paired data, which in turn helps to compare differences in findings under nesting and without nesting data, which is also very valuable and meaningful. Therefore, scholars can conduct relevant research. Third, although this paper combined the telecommuting context and the variables selected based on that, we did not include variables directly relevant to telecommuting. Future research in this area could be considered for refinement. Fourth, although the most typical type of family leadership, FSSB, was chosen for this study, there are other types of family leadership (Kossek et al., 2023). As different types of family leadership may affect employee bootlegging behavior differently, studies that use other family leadership styles as antecedents can be conducted. Fifth, our findings suggest that thriving at work is only a partial mediator between FSSB and employee bootlegging behavior, thus the role of other mediators can be explored. Sixth, according to the W-HR model, both key and macro resources can serve as moderators of the effect of FSSB on thriving at work, as well as downstream employee bootlegging behavior (Ten Brummelhuis & Bakker, 2012). However, this study only explored the key resource of proactive personality as a moderator. The role of macro resources can be explored in the future. Finally, FSSB and bootlegging behavior may occur at the team or organization level. Therefore, the effect of team- or organization-level FSSB on bootlegging behavior can be explored in the future.

Conclusion

In this study, we use telecommuting as a context, the W-HR model as a theoretical basis, and 277 telecommuters as a sample to draw the following conclusions. First, FSSB positively influences employee bootlegging behavior. Second, thriving at work partially mediates the relationship between FSSB and telecommuters’ bootlegging behavior. Finally, proactive personality not only positively moderates the positive effects of FSSB on thriving at work but also influences downstream employee bootlegging behavior by acting as a moderated mediator.