Schedule Control, Work Interference With Family, and Emotional Exhaustion: A Reciprocal Moderated Mediation Model

The current research drew upon the resource perspective (Grzywacz & Marks, 2000; ten Brummelhuis & Bakker, 2012) and firstly focused on the reciprocal mediation relationship between schedule control, work interference with family (WIF) and emotional exhaustion. First, the present study proposed that WIF mediates the negative relationship between schedule control and emotional exhaustion, and emotional exhaustion also mediates the negative relationship between schedule control and WIF. Second, family time adequacy was expected to play an amplifying role in the first path of the two mediations. Using a sample of 563 employees and adopting hierarchical linear modelling, the three-wave study first revealed that the emotional exhaustion mediates the relationship between schedule control and WIF while WIF also mediates the schedule control-emotional exhaustion relationship, which demonstrated a reciprocal mediation. Furthermore, the relationship between schedule control and emotional exhaustion, as well as the indirect effects of schedule control on WIF via emotional exhaustion, were stronger for employees with higher family time adequacy. Implications of the findings and future directions are discussed.