Investigating the relationship between resilience and work-family conflict among Italian workers: a mixed-method multi-sample research project.

Inglese

The work-family interface has recently gathered impetus from researchers because of the COVID-19 pandemic which has brought changes in working modalities as well as in ways of living everyday life. Despite the recent enrichment of the literature on this topic, little is known about the potential protective role of resilience in relation to work-family conflict and its outcomes. Shedding light on this can provide suggestions on how to practically help workers. Therefore, the current dissertation aims to fill this gap. The dissertation briefly revises the state of the art on work-family interface issues and, through the lens of the Conservation of Resources theory, on resilience. Afterwards, considering the relevance of the topic in today’s working environment, the thesis provides a systematic review of the literature on the association between resilience and work-life interface facets. Next, in Study 1, work-family conflict is found to partially mediate the relationship between moral distress and burnout in a sample of 153 Italian healthcare workers. Additionally, resilience buffered this relationship, so that highly resilient professionals experienced lower work-family conflict than their less resilient colleagues, regardless of moral distress levels. Moreover, professionals who most often adopted positive refocusing tendencies were less vulnerable to burnout when faced with morally distressing situations than their counterparts. Thereafter, in Study 2, work-family conflict is found to partially mediate the association between patient verbal aggression and emotional exhaustion in a sample of 197 Italian healthcare professionals during the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, dehumanization tendencies and resilience moderated this relationship. More specifically, healthcare professionals were less likely to develop emotional exhaustion when they had high resilience levels and, at the same time, they rarely tended to ascribe patients non-uniquely human traits. Study 3 revealed a total mediation of work-family conflict in the link between workload and job satisfaction in a sample of 168 Italian air traffic controllers during pandemic times. In addition, resilience buffered this relationship in such a way that highly and moderately resilient air traffic controllers were less likely to experience job dissatisfaction under high workload conditions than their poorly resilient colleagues. Furthermore, the qualitative findings allowed a deeper understanding of the personal experiences of air traffic controllers with the different variables investigated (e.g., the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, protective resources, work-life interface, etc.). Finally, the buffering role of resilience in relation to work-family conflict has been detected also in Study 4. More specifically, this research conducted on a sample of 266 Italian workers during the COVID-19 outbreak showed that technostress was related to psycho-physical malaise and work-family conflict, both directly and indirectly through the mediation of the fear of COVID-19 and working excessively, respectively. Moreover, the loss of a loved one due to COVID-19 exacerbated the first relationship, while resilience buffered the second one. Said differently, in contrast to lowly or moderately resilient workers, those with high levels of resilience have not experienced work-family conflict even when they tended to work excessively. In conclusion, this dissertation contributed to the literature on the work-family link by demonstrating that work-family conflict is a mechanism through which job-related risk factors lead workers to develop a negative state of wellbeing and job dissatisfaction. Additionally, evidence of the protective role of resilience in relation to work-family conflict has been provided. Overall, the findings of this dissertation provided several suggestions for the adoption of useful practices in the work environment.