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1. Introduction
Under the pressure of global competition, the human resource is the critical factor in an organization striving to maintain a competitive edge (Wright et al., 2001). This is especially true for the hospitality industry, as it is well-known for its long and irregular working hours, heavy workloads (Karatepe, 2010; Karatepe and Aleshinloye, 2009) and incompatible work and family demands (Karatepe and Baddar, 2006; Karatepe and Sokmen, 2006; Namasivayam and Zhao, 2007), which are direct precursors to work-family conflict (WFC) and family-work conflict (FWC; e.g. McNamara et al., 2011). Many studies have examined the relationship between high WFC/FWC and potential outcomes, such as higher levels of emotional exhaustion, higher turnover intentions (TIs) and lower job performances (Amstad et al., 2011; Sharma et al., 2010; Shockley and Singla, 2011; Tsaur and Tang, 2012). Therefore, the investigation of the relationship between WFC and TI is a critical issue for human resource management in the hospitality industry.
Researchers have been increasingly interested in the negative influences of WFC/FWC on employee behavior (e.g. Geurts et al., 2003). With respect to the hospitality industry, employee behavior must not just comply with organizational norms but must extend beyond the existing expectations to include additional roles that benefit the organization by enhancing the quality of the internal services provided by the enterprise, an objective accomplished by improving organizational citizenship behavior (OCB; e.g. Podsakoff et al., 2000). Given that research indicates that OCB is an important factor that influences an organization’s quality of service and performance (Large and König, 2009; Ma and Qu, 2011) and that previous studies have found that WFC and FWC are associated with OCB (Netemeyer et al., 2005), this study is also concerned with the relationships between WFC/FWC and OCB.
Accordingly, the WFC and OCB are found to be highly correlated. However, the related studies have commonly focused on western societies, thus resulting in a lack of information specific to Taiwan and other developing countries (Lu et al., 2008). That said, there is research that indicates the increase in the ratios of employee work burnout and WFC to TI is the result of the following phenomena: the working hours in Taiwan are among the highest of all countries; the system...