Orchestrating resources, compounding costs: Examining the roles of social capital, work absorption, and work autonomy in the relationship between workplace proactivity and work interference with family

While employees' workplace proactivity is generally considered to benefit the organization, it is still unclear whether and how it affects one's family life. Drawing upon the contextual-personal resources framework, the current study presents an agentic model that simultaneously examines the active obtainment of workplace contextual resources (indicated by social capital), the active allocation of personal resources at work (indicated by work absorption), and the structural condition enabling resource regulation (indicated by work autonomy) in the relationship between workplace proactivity and work interference with family (WIF). Using time-lagged data with 195 employees and 51 supervisors, the results revealed that employees' workplace proactivity was positively associated with increased social capital, which was further related to decreased WIF, supporting the contextual resource obtainment hypothesis. On the other hand, workplace proactivity was positively related to increases in work absorption, thereby leading to increases in WIF, supporting the personal resource over-allocation hypothesis. Furthermore, work autonomy weakened the positive relationship between work absorption and WIF. The theoretical and practical implications of the current research are discussed.