Work-Family Conflict (WFC) and Turnover Intention of Female Nurses: Does Perceived Supervisor Support Matter?

Abstract

As the shortage of nurses is a major problem being faced by the world healthcare system, as well as the Sri Lankan government and private hospitals, it is essential to investigate the factors that affect the turnover and turnover intentions of nurses. As such drawing on the Conservation of Resource (CoR) theory, the purpose of this research is to identify the influence of work-family conflict on female nurses’ turnover intention, in a selected private hospital chain in Sri Lanka. WFC is a type of inter-role conflict that occurs when the mutually exclusive demands placed by the family and work domains mount, and this is expected to create an intention within the mind of the employee to leave the job. In light of this situation, authors also hypothesize perceived supervisor support as a moderator of the relationship between WFC and turnover intention with the support of the Social Exchange Theory (SET). The authors conducted this as a quantitative, cross-sectional survey using a sample of 176 female nurses from the female nurses’ in XYZ hospital chain. Data were collected by emailing the link to an online questionnaire developed using well-accepted standard scales. The Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS), 23.0 was used to analyze data. The direct effect hypotheses were tested using simple linear regression analysis. Results revealed that there is a moderate positive impact of work-family conflict on turnover intention of female nurses in the XYZ hospital chain. However, results did not support the proposed moderation effect of perceived supervisor support (PSS) on the relationship between work family conflict and turnover intention.