Previous research has focused on the adverse effects of red tape on public organizations’ management and performance, but has largely overlooked its impact on employees’ roles within the family domain. Drawing upon the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model, we conducted two studies to investigate how high job demands (i.e., red tape) may be positively related to work-family conflict by blurring the boundaries between work and non-work domains. The study further examines whether job resources (i.e., family-supportive supervisor behaviors and perceived organizational support) are associated with mitigating the decline in perceived boundary control that is related to high job demand, in response to the buffering hypothesis in the JD-R model. Study 1 conducted a preliminary validation in a prefecture-level city in China (N = 265). To circumvent the limitations associated with the research setting and the specificity of job resource types, Study 2 tested the robustness of the findings by expanding the scope to a national level and incorporating additional types of job resources (N = 324). Results reveal that red tape has a spillover effect in work scene, which will blur the boundary between work and non-work domains, reduce perceived boundary control, and is correlated with work-family conflict. Importantly, the buffering hypothesis in the JD-R model was contradicted by evidence showing that job resources (i.e., family-supportive supervisor behaviors and perceived organizational support) exacerbated the negative effects of high job demands (i.e., red tape). The implications of these findings for theory and practice are explored.
Jiang et al. (Thu,) studied this question.