Social support, psychological need satisfaction and work-family balance: An empirical research on IT knowledge employees

The objective of this paper is to examine the mechanism by which multiple resources of social support at work and home (e.g., supervisor support, autonomy support, coworker relationship and spouse support) are related to work-family balance. Using insights from self-determination theory, we provide a theoretical framework explaining positive and negative work-family processes integrally. Based on a questionnaire sample of 293 married knowledge professionals in IT industry, we found that social support has significantly negative effect on work-family conflict and significantly positive effect on work-family facilitation. The basic psychological needs satisfaction of competence, autonomy, and relatedness mediate the negative relation between social support and work-family conflict and the positive relation between social support and work-family facilitation.