Striving for family in the workplace: how family functioning facilitates family motivation and compensates for job autonomy

Family motivation, characterized by the desire to exert effort for the benefit of one’s family within the work environment, has been demonstrated to be influenced by controlled contextual factors associated with family structure and financial stress, suggesting a predominantly controlled motivational nature. However, this study posits that family motivation can also be considered autonomous, thus introducing family functioning as an additional pre-factor that could impact family motivation. It postulates that optimal family functioning can satisfy individuals’ basic psychological needs within the family unit, consequently facilitating the internalization of family motivation into a more autonomous motivation. Through a two-stage survey conducted with an 8-week interval involving a sample of 399 valid participants in China. The results from the cross-lag model reveal a positive relationship between family functioning and family motivation. Moreover, the moderation mediation model confirms that the satisfaction of basic psychological needs within the family acts as a mediating mechanism in the association between family functioning and family motivation. Notably, individuals with low job autonomy exhibit a more pronounced indirect effect of needs satisfaction in the relationship between family functioning and family motivation. This study contributes to a deeper comprehension of how the family-interpersonal context nurtures employees’ intrinsic drive to contribute autonomously to their family’s well-being in the workplace, offering practical implications for promoting pro-family practices in the workplace.