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THE SPILLOVER OF DAILY JOB SATISFACTION ONTOEMPLOYEES FAMILY LIVES: THE FACILITATING

ROLE OF WORK-FAMILY INTEGRATION

REMUS ILIES

KELLY SCHWIND WILSONDAVID T. WAGNER

Michigan State University

The longitudinal, multisource, multimethod study presented herein examines the roleof employees work-family integration in the spillover of daily job satisfaction ontodaily marital satisfaction and affective states experienced by employees at home. Thespillover linkages are modeled at the within-individual level, and results support themain effects of daily job satisfaction on daily marital satisfaction and affect at home,as well as the moderating effect of work-family integration on the strength of thewithin-individual spillover effects on home affect. That is, employees with highlyintegrated work and family roles exhibited stronger intraindividual spillover effects onpositive and negative affect at home.

Modern technologies such as the Internet, cellu-lar phone, Blackberry, iPhone, and other mobilecommunication devices have enabled employeesand their family members to communicate witheach other nearly anywhere, anytime. Moreover,flexible work arrangements under which employ-ees can complete some work tasks from home areincreasingly prevalent. As a result, the boundary

between time designated for work and time desig-nated for nonwork is more fuzzy, increasing the

likelihood of work-family spillover. Work-familyspillover is defined as the effects of work andfamily on one another that generate similarities

between the two domains (Edwards & Rothbard,2000: 180). Work-family spillover can be behav-ioral or affective in nature (cf. Carlson, Kacmar,Wayne, & Grzywacz, 2006; Edwards & Rothbard,2000); the latter type of effect is this studys focus.

Affective work-family spillover typically meansthat work-related moods or attitudes are carriedhome, or that family-related moods or attitudes arecarried to work. Although moods and attitudes are

both affective in nature, they differ in stability andtarget-specificity. That is, unlike a mood, whichtends to be highly transient and diffuse (i.e., with-out a specific referent [Watson, 2000]), an attitudeis more stable and has a specific object (e.g., jobsatisfaction is an attitude about ones job [see Ilies &

Judge, 2004]). Judge and Iliess (2004) finding thatmood at work is positively related to mood athomea phenomenon referred to as mood spill-over (Judge & Ilies, 2004; Williams & Alliger1994)demonstrates mood-based work-familyspillover. Examples of attitudinal work-family

spillover include Heller, Watson, and Iliess (2004)theorizing about the likelihood of employees off-work life (e.g., family relationships) being influ-enced by their job satisfaction and by Judge andIliess (2004) finding that employees with higherjob satisfaction tend to report significantly morepositive affect at home.

In this article, we are concerned with the spill-over of a work role attitudejob satisfactionfromwork to family, a process by which employees

satisfaction with their jobs influences their feelingsand attitudes experienced in the family role. Unlikeauthors who study mood spillover (e.g., Williams &Alliger, 1994), we focus on the spillover of jobsatisfaction because it is, from the perspective ofresearch and practice, the most focal employee at-titude (Saari & Judge, 2004: 396), and because ithas been theorized to directly influence employeesoff-work lives (e.g., Heller et al., 2004).

Recently, theory and research have focused onjob satisfaction as an evaluative state that variesover time (e.g., Heller & Watson, 2005; Ilies & Judge,2002; Ilies, Schwind, & Heller, 2007). Using a sim-ilar conceptualization of job satisfaction, we focuson the spillover ofdaily job satisfaction onto feel-ings experienced in the family domain. Such afocus is consistent with Lockes definition of jobsatisfaction as an emotional state [italics added]resulting from an appraisal of ones job or job ex-periences (1976: 1300). In keeping with previoustheorizing (Heller & Watson, 2005; Judge & Ilies,2004; Williams, Suls, Alliger, Learner, & Wan,1991), we define daily job satisfaction as an attitu-dinal evaluation of ones job or job experiences on

Academy of Management Journal

2009, Vol. 52, No. 1, 87102.

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a particular workday. However, very little researchhas examined the spillover of daily job satisfactiononto constructs in the family domain measured inreal time, at the within-individual level (Heller &Watson, 2005; Judge & Ilies, 2004; Williams et al.,1991).

Moreover, there are conflicting findings in the

literature regarding job satisfactionwork-familyspillover at the within-individual level. Specifi-cally, Williams et al. (1991) failed to find a positivewithin-individual linkage between job satisfactionand positive affect at home, and Judge and Ilies(2004) were surprised that job satisfaction signifi-cantly affected only employees positive affect (andnot negative affect) at home. In addition, althoughHeller and Watson (2005) found that job satisfac-tion assessed in the afternoon predicted maritalsatisfaction assessed at night, further analyses didnot support a mediating role for mood.

One possible reason for the inconsistent findingsamong these three studies, which all measured jobsatisfaction on multiple occasions and assessed itswithin-individual associations with home out-comes, is that the studies participants may havediffered in their level of work-family role integra-tion. Employees with low work-family role inte-gration tend to segment, or separate, their work andfamily roles (e.g., Ashforth, Kreiner, & Fugate,2000; Nippert-Eng, 1996; Rothbard, Phillips, & Du-mas, 2005), thus demonstrating high work-familyrole segmentation; in contrast, employees withhigh work-family role integration tend to make lit-

tle distinction between their work and family roles(Desrochers, Hilton, & Larwood, 2005; Nippert-Eng,1996; Olson-Buchanan & Boswell, 2006).

An example of a highly work-family role-inte-grated employee is someone who cannot turn offhis/her Blackberry during a family vacation be-cause of his/her intrinsic interest in seeing e-mailsfrom work-related colleagues; a mildly work-familyrole-integrated employee will happily (or morehappily) do so. Therefore, employees who havehigher (rather than lower) levels of work-familyrole integration ought to have greater difficulty sep-

arating their work-selves from their family-selves. A work role boundary perspective wouldthus lead to the prediction that employees whocannot separate themselves from workthat is,more work-family role-integrated employeeswillprobably have more spillover at home of their job(dis)satisfaction. This perspective could explainwhy Williams et al. (1991) found no linkage be-tween employees job satisfaction and home affect:their studys participants, who were working moth-ers, may have all been low in work-family role-integration. And it may explain why Judge and Ilies

(2004) found that employees who are more job-satisfied experience more home positive affect. Onthe other hand, this explanation cannot account forwhy Judge and Ilies found a significant linkage

between employees job satisfaction and their pos-itive, but not their negative, affect at home. Hellerand Watson (2005) did not report whether job sat-

isfaction had direct effects on home positive andnegative affect, so we do not know what relation-ship may have existed between these variables intheir data.

A second reason for job satisfaction spilloverstudies inconsistencies could be that these studiesdiffer in terms of (1) where the employees were(i.e., at home or at work) when their job satisfactionwas assessed, (2) what time of day (i.e., afternoon orevening) employees job satisfaction was assessed,(3) what type of job satisfaction assessments wereused (momentary or daily), (4) how much time hadelapsed between work and home assessments, and(5) what control variables were included in theanalyses (or not included when they should have

been). For example, Williams et al. (1991: 667)assessed daily job satisfaction (how satisfied werethey that day) at the end of the day (presumably athome), whereas Heller and Watson, like Judge andIlies, assessed momentary job satisfaction duringworking hours.

The reason these differences matter is that em-ployees may have greater difficulty rating or bemore likely to be biased when assessing their jobsatisfaction when they are at home rather than at

work. For this reason, unlike Williams et al. (1991),in the present study we measured work affect and jobsatisfaction at work and home affect and marital sat-isfaction at home. Similarly, when it comes to report-ing home affect, it may be that employees significantothers or spouses are better able than the employeesare themselves to assess it without work-related affect

blurring this evaluation. For this reason, unlike Hellerand Watson (2005), Judge and Ilies (2004), and Wil-liams et al., in the present study we asked employeesspouses or significant others to assess the employeeshome positive and negative affect.

With regard to control variables, in the context ofmeasuring daily job satisfaction at the end of theworkday and the home outcomes later at home, we

believe it is important to control for the amount oftime elapsed between the two measurements inorder to account for possible time trends. In addi-tion, following Miner, Glomb, and Hulin (2005),who explained that using a daily baseline measure ofaffect as a control variable in within-individual anal-yses accounts for the lack of independence of resid-uals from time series data, we believed it was impor-tant to control for morning affect when predicting

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home affect. For these reasons, we included bothmorning affect and the amount of time elapsed be-tween the work and home surveys as controlvariables.

In summary, the goal of the present study was toimprove upon previous studies concerned with jobsatisfaction spillover by Williams et al. (1991),

Judge and Ilies (2004), and Heller and Watson(2005). We did so in the following ways: (1) byincluding a more complete set of control measures,(2) by assessing daily job satisfaction at work, (3) byassessing work affect in the afternoon at work, (4)

by assessing home affect in the evening at home, (5)by utilizing employees spouses or significant othersto assess their home affect, and (6) by including as-sessments of employees level of work-family roleintegration as a potential moderator of the job satis-factionhome affect and job satisfactionmarital sat-isfaction relationships. As a result, our study prom-ises to answer this question with greater clarity: Dolinkages exist between employees job satisfactionand their home affect (i.e., positive linkage for posi-tive affect and negative linkage for negative affect)and between their job satisfaction and marital satis-faction (positive linkage), and are each of these link-ages weaker for employees who have less (rather thanmore) work-family role integration?

Managers can benefit from enhanced under-standing about job satisfactionrelated work-familyspillover too. First, if daily job satisfaction has animpact on employees feelings experienced in thefamily domain, managers could perhaps influence

the occurrence and timing of positive and negativework events. For example, managers could sched-ule work events or interactions in such a way thatnegative events rarely occur and positive eventsoccur toward the end of the workday in order toenhance employees well-being later at home. Sec-ond, because organizational policies can influencethe extent to which employees work and familyroles are integrated (Kossek, Lautsch, & Eaton,2005; Rothbard et al., 2005), information regardingthe extent to which work-family role integrationinfluences spillover might help managers decide to

implement various flexible work-life policies in or-der to increase or decrease work-family role inte-gration, depending on whether the spillover is pre-ponderantly positive or negative in nature withintheir company or work group.

This article proceeds as follows: First, we reviewliterature guiding hypotheses regarding home affectand level of marital satisfaction we expect to seeassociated with higher rather than lower levels ofjob satisfaction. Second, we review literature guid-ing hypotheses regarding the likely moderating(strengthening) effect we expect employees level of

work-family role integration to have on linkagesbetween job satisfaction and outcomes from thefamily domain. Third, we describe the study thattested our hypotheses and its results. We conclude

by discussing our findings implications for man-agers as well as for management scholars who areinterested in better understanding when employees

are more versus less likely to experience job satis-factionrelated work-family spillover.

HYPOTHESES

The phenomenon of mood spillover is one of thereasons we believe it is likely that employees whoexperience high daily job satisfaction on a particu-lar workdaya marker of a good day at workaremore likely to experience positive affect at home.Empirical support for this view comes from Judgeand Iliess (2004) finding that employees who re-

port higher levels of daily job satisfaction at workgenerally report significantly higher levels of posi-tive home affect later in the day. The fact that thisrelationship has been inconsistently observedacross studies, for the possible reasons that we ex-plained earlier, suggests there is need to reexaminean assumed relationship of home affect with em-ployees daily job satisfaction. Thus, we predict:

Hypothesis 1. On days when employees expe-rience high daily job satisfaction, they experi-ence higher positive affect at home, comparedto days when they experience low daily job

satisfaction.Hypothesis 2. On days when employees expe-rience high daily job satisfaction, they experi-ence lower negative affect at home, comparedto days when they experience low daily jobsatisfaction.

Our reason for distinguishing between positiveand negative home affect is that theory on affectiveexperiences specifies that pleasant events and ex-periences are more relevant to positive affect,whereas unpleasant events and experiences are

more relevant to negative affect (see Watson, 2000).In addition to its influence on the affective statesexperienced by employees at home, daily job satis-faction is also likely to influence evaluations suchas daily marital satisfaction. In this regard, Zedeckdiscussed spillover in terms of attitudes and statedthat it is also assumed that attitudes at work be-come engrained and carried over into home life(1992: 8). Authors of previous work regarding thespillover of daily job satisfaction onto other atti-tudes have suggested that mood is a primary mech-anism responsible for such spillover (e.g., Heller &

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Watson, 2005). That is, daily job satisfaction spillsover onto daily marital satisfaction by coloring em-ployees assessments of their marriages via an af-fective pathway (Heller & Watson, 2005). Theseauthors asserted that, because attitudes have im-portant affective components, job satisfaction atwork influences marital satisfaction at home be-

cause the two attitudes are associated with mood atwork and at home, respectively, and work moodspills over to mood at home.

Besides the affective mechanism, to the extentthat work and family roles are not completely seg-mented, employees are likely to discuss their workexperiences and perhaps their subjective assess-ments of their workdays with their spouses or sig-nificant others after work. For those who thus dis-cuss their work experiences, sharing positive workexperiences (which cause high job satisfaction)should increase daily marital satisfaction, as sug-gested by laboratory research showing that when cou-ples shared positive events, their relationship satis-faction increased (Gable, Gonzaga, & Strachman,2006). There is also empirical evidence supporting anintraindividual link between daily job and daily mar-ital satisfaction. Heller and Watson (2005) found thatjob satisfaction at work, measured in the afternoon,predicted marital satisfaction measured at night overmultiple days (within individuals). These authors didnot, however, examine the influence of work-familyrole integration on the process of spillover from workto family; we turn to this influence next. Drawing onthe theorizing and empirical evidence reviewed

above, we predict:

Hypothesis 3. On days when employees expe-rience high daily job satisfaction, they reporthigher marital satisfaction for that day (dailymarital satisfaction), compared to days whenthey experience low daily job satisfaction.

The first three hypotheses concern the spilloverof daily job satisfaction onto home affect and dailymarital satisfaction. Our main focus is on the spill-over of daily job satisfaction, and not on the spill-over of mood, because day-to-day differences in

daily job satisfaction largely reflect differences inan employees subjective assessment of the qualityof his or her workday, whereas mood at work can

be subject to work and nonwork influences, such asinternal feelings (Watson, 2000). Nevertheless,mood spillover is a causal mechanism that mayexplain the spillover of daily job satisfaction ontoemployees experiences in the family domain (seeHeller & Watson, 2004). Therefore, in addition toexamining the direct spillover effect of daily jobsatisfaction on mood at home and marital satisfac-tion (Hypotheses 13), we also examine whether

daily job satisfaction spillover is independent ofmood spillover, on an exploratory basis.

The Influence of Work-Family Role Integrationon the Spillover of Daily Job Satisfaction

According to role boundary theory, individualscreate and maintain boundaries around the workand family domains as a way of simplifying andordering their environment (Ashforth et al., 2000;Nippert-Eng, 1996). The boundaries separatingwork and family roles are idiosyncratic, and differ-ences among employees degrees of work-familyrole integration-segmentation, which fall on a con-tinuum ranging from high segmentation to highintegration (Olson-Buchanan & Boswell, 2006), areinfluenced by the natures of their jobs and theirindividual characteristics (Kossek et al., 2005).Therefore, individuals differ in the extent to which

they allow, consciously or not, their daily job assess-ments to influence their feelings and attitudes. Thatis, work-family role segmentation limits the psycho-logical influence of work on the family domain, thuslimiting the spillover of job satisfaction. Individualswho segment their work and family roles are lesslikely to think about work while they are at home

because they focus primarily on the role relevant tothe life domain in which they are operating at thattime. Therefore, the home affect of employees withlow work-family role integration (i.e., high work-fam-ily role segmentation) should be less strongly influ-

enced by the quality of their work experiences (re-flected in daily job satisfaction) than is the homeaffect of those with high work-family role integration.In addition, employees with highly integrated work-family roles are more likely to discuss their workexperiences and subjective assessments of their work-days with their spouses or significant others afterwork, therefore showing a stronger link between theirdaily job satisfaction and daily marital satisfaction(than those employees with segmented work andfamily roles will show). Therefore, we predict:

Hypothesis 4. The tendency for employees with

higher (rather than lower) daily job satisfactionto experience higher positive affect at home (aspredicted by Hypothesis 1) is stronger for em-ployees who are more rather than less work-family role-integrated.

Hypothesis 5. The tendency for employees withhigher (rather than lower) daily job satisfactionto experience lower negative affect at home (aspredicted by Hypothesis 2) is stronger for em-ployees who are more rather than less work-family role-integrated.



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Hypothesis 6. The tendency for employees withhigher (rather than lower) daily job satisfactionto experience higher daily marital satisfactionat home (as predicted by Hypothesis 3) isstronger for employees who are more ratherthan less work-family role-integrated.

METHODS

Participants

The sample of employees included in the currentstudy participated in a broader study on work andfamily by Ilies, Schwind, Wagner, Johnson, DeRue,and Ilgen (2007). However, with the exception ofthe scores reflecting employees positive and nega-tive affect at work (assessed at the end of the work-day), none of the variables used in that study wereused in the hypothesis tests reported here. We re-cruited participants from a pool of university em-ployees including administrative professionals, su-pervisors, and clerical-technical employees. In therecruitment e-mail, we briefly described the studyand emphasized that, to enroll in it, employees hadto be married or cohabiting with a significant other,and their spouses/significant others needed to agreeto participate. Interested participants were directed toan online registration page where they created aunique user name and password. The first 150 indi-viduals to register were allowed to participate in thestudy and comprised our initial sample.

Participation in the study was voluntary, and

employees and their spouses/significant otherswere compensated for their participation (employ-ees received up to $75, and spouses/significant oth-ers up to $40, depending on how many surveysthey completed). Of the university employees whosigned up to participate in the study, 147 com-pleted an initial survey requesting demographicinformation. Of this sample, 7 individuals indi-cated they were not married or did not live with asignificant other willing to participate. Twenty ad-ditional participants did not respond to any of thedaily surveys at work. Although we do not know

the reasons that prevented each of these employeesfrom participating, we received e-mails from sev-eral individuals who indicated that they could notcontinue participating because their spouses or sig-nificant others could no longer participate; theyhad received new work assignments; they had totravel during the study period and could not fulfillthe study requirements; or health or family issuesprevented continuing. Four of the remaining par-ticipants did not complete any home measures, andthus their data were not usable. Six additional par-ticipants were eliminated from the final analyses

because they did not complete the final measure ofwork-family role integration. Finally, after match-ing the work and home data from employees andspouses or significant others, we removed data for 9of the remaining participants because they did nothave at least four matched sets of responses.

In sum, the final sample consisted of 101 employ-

ees and their spouses or significant others (67 percentof the initial sample). We obtained job titles for all ofthe employee participants in the final sample. Ananalysis of these job titles revealed that participantsheld jobs dealing with secretarial or administrativesupport work (34%), communications and coordina-tion (15%), research activities (13%), informationtechnology (13%), and other areas (25%).

The employees had an average age of 42.7 yearsand an average tenure of 12.7 years. Seventy-eightpercent were female; 48 percent had no children athome; and 43 percent had one or two childrenliving at home. In the final sample, all but one ofthe focal participants were married, and the oneexception lived in a domestic partnership. No de-mographic measures were obtained from spousesor significant others. We performed independentsample t-tests to compare the demographic datafrom the employees included in the data analysiswith the demographic data of the employees whosubmitted the latter but did not complete the entirestudy. We found no significant differences betweenthe two groups of employees on any of the demo-graphic variables mentioned above.

Procedures

Surveys were used to assess perceptions and/orfeelings from employees and their spouses/signifi-cant others. These surveys were given via the inter-net to employees at work and provided to theirspouses/significant others on paper. A paper sur-vey was also given to the employees in this study touse when reporting their daily marital satisfaction inthe evening of each workday. The paper surveys con-tained an instruction to immediately seal them inaccompanying envelopes addressed to the research-

ers and to mail these the next morning. Telephoneinterviews with employees spouses or significantothers also occurred between 7 and 9 p.m. of eachworkday of the study (beginning in phase 2).

In phase 1 of the study, the employees Internet-based survey assessed demographic variables andvarious individual difference variables such astrait positive affect and trait negative affect.Employees spouses or significant others also com-pleted a paper survey in which they rated theirspouses/significant others general levels of jobsatisfaction and their own global marital satisfac-



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tion (spouses returned the surveys directly to theresearchers in postage-paid envelopes).

In phase 2 of the study, which began one weekafter the completion of phase 1, the employeescompleted an Internet survey in the morning and inthe afternoon of each workday, and in the evening athome, they completed a paper survey that asked them

to rate their level of marital satisfaction for that day(i.e., daily marital satisfaction). Employees morningsurvey assessed their positive and negative affect(morning positive and negative affect at work) as acontrol for possible serial effects, as explained in thesection on control variables below. Employees after-noon survey assessed their daily job satisfaction andwork positive affect and work negative affect (after-noon positive and negative affect at work). In con-trast to the employees, during phase 2 the spousesand significant others completed one survey perworkday, in the form of a telephone interview. Theinterviewer (who phoned between 7 and 9 p.m.) wasa representative of a survey research organization andasked each spouse/significant other to rate the affec-tive state of his or her spouse/significant other (theemployee).

In phase 3 of the study, which began on theMonday following the completion of phase 2, theemployees completed an internet survey that as-sessed the extent to which they integrated theirwork and family roles. No surveys or telephoneinterviews were provided to employees spouses orsignificant others during phase 3 of the study.

Because all participants had Monday to Friday

work schedules, the two-week duration of thestudy gave each participant the opportunity to re-spond to 10 surveys of each type (morning, after-noon, and evening), with each spouse/significantother also having the opportunity to respond to 10surveys. We obtained 838 morning surveys and 796afternoon surveys from employees at work (re-sponse rates of 83 and 79 percent, respectively).Employees responded to 867 surveys from home(an 86 percent response rate), and spouses/signifi-cant others responded to a total of 621 nightlysurveys (a 61 percent response rate).

Measures

Job satisfaction. Two types of job satisfactionwere assessed, the first from the perspective of theemployee and the second from the perspective ofthe employees spouse or significant other. Ourmeasure of employees job satisfaction from theirspouses/significant others perspective was gen-eral job satisfaction of the employee, assessed viathe five-item Brayfield-Rothe Index (Brayfield &

Rothe, 1951). The items were modified to reflectthe rating perspective (e.g., [first name of focalemployee] feels fairly satisfied with his/her presentjob). Our measure of job satisfaction from the em-ployees perspective was daily job satisfaction ofthe employee,also assessed via the five-item Bray-field-Rothe Index (Brayfield & Rothe, 1951) modi-

fied to represent state, rather than global, evalua-tions of job satisfaction. The scale included thefollowing items: Right now, I find real enjoymentin my work, During most of the past hour I havefelt enthusiastic about my work, At this verymoment, I feel fairly satisfied with my job, Rightnow, each minute of work seems like it will neverend (reverse-coded), and At the present time,I consider my job rather unpleasant (reverse-coded). Both job satisfaction measures used a ratingscale ranging from 1, strongly disagree, to 5,strongly agree.

Employees daily marital satisfaction. Thedaily marital satisfaction of employees was as-sessed using a five-item scale (Norton, 1983)adapted to represent state satisfaction. Items in-cluded, Right now, I feel that I have a good mar-riage or relationship, At this moment, I feel thatmy relationship with my partner is very stable,Today, our marriage has been very strong, To-day, I have really felt like part of a team with mypartner, and My relationship with my partner hasmade me happy today (1 strongly disagree, to5 strongly agree) (The individual who was not

officially married was instructed to evaluate his/her satisfaction with the relationship as if he/shewere married.)

Spouses global marital satisfaction. We usedNortons (1983) scale, with general instructions, tomeasure spouses/significant others marital satis-faction. This measure differed from the daily mea-sure in that it referred to global, rather than daily,marital satisfaction. The scale items were, I feelthat I have a good marriage or relationship, I feelthat my relationship with my partner is very sta-

ble, Our marriage is very strong, I really feellike part of a team with my partner, and Myrelationship with my partner makes me happy.We used this one-time global rating of spouses/significant others marital satisfaction to providesome external validity to the employees ratings ofmarital satisfaction; we did not measure spouses/significant others daily satisfaction because the fo-cus of the job satisfactionmarital satisfaction anal-yses was on employees own marital satisfaction.The spouses/significant others marital satisfactionmeasure used the same five-point scale as the twomeasures described above.



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Employees positive and negative afternoon af-fect at work.We assessed employees positive andnegative affect at work during the afternoon (after-noon positive affect at workandafternoon negativeaffect at work) of each workday of the study withthe 20 adjectival descriptors of mood from the Posi-tive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS; Watson &

Clark, 1994). Specifically, the ten adjective descrip-tors from the positive scale were interested, enthu-siastic, excited, strong, proud, alert, in-spired, attentive, active and determined. Theten adjectives from the negative scale were up-set, irritable, distressed, guilty, scared,ashamed, nervous, jittery, afraid and hos-tile. This survey was administered daily over theinternet. Employees were asked to indicate the ex-tent to which they experienced each of the feelingsdescribed by the PANAS adjectives at the time theywere completing the survey (1 slightly or not atall, to 5, very much).

Employees home positive and negative affect.To assess the home positive and negative affect ofthe focal employees in this study, their spouses orsignificant others were asked by telephone to indi-cate, via a five-point scale, the extent to which they

believed that the focal employee had experiencedvarious positive and negative affective states oremotions that evening. The telephone interviewerpresented the 20 adjective descriptors from thePANAS (see above) in a random order, interspers-ing positive and negative affect descriptors. Thetelephone interviewer instructed spouses/signifi-

cant others to select one of the following answers:slightly or not at all, a little, moderately,quite a bit, or very much, and these responseswere coded 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, respectively.

Employees work-family role integration. Theextent to which each participant in the study inte-grated work and family roles was measured using aslightly modified version of the three-item Work-Family Role Integration-Blurring Scale (Desrocherset al., 2005). At the end of the study, participantsresponded to the following items: It is often diffi-cult to tell where my work life ends and my family

life begins, I tend to integrate my work and fam-ily duties when I work at home, and In my life,there is a clear boundary between my career andmy role as a parent or family member (reverse-scored). The anchor points for the scale used tomeasure work-family role integration ranged from1, strongly disagree, to 5, strongly agree, andtherefore, higher scores are associated with moreintegrated work-family roles.

Control variables. Because work-family spill-over effects are likely to depend on the amount oftime elapsed between the assessment of work and

home variables, we constructed time lag variablesmeasuring the time elapsed between each end-of-workday job satisfaction survey and (1) the employ-ees home survey assessing daily marital satisfac-tion, and (2) the time when the employees spouse/significant other responded to the phone interview.We controlled for these amounts of time in all the

within-individual analyses.For the analyses predicting positive and negativeaffect at home, to account for possible autocorrela-tion in the home affect scores, we controlled for thepositive and negative affect scores employees hadreported in the morning from work. These controlvariables were assessed every morning, via the in-ternet, using the same scales and response optionsused to assess afternoon positive and negative af-fect at work (see above).

Finally, following the suggestion of an anony-mous reviewer, we created two job type classifica-tions; we defined the first type as a supporting roleat work, which included such time-bound jobs assecretary, administrative assistant, and other simi-lar positions; we defined the second type as moreautonomous roles, which included jobs such ashuman resource analyst, communications manager,and editor. The primary distinction we sought tohighlight concerned the relatively rigid temporaland spatial requirements of the supporting roles,versus the more flexible boundaries of the autono-mous roles, and our implicit expectation was thatemployees with more autonomous jobs would havemore work-family role-integrated roles. We in-

cluded the job type classification as a control in theanalyses examining the moderating influence ofwork-family role integration on the strength of thejob satisfaction spillover.

Analytic Strategy

To test the intraindividual spillover effects ofdaily job satisfaction and the cross-level moderat-ing hypotheses, we used a hierarchical linear mod-eling (HLM) framework. For each criterion, wetested a model that regressed daily criterion scores

on the daily job satisfaction scores at the first level(within participants) of analysis. Importantly, thedaily job satisfaction scores were centered relative toeach respondents average score to form deviationsfrom respondents characteristic means. As many au-thors have explained (e.g., Ilies, Scott, & Judge, 2006;Sonnentag, 2003), this centering approach eliminatesall the between-individual variance in the predictorscores and therefore the estimates represent strictlywithin-individual associations.

To test our hypothesis that employees will expe-rience higher positive affect at home on days when



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they have experienced higher daily job satisfaction(Hypothesis 1), we estimated a model (model 1)that predicted home positive affect with morningpositive affect at work (to account for autocorrela-tion), time lag (to control for time trends), and dailyjob satisfaction, at the first level of analysis in HLM.No predictors were included at the second level of

analysis. This same procedure was used to test ourhypothesis that the converse would also be truenamely, that employees will experience lower neg-ative affect at home on days when they have expe-rienced higher daily job satisfaction (Hypothesis 2),the only difference being the use of home negativeaffect as the criterion and of morning negative af-fect at work as the methodological control variable.

To test our hypothesis that employees will expe-rience more daily marital satisfaction on days whenthey have experienced higher daily job satisfaction(Hypothesis 3), we estimated a model that pre-dicted daily marital satisfaction with daily job sat-isfaction and time lag, at the first level of analysisin HLM (no predictors were used at the secondlevel). Because we did not have measures of morn-ing marital satisfaction, unlike with the tests of thefirst two hypotheses, we did not control for morn-ing scores on the criterion.

In supplemental analyses, we also examinedwhether the effects specified in Hypotheses 1, 2,and 3 were maintained when mood spillover wascontrolled for. To test this, we estimated model 2for each of the three criteria, a procedure identicalto the model described above, with the exception

that we also included the afternoon affect at workscores as predictor variables at the first level ofanalysis. Theorizing and empirical findings by

Judge and Ilies (2004) support the tendency forpositive affect in one domain (e.g., at work) to spillover to positive affect, but not negative affect, in adifferent domain (e.g., home), and the tendency fornegative affect in one domain (e.g., at work) to spillover to negative affect, but not positive affect, in adifferent domain (e.g., home). For this reason,when predicting home positive affect we includedafternoon positive affect at work as a predictor;

and when predicting home negative affect, weincluded afternoon negative affect at work as apredictor. In contrast, when predicting daily mar-ital satisfaction, employees positive and nega-tive affect assessed in the afternoon at work wereincluded as predictor variables since we did nothave strong reasons to believe that one of theaffect variables would be more relevant than theother for marital satisfaction.

To test our interaction hypotheses (Hypotheses 4,5, and 6), all of which regard how the strength ofemployees work-family role integration affects the

main effects predicted by our first three hypothe-ses, we estimated model 3, which was constructed

by adding work-family role integration and job typeat the second level of analysis in HLM, as predic-tors of the first-level intercepts and slopes, to themodel used to test Hypotheses 1, 2, and 3 (i.e., tomodel 1). This addition constituted the only differ-

ence between the two sets of analyses (that is,model 3, used to test Hypothesis 4, was identical tomodel 1, used to test Hypothesis 1, with the excep-tion of the two predictors included at the secondlevel of analysis in model 3). As noted, job type wasincluded as a control variable, whereas work-fam-ily role integration was the substantive moderatorspecified in Hypotheses 4, 5, and 6.

RESULTS

Table 1 presents the between- and within-indi-vidual correlations among the variables used to testthe hypotheses and the internal consistency reli-abilities of the scores (for the daily variables, theinternal consistency values represent averagescomputed over days). As noted, to validate theself-reported scores with those provided by an inde-pendent source, we also collected one-time, general,spousal/significant other ratings of employees jobsatisfaction and ratings of spouses/significant othersown marital satisfaction. The correlation between av-eraged (self-reported) daily job satisfaction scores andone-time spousal reports was .38 (p .01), and theaverage level of employees daily marital satisfaction

correlated at .46 (p .01) with the marital satisfactionof their spouses/significant others.

Interestingly, at the between-individual level, theaverage affect scores provided by the spouses/sig-nificant others did not correlate consistently withthe average daily satisfaction scores provided bythe employees. We suspect that the low cross-sec-tional validity of the aggregate affect scores wascaused by augmented effects of rating biases suchas acquiescence (Watson & Tellegen, 2002). How-ever, acquiescence error is less pronounced in sin-gle ratings, and we essentially controlled for acqui-

escence in intraindividual analyses by centeringthe predictor scores relative to their means for eachparticipant (see Watson and Tellegen [2002] for anin-depth treatise on acquiescence in single ratingsand aggregated scores). Indeed, at the intraindi-vidual level, home positive and negative affect(spouse-reported) correlated with the daily satisfac-tion scores in the expected directions. Importantly,within individuals, spousal reports of employeesaffect were significantly correlated with self-re-ports that we collected for the broader work-familyresearch project (Ilies et al., 2007) for both positive



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affect (r .24,p .001) and negative affect (r .34,p .001), which supports the validity of the spou-sal reports of affect.

Before explicitly testing the hypotheses, weexamined whether there was sufficient intraindi-vidual variance in the daily scores to warrant mod-eling intraindividual relationships by computingthe proportion of the total variance in the dailyscores that was associated with within-individualvariation (from null HLM models). Indeed, a sub-stantial proportion of the total variance (2555%)

was caused by day-to-day fluctuations in each mea-sured score, which is consistent with previouswork examining within-individual fluctuations inaffect and satisfaction (e.g., Ilies & Judge, 2002).

Hypothesis Tests

Hypothesis 1 predicted that on days when em-ployees experience high daily job satisfaction, theywill experience higher positive affect at home thanthey will on days when they experience low dailyjob satisfaction. Support for this is seen in Table 2,

which shows a positive and significant effect ofdaily job satisfaction on positive affect at home( 0.15,p .01) in our test of model 1 to predictpositive affect at home.

Hypothesis 2 predicted that on days when em-ployees experience high daily job satisfaction, theywill experience lower negative affect at home thanthey will on days when they experience low dailyjob satisfaction. Support for this is seen in Table 2,which shows a negative and significant effect ofdaily job satisfaction on negative affect at home

(

0.17,p

.01) in our test of model 1 to predictnegative affect at home.Hypothesis 3 predicted that on days when em-

ployees experience high daily job satisfaction, theywill report higher daily marital satisfaction thanthey will on days when they experience low dailyjob satisfaction. This hypothesis was also sup-ported, as seen in Table 2: The effect of daily jobsatisfaction on daily marital satisfaction was posi-tive and significant ( 0.10,p .05) in our test ofmodel 1 to predict daily marital satisfaction.

Hypothesis 4 predicted that the tendency for

TABLE 1Between- and Within-Individual Correlations among Study Variablesa

Variablesb Mean s.d. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

1. Afternoon positive affect at work(self-rated)

2.93 0.79 (.94) .15** .39** .01 .09 .14*

2. Afternoon negative affect at work(self-rated)

1.22 0.33 .08 (.86) .35** .03 .07* .18**

3. Daily job satisfaction (self-rated, atwork, in the afternoon)

3.66 0.59 .54** .24* (.86) .08* .10** .18*

4. Daily marital satisfaction (self-rated, at home, in the evening)

4.11 0.59 .15 .02 .13 (.93) .10* .16**

5. Home positive affect (spouse-rated,at home, in the evening)

2.89 0.69 .12 .06 .03 .06 (.88) .11*

6. Home negative affect (spouse-rated,at home, in the evening)

1.24 0.29 .26* .09 .24* .05 .09 (.91)

7. General job satisfaction (spouse-rated; one-time rating)

3.56 0.72 .17 .02 .38** .09 .18 .22 (.83)

8. Spouse general marital satisfaction(spouse-rated; one-time rating)

4.34 0.71 .11 .14 .01 .46** .19 .12 .17 (.91)

9. Work-family integration (self-rated;one-time rating)

2.34 0.73 .02 .10 .07 .11 .01 .14 .17 .19 (.72)

10. Job type (coded from job titles) 0.34 0.48 .05

.25* .03

.02 .14

.11 .06

.07

.19

a The correlations below the diagonal represent between-individual associations (for variables 1 through 8, we computed the between-individual correlations using individuals aggregated scores; n 86101, pairwise). The correlations above the diagonal representwithin-individual associations (over time) and were estimated from fixed-effects HLM models with single level 1 predictors and no level2 predictors (n 621867, pairwise). Reliabilities are reported on the diagonal; for the within-individual variables, reliability values wereaveraged over measurements.

b Job type was coded as follows: support role (e.g., secretarial) 1, other 0. The morning affect control variables (self-rated byemployees at work) are not included in this table.

p .10*p .05

**p .01***p .001Two-tailed tests.



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employees with higher (rather than lower) dailyjob satisfaction to experience higher positive af-

fect at home (as predicted by Hypothesis 1) willbe stronger for employees who are more ratherthan less work-family role-integrated. As shownin Table 3, which presents the estimates formodel 3, the data supported this hypothesis inthat the interactive effect of daily job satisfactionand work-family role integration was positiveand significant when predicting home positiveaffect. Figure 1 depicts this interactive effectgraphically, showing that individuals withhighly integrated work and family roles experi-ence a strong, positive relationship between self-

ratings of daily job satisfaction at work and spou-sal ratings of their positive affect at home,whereas the relationship was weak (actually neg-ative) for those with segmented roles.

Hypothesis 5 predicted that the tendency for em-ployees with higher (rather than lower) daily job sat-isfaction to experience lower negative affect at home(as predicted by Hypothesis 2) will be stronger foremployees who are more rather than less work-familyrole-integrated. This hypothesis was also supported

by the data, as evidenced by the negative and signif-icant effect for the interaction between daily job sat-

isfaction and work-family role integration when pre-dicting home negative affect (see Table 3). This

interactive effect is illustrated in Figure 2, whichshows that individuals with highly integrated workand family roles strongly feel the effects of a dissatis-fying day on the job, resulting in high levels of nega-tive affect on days when they report low daily jobsatisfaction, and low levels of negative affect on dayswhen they experience high daily job satisfaction. Incontrast to the employees rating high on work-familyrole integration, those employees with segmentedroles experienced a positive (albeit weak) relation-ship between daily job satisfaction and negative af-fect, and there were relatively large differences in

home negative affect on days of dissatisfying workbetween employees with highly integrated, versushighly segmented, roles.

Finally, Hypothesis 6 predicted that the ten-dency for employees with higher (rather thanlower) daily job satisfaction to experience moredaily marital satisfaction at home (as predicted byHypothesis 3) will be stronger for employees whoare more rather than less work-family role-inte-grated. This hypothesis did not receive support, asthe interactive effect of daily job satisfaction and

TABLE 2Results of HLM Analyses Testing the Intraindividual Effects of Job Satisfaction on

Home Affect and Marital Satisfactiona

Variables

Home PositiveAffect (Spouse-

Rated, in theEvening)

Home NegativeAffect (Spouse-


Daily MaritalSatisfaction (Self-


t t t

Model 1Intercept 2.91 38.15** 1.25 35.11** 4.12 67.38**Time lag (coded) 0.11 1.93* 0.04 0.65 0.09 1.52Daily job satisfaction (self-rated, in the afternoon) 0.15 3.28** 0.17 2.55** 0.10 2.13*

Model 2Intercept 2.91 36.15** 1.25 34.02** 4.12 67.34**Afternoon positive affect at work (self-rated) 0.04 0.47 0.01 0.31Afternoon negative affect at work (self-rated) 0.11 1.74* 0.07 1.41Time lag (coded) 0.10 1.88* 0.05 1.10 0.10 1.79*Daily job satisfaction (self-rated, in the afternoon) 0.16 2.73** 0.13 2.03* 0.10 2.24*

a

Daily job satisfaction, measured with reports provided by employees from work each afternoon before leaving, was the substantivepredictor in these analyses. In the model 2 analyses, we included the affect scores reported by employees at the end of the workday (workpositive and negative affect) as predictors to account for work-to-home mood spillover. When predicting positive and negative affect athome, models 1 and 2 also controlled for morning positive or negative affect at work, respectively, to account for possible autocorrelationin the data. The regression coefficients for these controls were close to 0 (ranging from .03 to .01) and nonsignificant. We centered level1 predictor scores at the individuals means to eliminate between-individual variance. The main effects of job satisfaction and time lag arestandardized.

*p .05**p .01

One-tailed directional tests.



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dicting home affect did not diminish the effect ofdaily job satisfaction on home positive affect (thestandardized regression coefficient actually in-creased by .01), whereas the effect of daily jobsatisfaction on home negative affect decreasedslightly in magnitude (from 0.17 to 0.13) butremained statistically significant (p .05). The in-traindividual effect of daily job satisfaction ondaily marital satisfaction predicted by Hypothesis 3

was also maintained when we introduced workpositive and negative affect scores into the regres-sion predicting daily marital satisfaction (seeTable 2).

Second, we tested whether work-family role in-tegration moderated the spillover of mood fromwork to home; results supported such a moderatingeffect only for positive affect. That is, the results ofmultilevel models predicting home affect scoresreported by spouses or significant others with workaffect scores reported by employees in the after-noon and including work-family role integration as

a cross-level moderator showed that work-familyrole integration strengthened the relationship be-tween work positive affect and home positive af-fect; although work negative affect had a significanteffect on home negative affect, work-family roleintegration did not influence the strength of thiseffect (these results are not shown in the tables).

Finally, although job type did not moderate thespillover of daily job satisfaction onto home posi-tive and negative affect, it had a significant moder-ating effect on the relationships between daily jobsatisfaction and daily marital satisfaction (

0.16,p .05). This moderating effect showed thatemployees with support roles (e.g., secretary) expe-rienced less spillover between their daily job andmarital satisfaction than those with more autono-mous work roles.

DISCUSSION

The findings of the present study allow us to

make three conclusions that offer novel contribu-tions to the literature on work-family spillover. Ourfirst conclusion is that the spillover of daily jobsatisfaction does not exist only at the experientiallevel but that, in fact, employees express the affec-tive results of daily job satisfaction at home in sucha way that others can observe them. This first con-clusion is based on the results indicating that em-ployees daily job satisfaction ratings are related tospousal/significant other evaluations of the em-ployees affective states at home. Second, we canconclude that the spillover of daily job satisfaction

onto both mood at home and daily marital satisfac-tion cannot be fully explained by work-to-homemood spillover, because the effects of daily jobsatisfaction were maintained (or decreased, butwere nonetheless significant) when we controlledfor the effects of mood at work. Third, this studyattests to the importance of individual differencesin work-family role integration in spillover fromwork to family; this conclusion is driven by thefinding that the extent to which employees inte-grate their work and family roles is positively re-lated to the strength of the spillover of daily job

FIGURE 2Interactive Effect of Work Family Integration and Job Satisfaction on Home Negative Affecta

0.90

1.10

1.30

1.50

1.70

Low Job Satisfaction High Job Satisfaction

Negative Home Affect,Spouse-Reported

Low work-family integration High work-family integration

a Low job satisfaction and low work-family integration represent scores one standard deviation below the grand means on theirrespective measures; scores are one standard deviation above grand means.



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satisfaction onto positive and negative affect athome. We next identify theoretical and practicalimplications corresponding to these three mainconclusions enabled by our findings.

Affective Outcomes of Job Satisfaction AreExpressed in the Family

As we explained in the introduction, a recentstream of research has shown that daily job satisfac-tion influences employees reports of home affect andmarital satisfaction (Heller & Watson, 2005; Judge &Ilies, 2004). Our study extends these previous con-tributions by showing that daily job satisfactioninfluences not only what employees experience intheir family roles but also what their spouses orsignificant others observe. Given the importance ofaffect for employees social behavior in their familyroles (Ilies et al., 2007; Repetti, 1989), showing thatdaily job satisfaction influences spousal/significantother assessments of employee home affect should

be a first step toward developing a more compre-hensive model that specifies not only how employ-ees work lives influence their own family lives, butalso how employees work lives influence the livesof their spouses/significant others and other familymembers. For example, our finding that job satis-factioninfluenced affect is somehow observed byspouses/significant others suggests that it is possi-

ble that employees affective states are also trans-mitted to spouses and other family members, per-haps via emotional contagion (Hatfield, Cacioppo,

& Rapson, 1994; Ilies, Wagner, & Morgeson, 2007).In addition, although we collected spousal/sig-

nificant other reports of employee home affect, wedid not assess spouses or significant others ownreactions to employees work experience or job sat-isfaction. As an anonymous reviewer suggested, itis possible that spouses/significant others respondto employees job dissatisfaction with greater inti-macy and support, thereby ameliorating the nega-tive effect of job dissatisfaction on employeeshome affect. Following this argument, it is possiblethat daily job satisfaction would be negatively re-

lated to positive home affect when spousal supportand intimacy are very high. We cannot test thesepossibilities with our data; thus we recommendthat future research measure spousal support andintimacy and examine the role of these reactions inthe spillover process.

Mood Spillover Does Not Completely Explain JobSatisfaction Spillover

Mood spillover is an important mechanismlinking work and family domains, and indeed,

our data support the existence of mood spilloverin that work affect scores reported by employeesin the afternoon were related to the spouse/sig-nificant other reports of affect for both positiveand negative affect. Nevertheless, our resultsshowed that work-to-home mood spillover couldnot fully explain the spillover of daily job satis-

faction onto both mood at home and daily maritalsatisfaction. We believe this finding is an impor-tant contribution because it suggests that, in ad-dition to the affective pathway proposed by otherauthors (e.g., Heller & Watson, 2005), there must

be other pathwayssuch as recalling or discuss-ing the days work events and experiences in thefamilythrough which daily job satisfaction in-fluences affect and satisfaction at home. Our datado not allow us to test these speculations, but ourfindings suggest that developing and testing aconceptual model that specifies additional mech-anisms (beyond mood spillover) that might ex-plain the spillover of job satisfaction would be afruitful endeavor.

Work-Family Role Integration Has an ImportantRole in the Spillover Process

Unlike previous researchers examining daily jobsatisfaction spillover, we followed Ashforth et al.s(2000) request for empirical research examining theconcept of role segmentation-integration by inte-grating role boundary theory with spillover theoryand testing whether work-family role integration

moderates the strength of the within-individual ef-fects of daily job satisfaction on affect at home anddaily marital satisfaction. In this respect, our find-ing that the extent to which employees integratetheir work and family roles is positively related tothe strength of the spillover of daily job satisfactiononto positive and negative affect at home repre-sents a novel contribution to the literature.

With increasing interest in telecommuting andflexible work arrangements (Conlin, 2006), organi-zations must consider the implications of suchwork arrangements for employee attitudes and

well-being. As an increasing amount of work isbrought home, time and space boundaries, whichare largely a function of the job, become blurred.This could lead to greater work-family role integra-tion and, presumably, greater spillover of job atti-tudes onto attitudes and affective states in thehome domain. Our results showing that job typedid not moderate the spillover of daily job satisfac-tion suggest that the moderation of spillover may bea result of boundary permeability, which is a psy-chological aspect of integration (rather than a struc-tural aspect associated with the job) that employees



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can control to some extent. Therefore, a potentialapplication of this research is to train employees onhow to integrate work and family roles, so that theemployees can experience greater personal benefitfrom their positive reactions to, and evaluationsof, work.

Although our emphasis has been on the relation-

ship between daily job satisfaction and home out-comes, employees with highly integrated work andfamily roles experience higher levels of negativeaffect and lower levels of positive affect when theyare dissatisfied with their work. Therefore, trainingemployees in how to segment their work and fam-ily roles, especially when their jobs are frustratingor dissatisfying, can minimize the negative impactof their work evaluations on their personal well-

being. Clearly, the utility of each approach (trainingemployees to integrate versus segment their work-family roles) is contingent upon the typical level ofsatisfaction that employees have with their jobs.Nevertheless, it would be useful for work-familyresearch to examine the effects of work-family roleintegration for positive and negative spillover sep-arately. If employees could learn how to maximizepositive spillover and counteract the effects of neg-ative spillover (perhaps using mood repair strate-gies), their family lives and general well-beingwould be enhanced.

Following other authors (e.g., Kossek et al.,2005), we believe that work-family role integrationis influenced by both job characteristics and indi-vidual differences, yet it seems that the latter is

more relevant for the current study because all theindividuals comprising our sample had jobs thatwere similar in terms of the flexibility of theirwork-role time boundary (all participants workedon an 85 schedule). In our view, future researchthat distinguishes between person-based and job-

based components of work-family role integrationcan further contribute to the literature on work-family spillover by examining which aspect is moreimportant in moderating the spillover effects. Dif-ferentiating such components would also be valu-able for practitioners because it would reveal the

extent to which organizations can influence work-family role integration through job design.Another area in which future research can con-

tribute to the work-family literature concerns work-family enhancement. In our view, the integration ofwork and family roles represents a means by whichemployees can capitalize on the positive facets oftheir jobs. By psychologically increasing the per-meability of the boundary between work and fam-ily roles, individuals eliminate the walls betweenthe two roles, thereby permitting positive work ex-periences to enrich not only their roles as employ-

ees, but also their roles as spouses/significant oth-ers and parents. Because work can be a source ofenriching and fulfilling experiences (Csikszentmi-halyi & LeFevre, 1989), we propose that by integrat-ing work and family domains employees can mag-nify the benefits of the positive features of work,and we suggest that future research should examine

the role of work-family role integration in work-family enhancement.

Limitations of the Study and FutureResearch Needs

The present research entails several limitations.First, even though the spousal/significant other re-ports of employees affect converged with self-re-ports, other factors besides employees affectivestates may have influenced the spousal/significantother ratings. For instance, it is possible that em-

ployees shared the highlights or frustrations of theday with their spouses or significant others,thereby enabling the latter to make inferences re-garding the employees affective states at home. Wesuggest that future research on job satisfactionspillover include a measure assessing the extent towhich employees discuss their workdays with theirspouses or significant others; such a research de-sign would enable one to examine the extent towhich interpersonal sharing of work events is re-sponsible for the effects of self-rated job satisfactionon spouse/significant otherrated home affect. Sec-ond, our sample was unbalanced on gender (only22 percent male), which limits the generalizabilityof these results. Furthermore, this imbalance pre-cluded us from conducting meaningful analyses bygender, such as examining whether gender predictswork-family role integration or spillover strength.To address this limitation, we suggest that futureresearch on this topic should recruit gender-bal-anced samples. A final limitation is that becausethe work-family role integration measure was givenafter the daily surveys were completed, it is possi-

ble that the daily surveys had a reactive effect onparticipants responses on the work-family role in-

tegration scale.

Conclusion

The present study contributes to the literature onwork and family by examining the spillover ofdaily job satisfaction to the home domain usingmultisource, multimethod data in a within-indi-vidual design. In addition, the study extends thework-family literature both theoretically and em-pirically by proposing and testing a model that



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supports the integration of spillover theory androle boundary theory.

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Remus Ilies([email protected]) is the Valade Research Fel-low and an associate professor of management in the EliBroad Graduate School of Business at Michigan StateUniversity. Remus received his Ph.D. from the Universityof Florida. His research interests include individual dif-

ferences, employee well-being, work-family processes,emotions, attitudes, leadership, and motivation.

Kelly Schwind Wilson ([email protected]) is aPh.D. candidate in the Management Department of theEli Broad College of Business at Michigan State Univer-sity. Before pursuing her Ph.D., Kelly graduated withhonors from the University of Michigan with a B.A. inpsychology and communication studies. Kellys researchfocuses on three areas: work and family processes, affect,and leadership.

David T. Wagner([email protected]) is a doctoralcandidate in the Eli Broad Graduate School of Manage-

ment at Michigan State University. He holds a master ofaccountancy degree from Brigham Young University. Hisresearch examines fluctuations in affect and well-beingas they occur in the workplace, and the impact thatorganizational citizenship behaviors have on employeesand their relationships with coworkers.



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2009 the spillover of daily job satisfaction onto

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