Antecedents of employee engagement: Examining the moderating role of work life conflict for flight attendants

Background Flight attendants have direct contact with customers and are believed to be the face of the company. Therefore, factors causing employee engagement of flight attendants are important to understand. Objectives The purposes of this study are two-fold: (a) to investigate the impact of authentic leadership and group cohesiveness on employee engagement; (b) to examine the moderating role of work-life conflict on the hypothesized relationships. Methods Data was collected from 253 flight attendants from different Pakistani airlines with two separate time frames. This research study applies the hierarchical linear model to analyze the survey data. Results Results confirmed the significant and positive relationship between authentic leadership and group cohesiveness with employee engagement. In addition, work-life conflict was found to be a significant moderator for the relationships between the authentic leadership and flight attendants’ engagement. However, if there is a high level of work-life conflict, flight attendants who perceived a strong group cohesiveness turned out to indicate a high engagement level. Conclusion This study is the first to examine the work-life conflict faced by female flight attendants in association with authentic leadership, group cohesiveness, and employee engagement and the boundary conditions created by work-family conflict.