The Mediating Effect of Organizational Culture and Work Fatigue on Work Life Balance in the Context of Work from Home among Indonesian Workers
Keywords:
work from home, work life balance, organizational culture, work fatigue, COVID-19 pandemicAbstract
Remote work has existed for quite some time but has gained popularity with the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, as all activities had to be conducted from home. The research gap lies in the scarcity of empirical evidence on how organizational culture and work fatigue mediate the relationship between Work From Home (WFH) and work-life balance (WLB), especially in the Indonesian context. This study examined whether organizational culture and work fatigue mediate the impact of WFH on WLB among Indonesian workers. This study sought to understand how work-life balance is affected by organizational culture and work fatigue among Indonesian remote workers. Using purposive sampling, the study gathered data from 112 respondents and analyzed them with Smart PLS. The findings indicate that the direct relationship between work-from-home and work-life balance as well as work fatigue is not significant. Similarly, the mediation effect of organizational culture and work fatigue on the relationship between work-from-home and work-life balance was not significant. Furthermore, the link between organizational culture and work-life balance is not significant. A significant relationship is only observed between work fatigue and work-life balance and between work-from-home and organizational culture. This research is crucial because while remote work offers flexibility, it also poses challenges such as fatigue and blurred boundaries that may jeopardize employees' well-being. Understanding these dynamics aids organizations in developing supportive cultures and strategies to enhance employee work-life balance in the post-pandemic digital-first era.
References
Anderson, D., & Kelliher, C. (2020). Enforced remote working and the work-life interface during lockdown. Gender in Management: An International Journal.Vol. 35 No. 7/8, pp. 677-683. https://doi.org/10.1108/GM-07-2020-0224
Aruldoss, A., Kowalski, K. B. & Parayitam, S. (2020). The relationship between quality of work life and work life balance mediating role of job stress, job satisfaction and job commitment: evidence from India. Journal of Advances in Management Research,ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print),–.doi:10.1108/JAMR-05-2020-0082
Beckers, D. G. J., Van der Linden, D., Smulders, P. G. W., Kompier, M. A. J., Taris, T. W., & Geurts, S. A. E. (2015). A diary study to open up the black box of overtime work among university faculty members. Human Resource Management, 54(2), 315-334.
Bellmann, L. & Hubler, O. (2020). Working from home, job satisfaction and workâlife balance â robust or heterogeneous links. International Journal of Manpower, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print), –. doi:10.1108/IJM-10-2019-0458
Bhende, P., Mekoth, N., Ingalhalli, V., & Reddy, Y. V. (2020). Quality of Work Life and Work–Life Balance. Journal of Human Values, 097168582093938. doi:10.1177/0971685820939380
Dhas, D. B. & Karthikeyan, P. (2015) Work-Life Balance Challenges and Solutions: Overview, International Journal of Research in Humanities and Social Studies, 2(12), 10-19
Fang, D., Jiang, Z., Zhang, M., & Wang, H. (2015). An experimental method to study the effect of fatigue on construction workers’ safety performance. Safety Science, 73, 80–91. doi:10.1016/j.ssci.2014.11.019
Frone, M. R., & Tidwell, M.-C. O. (2015). The meaning and measurement of work fatigue: Development and evaluation of the Three-Dimensional Work Fatigue Inventory (3D-WFI). Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 20(3), 273–288. doi:10.1037/a0038700
González-RodrÃguez, M. R., MartÃn-Samper, R. C., Köseoglu, M. A., & Okumus, F. (2019). Hotels’ corporate social responsibility practices, organizational culture, firm reputation, and performance. Journal of sustainable tourism, 27(3), 398-419.
Glock, C. H., Grosse, E. H., Kim, T., Neumann, W. P., & Sobhani, A. (2018). An integrated cost and worker fatigue evaluation model of a packaging process. International Journal of Production Economics. doi:10.1016/j.ijpe.2018.09.022
Hair, J., Sarstedt, M., Hopkins, L. & Kuppelwieser, V. (2014). Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). European Business Review, 26(2), 106–121. doi:10.1108/EBR-10-2013-0128
Hair, J., Hollingsworth, C. L., Randolph, A. B., & Chong, A. Y. L. (2017). An updated and expanded assessment of PLS-SEM in information systems research. Industrial management & data systems, 117(3), 442-458.
Hofstede, G. (1980). Culture's consequences: International differences in work-related values. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
Hongdiyanto, C., Widyarini, L. A., & Yusup, A. K. (2022). The Effect of Organizational Inertia and Customer Orientation with Incremental Innovation as the Mediating Variable towards Organizational Performance. Jurnal Entrepreneur Dan Entrepreneurship, 11(1), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.37715/jee.v11i1.1954
Jaharuddin, N. S., & Zainol, L. N. (2019). The impact of work-life balance on job engagement and turnover intention. The South East Asian Journal of Management.
Johnston, D. W., Allan, J. L., Powell, D. J. H., Jones, M. C., Farquharson, B., Bell, C., & Johnston, M. (2018). Why does work cause fatigue? A real-time investigation of fatigue, and determinants of fatigue in nurses working 12-hour shifts. Annals of Behavioral Medicine. doi:10.1093/abm/kay065
Keesler, J. M. (2020). Promoting satisfaction and reducing fatigue: Understanding the impact of traumaâ€informed organizational culture on psychological wellness among Direct Service Providers. Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities, 33(5), 939-949.
Kim, P. S. & Kim, T. H. (2010) The mediation effect of work-family conflicts on the effect of family friendly corporate culture on the performance of human resources. J. Fam. Relat, 15, 3–29.
Klindžić, M., & Marić, M. (2019). Flexible work arrangements and organizational performance–The difference between employee and employer-driven practices. Društvena istraživanja, 28(1), 89-108.
Lee, E., & Jang, I. (2020). Nurses’ fatigue, job stress, organizational culture, and turnover intention: A culture–work–health model. Western journal of nursing research, 42(2), 108-116.
Lee, J. M., & Choi, H. G. (2019). Influence of organizational culture supporting work-life balance on well-being and depression mediated by work-life balance: An application of multi-group analysis across gender and age. Korean Journal of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 32(1), 1–27. https://doi.org/10.24230/kjiop.v32i1.1-27
Le, H., Newman, A., Menzies, J., Zheng, C., & Fermelis, J. (2020). Work–life balance in Asia: A systematic review. Human Resource Management Review, 100766. doi:10.1016/j.hrmr.2020.100766
Marcos, A., GarcÃa-Ael, C., & Topa, G. (2020). The influence of work resources, demands, and organizational culture on job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and citizenship behaviors of Spanish Police Officers. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(20), 7607.
Mungkasa, O. (2020). Bekerja dari rumah (working from home/WFH): menuju tatanan Baru era pandemi Covid 19. Jurnal Perencanaan Pembangunan: The Indonesian Journal of Development Planning, 4(2), 126-150.
Nagel, L (2020). The influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on the digital transformation of work. International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print), –. Palumbo, R. (2020), Let me go to the office! An investigation into the side effects of working from home on work-life balance, International Journal of Public Sector Management, 33(6/7), 771-790. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJPSM-06-2020-0150doi:10.1108/IJSSP-07-2020-0323
Pattnaik, L. & Jena, L. K. (2020). Mindfulness, remote engagement and employee morale: conceptual analysis to address the new normal. International Journal of Organizational Analysis, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print), –. doi:10.1108/IJOA-06-2020-2267
Powell, R. I. & Copping, A. G. (2016). Measuring fatigue-related impairment in the workplace. Journal of Engineering, Design and Technology, 14(3), 507–525.doi:10.1108/JEDT-09-2014-0063
Sekaran, U., & Bougie, R. (2016). Research methods for business: A skill building approach. john wiley & sons.
Sirgy, M. J., & Lee, D.-J. (2015). Work-Life Balance: A Quality-of-Life Model. Applied Research in Quality of Life, 11(4), 1059–1082. doi:10.1007/s11482-015-9419-6
Sirgy, M. J., & Lee, D.-J. (2017). Work-Life Balance: an Integrative Review. Applied Research in Quality of Life, 13(1), 229–254. doi:10.1007/s11482-017-9509-8
Sharma, R. R. & Cooper, S. C. (2016). Executive Burnout (Eastern and Western Concepts, Models, and Approaches for Mitigation) || Stress And Burnout: an Introduction.,10.1108/9781786352859(),1–16.doi:10.1108/978-1-78635-286-620161001
Stoilova, R., Ilieva-Trichkova, P. & Bieri, F. (2020). Worklife balance in Europe: institutional contexts and individual factors. International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, 40(3/4), 366–381.doi:10.1108/ijssp-08-2019-0152
Tavares, F., Santos, E., Diogo, A. & Ratten, V. (2020). Teleworking in Portuguese communities during the COVID-19 pandemic. Journal of Enterprising Communities: People and Places in the Global Economy, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print), –. doi:10.1108/JEC-06-2020-0113
Thompson, C. A., Beauvais, L. L., Lyness, K. S. (1999) When work-family benefits are not enough: The influence of work-family culture on benefit utilization, organizational attachment, and work-family conflict. J. Vocat. Behav, 54, 392–415.
Wood, J., Oh, J., Park, J., & Kim, W. (2020). The Relationship Between Work Engagement and Work–Life Balance in Organizations: A Review of the Empirical Research. Human Resource Development Review, 153448432091756. doi:10.1177/1534484320917560
Yu, H. S., Lee, E. J., & Na, T. K. (2022). The mediating effects of work–life balance (WLB) and ease of using WLB programs in the relationship between WLB organizational culture and turnover intention. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(6), 3482.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Charly Hongdiyanto, Frederick Abainza Halcon, Adi Kurniawan Yusup, Gracia Ongkowijoyo

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
a. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License - Share Alike that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
b. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial publication in this journal.
c. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.
USER RIGHTS
All articles published Open Access will be immediately and permanently free for everyone to read and download. We are continuously working with our author communities to select the best choice of license options, currently being defined for this journal as follows: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC BY-SA)