Work–Family Conflict and Flexible Work Arrangements: Deconstructing Flexibility

Workplace flexibility has been a topic of considerable interest to researchers, practitioners, and public policy advocates as a tool to help individuals manage work and family roles. In this study, meta‐analysis is used to clarify what is known about the relationship between flexible work arrangements and work–family conflict by deconstructing the flexibility construct. We found that the direction of work–family conflict (work interference with family vs. family interference with work) and the specific form of flexibility (flextime vs. flexplace; use vs. availability) make a difference in the effects found. Overall, the significant effects were small in magnitude.     

When flexibility helps: Another look at the availability of flexible work arrangements and work–family conflict

Despite the positive press given to flexible work arrangements (FWA), empirical research investigating the link between the availability of these policies and work–family conflict is largely equivocal. The purpose of the present study was to begin to reconcile these mixed results through more precise measurement and the examination of moderators. Using a sample of employed women, we found that FWA relate more highly to work interference with family (WIF) than to family interference with work (FIW) and that temporal flexibility (flextime) has a stronger relationship with WIF than does spatial flexibility (flexplace). Additionally, we found family responsibility significantly moderated these relationships, such that the relationship was stronger for those with greater family responsibility. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed.     

When flexibility helps: Another look at the availability of flexible work arrangements and work-family conflict

Despite the positive press given to flexible work arrangements (FWA), empirical research investigating the link between the availability of these policies and work-family conflict is largely equivocal. The purpose of the present study was to begin to reconcile these mixed results through more precise measurement and the examination of moderators. Using a sample of employed women, we found that FWA relate more highly to work interference with family (WIF) than to family interference with work (FIW) and that temporal flexibility (flextime) has a stronger relationship with WIF than does spatial flexibility (flexplace). Additionally, we found family responsibility significantly moderated these relationships, such that the relationship was stronger for those with greater family responsibility. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed.     

Happiness is Flextime

We study how work a schedule flexibility (flextime) affects happiness. We use a US General Social Survey (GSS) pooled dataset containing the Quality of Worklife and Work Orientations modules for 1998, 2002, 2006, 2010, and 2014. We retain only respondents who are either full-time or part-time employees on payrolls. For flextime to be associated with greater happiness, it has to be more than just sometimes flexible or slight input into one’s work schedule, that is, little flextime does not increase happiness. But substantial flextime has a large effect on happiness–the size effect is about as large as that of household income, or about as large as a one-step increase in self-reported health, such as up from good to excellent health. Our findings provide support for both public and organizational policies that would promote greater work schedule flexibility or control for employees.     

Flexible Work Arrangements Availability and their Relationship with Work‐to‐Family Conflict,Job Satisfaction,and Turnover Intentions: A Comparison of Three Country Clusters

The present study explored the availability of flexible work arrangements (FWA) and their relationship with manager outcomes of job satisfaction, turnover intentions, and work‐to‐family conflict (WFC) across country clusters. We used individualism and collectivism to explain differences in FWA availability across Latin American, Anglo, and Asian clusters. Managers from the Anglo cluster were more likely to report working in organisations that offer FWA compared to managers from other clusters. For Anglo managers, flextime was the only FWA that had significant favorable relationships with the outcome variables. For Latin Americans, part‐time work negatively related with turnover intentions and strain‐based WFC. For Asians, flextime was unrelated to time‐based WFC, and telecommuting was positively associated with strain‐based WFC. The clusters did not moderate the compressed work week and outcome relationships. Implications for practitioners adopting FWA practices across cultures are discussed.     

Flexible work schedules and family time allocation: Assessment of a system change on individual behavior using self-report logs

This study assessed the effects of a flexible work schedule ("flextime") on time allocated to children and spouse by federal workers. Direct behavioral observations of family, home, and work functions were precluded because of the cost involved in observing many people for long periods of time. In order to obtain detailed individual data, participants completed hour-by-hour activity logs a mean of twice per week for 35 weeks. Participants received prior training on log completion, initial feedback on the detail of their log entries, and were prompted to complete the forms. Four different procedures assessing reliability indicated a corroboration rate of 80% with other sources. Log data were reliably reduced to nine categories such as "PM time with children" and 37 subcategories such as "time at dinner." The log data were presented in time-series form and the use of a quasi-experimental design showed that participants who altered their work schedule were able to spend more PM time with their families. The log data demonstrated that the capacity exists to assess closely the effects of large-scale changes at a micro-behavioral level, but other methods are needed to make complex self-reporting systems less expensive and more capable of immediate monitoring of the intervention's effects.     

职场排斥对员工家庭的溢出效应：归属需求和工作家庭区隔偏好的作用

以往研究证实了职场排斥会对员工组织内诸多方面产生危害, 然而关于职场排斥向组织外部特别是家庭领域的溢出效应还知之甚少。本研究基于资源保存理论构建了一个有调节的中介效应模型, 探讨职场排斥对员工家庭贬损和家庭满意度的溢出效应和具体机制, 研究结果表明：(1)职场排斥对员工家庭贬损有显著正向作用, 对家庭满意度有显著负向作用; (2)工作压力中介了职场排斥与家庭贬损和家庭满意度的关系; (3)员工归属需求调节了职场排斥对工作压力的影响, 同时调节了工作压力在职场排斥与家庭贬损、家庭满意度之间的中介效应; (4)员工工作家庭区隔偏好调节了工作压力对家庭贬损和家庭满意度的作用, 并且调节了职场排斥通过工作压力对家庭贬损和家庭满意度的中介效应。     

Exploring the Role of Self-Confidence,Need-for-Cognition,and the Degree of IT Support on Individual Creativity: Multilevel Analysis Approach

In today’s creative economy, individuals generally have not been regarded as reservoirs of creativity who yield sustainable growth in hypercompetitive markets. Individuals rely on IT support to reduce clerical loads and enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of their work as well. When they work in teams, they also require self-confidence and the need for cognition to promote their individual creativity. Data were derived from the members of a large system integration company in South Korea (N = 256, 50 teams). As the study considered variables at both the team and individual levels, we adopted a multilevel analysis approach. We found that individual self-confidence, which indicates the degree of perceived possibility of success at a task, and the need for cognition, the intrinsic motivation to engage in and enjoy thinking, affected individual creativity significantly. Further, the degree of IT support, the team-level variable, had a significant effect on individual creativity. The degree of IT support did not have a significant effect on the relationship between self-confidence and individual creativity, but did have a moderating effect that weakened the relationship between the need for cognition and individual creativity. These findings have implications for theories of members’ creativity in organizations.     

Workplace factors associated with family dinner behaviors

This study investigated relationships between workplace factors and family dinners. We examined two aspects of the family dinner, the frequency that the entire family typically has dinner together each week and the frequency that children eat fast food for dinner. Participants were 220 parents who worked at least 20 h a week and had at least one child living at home. Results indicated that work interference with family (WIF) mediated the relationship between family-supportive supervision and family dinner frequency. Greater flexplace (i.e., telecommuting) availability was associated with less frequent use of fast food for children’s dinner.     

Quand le genre s’en mêle : quelle conciliation entre vie professionnelle et vie privée ?

Declarations of conciliation between private life and professional life based on three factors (sex, gender and positions) are studied in this paper. Our goals were (i) to show that conciliation between the different life spheres need to be considered both in terms of conflict and of life enrichment; (ii) and to demonstrate that the gender variable has combined effects with sex variables, as well as with positions variables, over the perception of work in relation to family interferences in terms of nature (conflict/enrichment), intensity and direction (family over work versus work over family). The study, conducted with 240 employees of low or high professional positions, based on SWING and BSRI scales, shows the moderating effect of gender on the perceptions of conciliation, whether enriching or conflicting. Our results also allow us to conclude that congruent adjustment (masculine domination) of the levels of our three factors constitute a protecting factor for employees, while an incongruent adjustment can constitute a risk factor, this being especially verified for women.     

Work-family supportiveness organizational perceptions: Important for the well-being of male blue-collar hourly workers?

The current study questions whether organizational perceptions of family supportiveness predict work-family conflict (WFC) and job satisfaction for an atypical sample of male hourly workers in a manufacturing organization, and whether those relationships depend on work (number of work hours) and family (number of family roles) demands. A unidimensional factor structure for the family supportiveness scale was not found; however a subscale for the extent that the organization supported work-family balance was strongly related to WFC and job satisfaction. An interaction was found such that those working long hours in the family-supportive work environment had lower WFC than those working long hours in an unsupportive environment, while the number of family roles (e.g., spouse, parent, eldercare) had no moderating effects. Supporting employees’ non-work life is determined to be important for these employees.     

Family-Friendly Policies,Supervisor Support,Work–Family Conflict,Family–Work Conflict,and Satisfaction: A Test of a Conceptual Model

The present study tests a model of antecedents (i.e., the use of family-friendly policies, supervisor support, number of hours worked, having childcare responsibility) and consequences (i.e., job and family satisfaction) of work–family conflict and family–work conflict. As hypothesized, we found that the use of family-friendly policies, hours worked per week, and supervisor support were predictive of work–family conflict. In addition, as predicted, childcare responsibility and supervisor support were found to be related to family–work conflict. Work–family conflict was found to be related to both job and family satisfaction. Our research extends previous research in a number of ways. We believe that a particular strength of our study is it incorporated data gathered at different points in time and from more than one source.     

Coping with work and family: How do dual‐earners interact?

Juggling the demands of both work and family has become increasingly difficult, especially for dual‐earner households; nevertheless, families have developed strategies to deal with work‐family challenges. This paper uses couple level analyses (APIM models) with 100 dual‐earner couples to provide insight about partners' mutual influence on the use of work‐family coping strategies. The results show that women's use of coping strategies is more associated with work‐family conflict and work‐family enrichment than men's coping. In addition, using partner coping, having a positive attitude towards multiple roles, using planning and management skills and avoiding having to cut back on professional responsibilities is associated with better outcomes (more enrichment and less conflict). Surprisingly, the use of childcare facilities is associated with women's conflict and partner effects were only found concerning the use of management and planning skills. These skills, however, have distinct effects for men and women's outcomes: their use by men reduces their own conflict but increases their wives', while their use by women decreases their own conflict and increases their own and their partner's enrichment. These results point to the fact that gender roles continue to be a hallmark of work‐family issues. Our design and results point out the need for new interventions that take couple interdependences into account.     

工作家庭冲突的初步研究

工作家庭冲突是一种特殊类型的角色交互冲突 ,它对于了解人的胜任特征模型和提高人力管理的效率有重要的意义。本研究通过在银行、科研单位和高新技术企业进行的有关工作家庭冲突的调查结果表明 ,较之家庭—工作冲突 ,工作—家庭冲突能较好预测员工的工作压力 ,它通过工作压力间接地对工作满意感起作用 ,女性员工的工作态度更容易受到工作—家庭冲突的影响。     

Parental role participation and perceptions of responsibility for children's school adjustment

This research examined the effects of parental participation in work and family roles on perceptions of responsibility for their children's school adjustment. We hypothesized that mothers would be perceived as being more responsible than fathers, and that participation in nontraditional work and family roles would influence perceived responsibility. Contrary to the first hypothesis, college student subjects perceived fathers as being more responsible than mothers for good adjustment, but not for poor adjustment. Consistent with hypotheses, role participation influenced perceptions of responsibility, but only for mothers. Divorced mothers were credited less and blamed more for school adjustment than married mothers, especially when they worked outside the home. Implications of the findings for future research on role participation are discussed.     

Nonstandard career paths and profiles of commitment to life roles: A complex relation

The career paths (ascending, interesting, uninteresting, descending) of 124 White Canadian francophones (62 men, 62 women) who had experienced nonstandard and precarious work for the last three years were examined in relation to the participants’ profiles of commitment to three life roles (work, family, and duality, that is, investment in both career and family). The paths were derived from the content analysis of the data collected through semi-structured individual interviews. Quantitative tools were used to assess the importance of life roles and to compare the career paths as well as the commitment profiles with respect to specific and general anxiety. Among other results, a significant relationship was found between unsatisfying career paths and the duality profile, on the one hand, and higher levels of specific and general anxiety, on the other. The results are discussed with respect to the scientific literature. Implications for career counseling are suggested.     

DEFINING DISABILITY FOR WOMEN AND THE PROBLEM OF UNPAID WORK

National policy and much of scholarly research on disability overlook the importance of unpaid family work and instead focus on disability in paid work, largely in male samples. Because of societal expectations about appropriate social roles for men and women, women tend to assume responsibility for unpaid work in the family and also tend to have paid work that is characterized by low pay and limited autonomy. This article discusses the political, theoretical, and methodological issues relating to defining and measuring paid and unpaid work disability for women and men within the context of these structural factors. The results of a study analyzing disability in both paid work and unpaid family work among a sample of 206 women with rheumatoid arthritis are presented. The study demonstrates the feasibility of measuring disability in family work and shows that women experience significant limitations in homemaker functioning as well as in paid work roles.     

ROLE CONFLICT AND FLEXIBLE WORK ARRANGEMENTS: THE EFFECTS ON APPLICANT ATTRACTION

This paper challenges a popular assumption that organizations with flexible work arrangements are more attractive to job seekers than those with a standard work arrangement. Drawing on boundary theory, we suggest that the attractiveness of these arrangements depends in part on job seekers' interrole conflict. Subjects were 142 MBA students at a midsized midwestern university. Those with high role conflict were more attracted to an organization when flextime was offered than when it was not. Those with low role conflict, however, were just slightly less attracted to an organization when flextime was offered. Conversely, subjects with low role conflict were more attracted to an organization when telecommuting was offered than when it was not; subjects with high role conflict were indifferent. These results suggest that organizations should understand the needs of their targeted applicant pool and carefully consider recruitment implications of work arrangements when analyzing costs associated with these policies.     

Assessing potential effects of daily cross-domain usage of information and communication technologies

ABSTRACT

A within-person diary research design with 39 full-time workers was used to examine the effects of daily cross-domain usage of information and communication technologies (ICTs) on job-related performance and stress in both workplace and home domains. Segmentation preference effects on links between cross-domain ICT usage and both job performance and job stress were also analyzed. A positive association was found for the first relationship in mixed home-workplace contexts, and a negative association for the second in home contexts only. A stronger segmentation preference effect on the negative relationship between cross-domain ICT usage and job stress was found for integrators (employees who integrate work and home domains) compared to separators (employees who separate work/non-work activities). Our findings suggest that daily cross-domain ICT usage can enhance job performance and reduce job stress, with a moderating effect of segmentation preference on the link between cross-domain ICT usage and job stress.     

The relationship between family history,gender role attitudes,and susceptibility to gender inequitable perceptions of family and family member functioning

This research examined how family roles, gender of family leadership, beliefs about the consequences of maternal employment, and family history of parental division of responsibility related to young adults' perceptions of family and individual family member functioning. One hundred seven (107), predominantly Anglo American undergraduate students completing courses in educational psychology at a large midwestern university rated two videotaped family interviews. One interview demonstrated a matriarchal style of family interaction and the second demonstrated a patriarchal style. It was found in perceptions of family functioning that a personal family history characterized by elevated paternal involvement in family tasks and child care in combination with traditional gender-related attitudes was associated with views favoring male family leadership. In ratings of individual family member functioning, it was found that individuals whose family history was characterized by elevated paternal involvement and whose gender attitudes were more traditional held more favorable views of the matriarchal mother than the mother in the patriarchal interview in comparison to adults whose fathers were less involved and whose attitudes were less traditional regarding gender roles. It was also found that individuals whose family history was characterized by elevated paternal involvement and whose gender attitudes were more traditional held more favorable views of the father in the patriarchal interview than the matriarchal father in comparison to adults whose fathers were less involved and whose attitudes were less traditional regarding gender roles. These findings suggest that adults may be vulnerable to biased views of families and individuals within family settings related to gender roles, personal history, and attitudes.