Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment

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Work-life balance for sustainable human

development: Cultural intelligence as enabler

Indu Rao

To cite this article: Indu Rao (2017): Work-life balance for sustainable human development:
Cultural intelligence as enabler, Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment, DOI:
10.1080/10911359.2017.1327391

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10911359.2017.1327391

Published online: 25 May 2017.

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JOURNAL OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR IN THE SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT
https://doi.org/10.1080/10911359.2017.1327391

Work-life balance for sustainable human development: Cultural

intelligence as enabler
Indu Rao
Institute of Management, Nirma University, Chandlodia Gota, Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
It is proposed that sustainable human development can occur only when Cultural intelligence;
role-related engagement;
there is a reasonable work-life balance for humans. Developmental work
sustainable human
for humans is mostly achieved through high performing organizations, development; work-life
and the performance of organizations, in turn, depend on the commit- balance
ment and engagement of their employees. While societies organize
themselves though groups which come together to form an organization,
the individual continues to play a key role in success of these organiza-
tions. This article explores the impact of an individual’s work-life balance
on his/her role—related engagement, thereby contributing to the sus-
tainable human development. Since culture drives behavior for all three,
that is, the individual, the organizations, and the society, it is suggested
that if we create a culture that supports work-life balance, it is likely to
promote sustainable human development though higher role-related
engagement of individuals. Further, it is suggested that cultural intelli-
gence plays an important role in achieving both work-life balance and
sustainable human development.

Introduction
Individuals form groups to perform work for development of human kind in general,
either through profit or nonprofit organizations. There is growing body of research which
shows that work-life balance of individuals benefits both, the employees and the organiza-
tions. (e.g., Greenhaus & Powell, 2006; Hammer, Neal, Newson, Brockwood, & Colton,
2005). If individuals are not successful in maintaining a work-life balance, they are likely
to experience difficulties in coping up with required performance at workplace as well as
in their family commitments (Lachman and Boone-James, 1997). On a positive note,
balanced work-life experiences are likely to improve the overall psychological well-being
as well as increased satisfaction at work and in family domains (Grzywacz, 2000).
Empirical investigations reveal that poor work-life balance leads to poor job performance
and higher absenteeism at workplace (Frone, Russel, & Cooper, 1997), but a good work-
life balance is likely to increase job satisfaction and organizational commitment (Cegarra-
Leiva, Sánchez-Vidal, & Cegarra-Navarro, 2012; Wayne, Musisca, & Fleeson, 2004). In
other words, employees’ work-life balance experiences deepen their role-related engage-
ment, both at workplace, and in family domains, and subsequently the contribution of
individuals to the overall sustainable human development. Further, for most employees,

CONTACT Indu Rao indu@nirmauni.ac.in Institute of Management, Nirma University, Ahmedabad, Gujarat
382481, India.
© 2017 Taylor & Francis
2 I. RAO

invariably, the workplace culture and an individual’s family culture are likely to be
different. Therefore, it is suggested that the presence of cultural intelligence can help
people to cope better with work-life cross-cultural issues, leading to increased work
engagement, and eventually a sustainable human development. The next section reviews
literature of the concepts discussed above. Further, a model is developed to illustrate the
main theme of this article, followed by discussion and conclusion.

Literature review
In this section, concepts of work-life balance, cultural intelligence, and work engagement
are reviewed as in literature, to help build the model for sustainable human development.

Work-life balance
Work-life balance in the workplace has become a more important issue as it tends to
exhibit positive results such as low turnover, work engagement, organizational citizenship
behavior, in-role performance, increased firm productivity, job satisfaction, and organiza-
tional commitment (Konrad & Mangel, 2000; Lambert, 2000; Shepard, Clifton, & Kruse,
1996; Wang & Walumbwa, 2007). Individuals experience more conflict between work and
personal life as they continue to pursue the quality of life that they need (Casper et al.,
2011). Thus, successfully balancing work and family life is one of the major challenges
facing current individual workers (Halpern, 2005). Work-life adjust is an idea including
legitimate organizing between “work” (vocation and aspiration) and “way of life” (well-
being, delight, relaxation, family, and profound advancement/reflection).
Work-life balance does not happen by itself, but requires conscious efforts at various
levels. It includes the endeavors of various accomplices: the worker, the association for
which the representative works, the family with whom the worker lives, and the general
public in which all are implanted. It includes common comprehension and regard
between these players.
Women may now be taking a more career minded view, while men are becoming more
family oriented. Work-life balance must be supported and encouraged at all levels of the
organization including senior management, line managers, and all staff. Louise Heslop and
colleagues (2005) suggests that the work and family outcomes such as role interference,
stress strain, and life satisfaction are related to several strategies and orientation. Aziz and
Cunningham (2008) found that work stress and work life balance are correlated.

Cultural intelligence
Hofstede (2010) defines culture as “the collective programming of the mind which
distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from another” (p. 6). The
culture is so learned and is the result of a social context.
The idea of cultural intelligence was presented by Earley (2002, p. 274) as “a
person’s ability to adapt efficiently to a new cultural context.” Schmidt and Hunter
(2000) suggest that “the ability to understand and to reason properly with abstractions
(concepts) and to solve problems” applies to different social environments (Thomas,
2006). Cultural intelligence (CQ) is characterized as a multidimensional construct that
 JOURNAL OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR IN THE SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT 3

includes the ability of an individual to function properly in (Early & Ang, 2003)
socially different environments. The discrete components that make up the cultural
intelligence framework include metacognitive CQ, cognitive CQ, motivational CQ, and
behavioral CQ. Cognitive CQ refers to the awareness that an individual has with
regards cultural interactions. Cognitive CQ is to see learning to reflect the convictions
of meeting the quality and standards. The CQ motivation is the ability to direct the
vitality to find out the differences. Finally, behavioral CQ reflects the ability to choose
the appropriate physical and verbal activities while connecting with people from
different companies.
Researchers are increasingly studying the relationship between cultural intelligence
and job performance. Lee and Sukoco (2010), and Che Rose et al. (2010), are few of
them. It has been shown that there is a positive relationship between organizational
commitment and cultural intelligence. Of many other individual level variables, cul-
tural intelligence is the most critical and it relates positively and has direct effect on
organizational commitment, while other factors like the opportunity factor, role
ambiguity, the promotion of employment, organizational participation, role pressure,
and the independence of the work have an indirect effect.

Work engagement
Work engagement is most often defined as “. . .a positive, fulfilling, work-related state of
mind that is characterized by vigor, dedication, and absorption” (Schaufeli & Bakker,
2010; Schaufeli, Salanova, González-Romá, & Bakker, 2002, p. 74). In essence, work
engagement captures how workers experience their work: as stimulating and energetic
and something to which they really want to devote time and effort (the vigor component);
as a significant and meaningful pursuit (dedication); and as engrossing and something on
which they are fully concentrated (absorption).
Kahn (1990, p. 694) defines employee engagement as “the harnessing of organization
members’ selves to their work roles; in engagement, people employ and express themselves
physically, cognitively, and emotionally during role performances.” Thus, according to
Kahn (1990), engagement means to be psychologically as well as physically present when
occupying and performing an organizational role.
Robinson, Perryman, and Hayday (2004) state that:

. . . engagement contains many of the elements of both commitment and OCB but is by no
means a perfect match with either. In addition, neither commitment nor OCB reflect
sufficiently two aspects of engagement—its two way nature, and the extent to which engaged
employees are expected to have an element of business awareness.

A model for sustainable human development

The conceptual model
Figure 1 is the conceptual model proposed in this article. In the following section, we
build the model.
4 I. RAO

Work-Life Balance

Cultural Intelligence

Role-Related Work Engagement

Sustainable Human Development

Figure 1. A model of sustainable human development.

Work-life balance and role-related engagement

Peeters, Wattez, Demerouti, and de Regt (2009) studied the impact of work-family culture
on the levels of employees’ work engagement and performance. The results of the study
suggest that in order reduce the conflict between employees’ home and work life, orga-
nizations needed to not only provide work-family arrangements, but also foster a culture
that encouraged employees to use such arrangements. Further, it demonstrates that
organizations that discouraged the use of work family arrangements decreased employees’
work engagement, as well as depleted energy and other resources. An explanation pro-
vided by Peeters et al. (2009) proposed that employees perceived more work-family
conflict, which decreased their work engagement.
Accordingly, employers should ensure their workers perceive a balance between work-
family obligations to enhance work engagement. Bakker and Schaufeli (2008) showed that
of all job resources (job control, supervisor support, and appreciation) appreciation was
the strongest predictor of work engagement.
This leads to the first proposition as below:

Proposition 1: Work-life balance is related to role-related work engagement.

Cultural intelligence, work-life balance, and work engagement

Work and Life involve different cultures and, for an individual to transition smoothly
across cultures, require cultural intelligence. Cultural intelligence is the moderator which
can help navigate cultural differences. A culturally intelligent person has the ability to see
and adapt to the work culture of other groups in society. Cultural intelligence plays a role
in overcoming the problems that a person faces in adjusting to the new culture. Employees
and managers need cultural intelligence to manage cultural differences. As a result, it is
expected that cultural intelligence facilitates and promotes employee as well as customer-
 JOURNAL OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR IN THE SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT 5

oriented service behaviors. In addition to this, it is expected that cultural intelligence

improves the professional skills component.
Cultural intelligence can be considered as the most comprehensive approach to
intelligence and is also seen as conceptually different from other types of intelligence,
such as general intelligence, social intelligence, and emotional intelligence. The
general intelligence, social and emotional, is important for an individual victory.
Success in work and personal relationships, while cultural intelligence enables people
to cope with diversity and to successfully adapt to the cultural settings. In addition to
this, it helps people to understand cultural diversity through knowledge and aware-
ness and allows them to act efficiently and effectively in different cultures. As a
result, cultural intelligence reflects the ability of an individual to gather and interpret
the fundamentals of intercultural interactions, facilitates individuals to develop a
conscious approach to intercultural interactions, and provides adaptive capacity
building in a multicultural situation.
This leads to the second proposition as below:

Proposition 2: Cultural intelligence moderates the relationship between work-life balance

and role-related engagement.

Work-life balance and sustainable human development

As discussed in previous sections, work-life balance has an impact on various work
situations, on work-commitment, and work-behaviors. However, work-life balance
has serious implications for individuals, family, and societies in other ways. An
imbalance in work-life may lead to health disorders, both physical and psychological
for the individual human being. As humans are social beings, it also affects the well-
being of the family and the societies in general. Different scholars have proposed
theories to explain this effect.
The border and boundary theory (Clark, 2000) suggests that the flexibility and perme-
ability of boundaries between work and life affect the transitions between the two roles. If
the two domains are more distinct and separate, conflict is less likely; however, the
transition is more difficult. Depending upon the nature of work-family conditions, an
individual can seek to find the work-life balance.
Congruence theory (Edwards & Rothbard, 2000) suggests that variables that are not
directly related to work or family may affect the work-life balance. These variables are
personality traits, behavioral styles, and sociocultural forces. The level of intelligence or
education may affect the work-life balance. Using congruence theory of work-life balance,
we suggest that cultural intelligence may affect the relationship between work-life balance,
role-related engagement, and sustainable human development.
Morris and Madsen (2007) recognized that integration theory incorporates additional con-
textual elements such as community, into the work-life balance affects. Therefore, we can suggest
that work-life balance affects communities and societies and the overall human development.
This leads to the third proposition as below:

Proposition 3: Work-life balance is related to role-related engagement and sustainable

human development, cultural intelligence acts as an enabler.
6 I. RAO

Discussion
Five models of work-life balance are discussed in this section. First, segmentation model of work-
life suggests that work and family are two independent domains of life with no influence on each
other. However, there is little or no empirical support for this. Second, the spillover model
(Belsky, Perry Jenkins, & Crouter, 1985; Crouter, 1984) gives an idea that emotions, attitudes,
and behaviors that are established at work are carried into the family life of workers and
employees in general. Spillover can of course be positive or negative. In either case, it has
implications for the family and societies, and therefore, human development in general. Third,
the compensation model (Zedeck & Mosier, 1990) further advances our understanding to the
effect that insufficiency of positive experiences at workplace can be compensated in family
domains and vice-versa. Fourth, the Instrumental model suggests that experiences in one sphere,
work or family can be instrumental in facilitating the other in a positive way. Fifth, the conflict
model proposes that when high levels of demands exist in both work and family, individuals
involved in multiple roles have less time and resources to focus on each, and conflict may occur.
Given that more and more individuals perform multiple roles in today’s world it is likely
that it becomes difficult to maintain work-life balance. As more women join workforce,
spillover effects are likely to occur. It is therefore, useful to take advantages of the instru-
mental model and to avoid the conflict model. Our article thus contributes to this emerging
area of research and suggests that work-life balance is necessary for sustainable human
development. It is difficult to achieve work-life balance. But work-life balance affects role-
related engagement of individuals and in turn the human sustainable development.

Conclusion
The world of work is changing rapidly, and the Sustainable Development Goals are very much
linked to work. (The Human Development Report 2016 ‘Human Development for Everyone’ of
UNDP). Therefore, in this article, a model is proposed which suggests that work-life balance can
lead to work-engagement leading to sustainable human development. We have found that it is
increasingly difficult to maintain work-life balance due to complex demands at workplace and
family. At the same time, sustainable human development is possible if human beings are able to
achieve work-life balance. We contribute to this real-life problem and the emerging research
area by suggesting that cultural intelligence can be used as an enabler to improve the relationship
between work life balance and sustainable human development. Therefore, further research can
be conducted in different work areas as to how cultural intelligence can be improved for better
work-life balance and for sustained human development.

ORCID
Indu Rao http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2611-0414

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