Work-Family Conflict and

Enrichment

Personal Growth Lab Assignment

(Submitted to: Mr Kameshwar Rao)

Submitted by: Mahesh Chitra

Roll no: 215110071

 Acknowledgement
My sincere thank to Mr. Kameshwar Rao (DoMS NITT) and my peers
for their kind support and guidance in writing this assignment. From this
assignment I come to learn about the subject and this understanding will
certainly help me in my career growth in serene manner.
Introduction
Work-life balance is an issue of paramount importance to individuals,
organizations, families, government and society. Techno-economic
changes have increased the pressures on organizations and employees
alike. Moreover, the increasing number of women in the workforce,
nuclear families and dual earner couples has made work-life balance a
crucial concern for employees as well as organizations across industries
and occupations. The need for a balance between work and personal life
has become an integral element of employee expectations from
employers.

Career success today is defined not only in terms of promotions and

lucrative assignments but also the ability to balance between work and
non-work life. In this regard helping employees to have a healthy work-
life balance has become a challenge for employers and human resource
professionals.

Research findings suggest that level of work-life balance significantly

influences various individual, family and organization relevant outcomes
such as employee health, employee commitment, job satisfaction and
family satisfaction. However, these findings are derived from studies
mostly conducted in western countries. Moreover, most of the research
studies have focused on the negative aspect of work-life balance
typically referred as “work-family conflict” (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985;
Frone, 2003). It highlights the inherent incompatibility between the role
requirements of work and non-work life (e.g. family). The underlying
arguments are: work and family constitute two different domains and
they have different set of demands and investments in terms of time,
energy and behavior. Time and energy being limited when invested in
one domain is likely to reduce the time and energy available for other
domains. Hence, participation in multiple roles leads to negative
consequences such as stress and poor health. Stress, negative emotion
and behavior arising from one domain (e.g. work) often transfers to the
other domains (e.g. family) affecting the performance in the target
domain resulting in to work-life imbalance or work-family conflict.
Based on these assumptions, research in this area has nearly exclusively
focused on negative aspect of work-life balance for quite some time.

Work-family conflict
Work Family Conflict is “a form of inter-role conflict in which the role
pressures from the work and family domains are mutually incompatible
in some respect. That is participation in the work (family) role is made
more difficult by virtue of participation in the family (work) role”
(Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985, p.77). Conflict between work and family is
important for organizations and individuals because it is linked to
negative consequences. For example, conflict between work and family
is associated with increased absenteeism, increased turnover, decreased
performance, and poorer physical and mental health.

Conceptually conflict between work and family is bi-directional. Most

researchers make the distinction between what is termed work-family
conflict, and what is termed family-work conflict. Work-to-family
conflict occurs when experiences at work interfere with family life like
extensive, irregular, or inflexible work hours, work overload and other
forms of job stress, interpersonal conflict at work, extensive travel,
career transitions, unsupportive supervisor or organization. For example,
an unexpected meeting late in the day may prevent a parent from picking
up his or her child from school. Family-to-work conflict occurs when
experiences in the family interfere with work life like presence of young
children, primary responsibility for children, elder care responsibilities,
interpersonal conflict within the family unit, unsupportive family
members. For example, a parent may take time off from work in order to
take care of a sick child. Although these two forms of conflict-work
interference with family (WIF) and family interference with work (FIW)
are strongly correlated with each other, more attention has been directed
at WIF more than FIW. This may because work demands are easier to
quantify; that is, the boundaries and responsibilities of the family role is
more elastic than the boundaries and responsibilities of the work role.
Also, research has found that work roles are more likely to interfere with
family roles than family roles are likely to interfere with work roles.

Work can conflict with one’s home and family life. However,
workaholism can lead to adverse affects on one’s relationship with his or
her partner. Workaholism is “an individual difference characteristic
referring to self-imposed demands, compulsive overworking, an inability
to regulate work habits, and an overindulgence in work to the exclusion
of most other life activities (Robinson, 1997).” Workaholism can affect
a person’s private life since it includes exclusion of other activities
including spending time with spouses which is significant to any
healthy, happy relationship. When there is a strain on a relationship due
to a partner’s workaholism, both partners can become stressed and less
supportive of one another resulting in negative behavior. Individuals,
who work a lot to the point of interference with the rest of his or her life,
tend to perceive their family as having less of a strong communication
background. These individuals also perceive their families as having
family roles that are not as clearly defined as they would like them to be.
Workaholism isn’t the only dynamic that can be a factor in work-family
conflicts. Family alone demands enough from an individual, but in this
new millennium where more than one individual or spouse is working to
support a family, the demands of upholding family life and maintaining
a career or job are immense.

Theories related to work-family conflict

Several theories have been invoked in the study of work-family conflict.

Most of the studies focused on six competing theories to explain the
interplay between work role and family role: spillover, compensation,
segmentation, congruence, integrative, and resource drain.

Spillover

This theory focuses on the impact that satisfaction and affect from one
domain has on the other domain. Positive spillover refers to situations in
which the satisfaction, energy, and sense of accomplishment derived
from one domain transfers to another. On the contrary, negative
spillover is the derived problems being carried over from one domain to
another. For example, increased satisfaction (dissatisfaction) in the work
domain leads to increased satisfaction (dissatisfaction) with life.

Compensation

It is a bidirectional theory stating that the relationship between work and

non-work domain is one in which one domain may compensate for what
is missing in the other. Thus, domains are likely to be interrelated in a
counterbalancing manner. For example individuals unsatisfied with
family life may try to enhance performance at work.

Segmentation

Segmentation is a theory that each domain operates independently, such

that satisfaction can be derived from work, family, or both. Therefore,
segmentation is the antithesis of spillover theory in which it is assumed
that one can compartmentalize competing role demands.

Congruence

Congruence is a theory that states although a positive or negative

relationship may be found between work and family, the relationship is
spurious because it is caused by a third common factor, like personality.

Integrative

Integrative theory suggests that work and family roles are so intertwined
that they become indistinguishable.

Resource Drain

Resource drain theory states that a negative correlation between family

and work domains, such that there is a finite amount of personal
resources to be expended and more activity in one domain, by definition,
takes away resources that could be expended in the other domain.
Work Family Enrichment
More recently, theoretical and empirical research on the other
possibilities of interconnectedness between work and family
particularly, the extent to which work and family can positively
influence each other or benefit each other is gaining popularity among
researchers. Participation in multiple roles (e.g. work and family) is
found to be beneficial for employees, and these benefits are found to
outweigh the difficulties (Greenhaus & Powell, 2006). For example, the
conflict and stress inherent in managing work and family responsibilities
found to be counterbalanced by the socio-psychological benefits that
stem from participating in the work and family roles (Barnett and Hyde,
2001). Positive affective states, attitudes, values, skills generated in one
role are found to positively influence the other role (Greenhaus &
Powell, 2006). These understandings have recently drawn attention of
researchers to the need to compliment the focus on work-family conflict
by examining the positive dimension of work-life balance generally
referred as “work-family enrichment”. The increasing emphasis on the
positive interaction between work and family is consistent with the
emerging trends in positive psychology (Seligman and
Csikszentmihalyi, 2000) and positive organizational behavior (Luthans,
2002) that focus on the strengths and optimal functioning rather than on
weaknesses and malfunctioning of individual as well as social systems.

Given this background, it has been examined how and to what extent an
individual’s work and family life positively influence each other and
examined the impact of this interaction on her/his attitude, behavior and
work performance on a sample of 485 employees working across
organizations in India through a survey questionnaire and structured
interviews. Some of the specific objectives of study were to:

 Explore work-family conflict and work-family enrichment

dimensions of work-life balance
  Identify the determinants of work-family enrichment and its effect
on attitudes and behaviors of employees
 Identify organizational practices that deal with work-life balance
issues
 Advance recommendations that can be of practical aid to
employees and human resources professionals in addressing issues
of work-life balance.

Results based on qualitative and quantitative analyses of the responses

suggest that the outcomes of combining work and family life are not
always negative. Rather, working men and women in India do
experience more work-family enrichment than work-family conflict
although there was no significant gender difference in employee
perceptions of work-family enrichment. Support from family members
and supervisor, nature of job, work-life balance policies and family-
friendly culture of the organizations emerged as the significant
predictors of work-family enrichment. Work-family enrichment was
found to positively influence employee job satisfaction, psychological
well-being, organizational commitment and organizational citizenship
behavior. Organizations do vary in their policies and practices with
regard to work-life balance. Some of the common work-life balance
policies and practices across organizations were found to be flexi-time
and maternity leave and benefits.

Implications of this study are many. Understanding the level of work-

family enrichment of employees will definitely help organizations
developing strategies or initiatives to help employees effectively manage
their work and non-work obligations. This, in turn, will ensure employee
commitment and extra role performance.  Assessment of the perceived
organizational family supportiveness will help employers evaluate the
effectiveness of the existing culture and practices of their organization.
The results from this research can be used to improve employee
satisfaction, engagement, commitment and performance.