Hardworking coworkers: A multilevel cross‐national look at group work hours and work–family conflict

Abstract

Summary This study investigates the relationship between coworker work hours and perceived work‐to‐family conflict (WFC) in a multinational sample of professional service employees. Building on recent research on the ways in which workgroups influence individual WFC, we demonstrate that the average hours worked by coworkers has a significant relationship to reported WFC independent of an employee's own work hours. Although this finding is universal across the multinational sample, national cultural differences were found to moderate the relationship, such that employees in more collectivist countries are more strongly influenced by average coworker hours than their counterparts in less collectivist countries. The multilevel analysis was conducted using a sample of 7,600 professional service employees in 497 different workgroups across 20 countries. The results provide support for the effect of culture on the relationship between group average hours and perceptions of WFC. We conclude with a discussion of how national culture affects WFC.

The impact of work hours on work‐to‐family enrichment and conflict through energy processes: A meta‐analysis

“…Thus, the positive relationship between the working hours and WFE through vigor will become stronger, while the positive relationship between the level of working hours and WFC through exhaustion will become weaker. Other potential moderators may include individual characteristics (age, health, personality, gender role identity, and sex), and other contextual variables (Ko & Choi, 2018;Lazarus, 1991;ten Brummelhuis & Bakker, 2012a;Vaziri et al, 2018) nested in the work environment itself, such as the nature of the work performed, the amount of autonomy offered, and the support an employee receives from the organization, managers, and peers. Potential moderators may also interact with working hours and affect each of the positive and negative mediational processes of human energy.…”

Relationships between professional burnout and job demands, resources among workers in an industrial plant in Lithuania

“…The notion of role conflict comes from scarcity theory [28], which assumes that personal resources, such as time and energy, are finite and that the devotion of greater resources to one role necessitates the devotion of lesser resources to other roles. Work-family conflict has an array of negative consequences, including lower job and family satisfaction, lower career satisfaction, organizational commitment, job performance, and organizational citizenship behaviours [29,30]. Work-family conflict is also associated with higher turnover intentions, absenteeism, stress, burnout, and exhaustion [31,32].…”

Hotel employees’ fun climate at work: Effects on work-family conflict and employee deep acting through a collectivistic perspective

“…WFC happens when employees’ participation in the work role causes conflict for them in performing family-related responsibilities ( Netemeyer et al, 1996 ), especially when employees are trying to achieve satisfactory or even perfect levels in both roles ( Ling and Poweli, 2001 ). Employees in collectivistic cultures normally perceive more severe WFC than those in individualistic cultures ( Billing et al, 2014 ; Ling and Poweli, 2001 ; Vaziri et al, 2019 ) due to their concerns over and frequent acceptance of criticism and comments from others about their imperfection in family roles. Netemeyer et al (1996) classified conflict in WFC into time-based conflict and strain-based conflict.…”

“…Although a fun climate at work promotes spending time socializing and celebrating with colleagues at work and outside of work ( McDowell, 2004 ), it implies a significant reduction of time and resources for employees to spend with their families. In fact, a series of studies have proven that employees in collectivistic cultures may experience more severe dilemmas in balancing work and family than those in individualistic cultures ( Billing et al, 2014 ; Vaziri et al, 2019 ), especially employees who are working parents ( Lu et al, 2009 ). Hence, to clarify the outcomes of fun climate on work and family domains in collectivistic culture, this study selects work-family conflict (family domain) and employee deep acting (work domain) as outcomes of Chinese hotel employees’ fun climate at work.…”