Research on Work- Family Balance: A Review

Abstract

In the current globalized era, an increasing number of firms in the services sector require employees to work longer, frequently interact with customers and work across varied time zones. This has resulted in dilation of the boundary between work and family. This review explores the meaning, antecedents, consequences and moderators of work - family balance from conflict as well as enrichment perspectives. Further, the paper discusses the role of turn over intentions which have given mixed results in different settings. The review also focuses on the role of individuals' personality dimensions such as core self evaluation which are yet to gain prominence in work-family studies but are important enough to invite further research. The paper finally suggests the development of an integrated framework to understand the concept of work - family balance.

The Relationship between Work and Home: Examination of White and Blue-Collar Generational Differences in a Large U.S. Organization

“…Descriptive statistics and intercorrelations between the measures are shown in Table 1; point biserial correlations were computed for dichotomously scored variables. As reported in other studies (Beutell, 2010;Dilworth & Kingsbury, 2005;Jain & Nair, 2013), gender, having a partner, education, and work hours (both those worked at the organization and those worked a home), showed some degree of association with either the independent of dependent variables of interest. We therefore controlled for these demographic variables in all subsequent analyses.…”

A Time-Lagged Examination of the Greenhaus and Allen Work-Family Balance Model

“…An attempt was made to identify the proximal antecedents of WFB, such as job and family satisfaction, as well as the several factors that influenced WFE and WFC, in turn strongly associated constructs directly and indirectly linked to WFB [ 8 , 9 , 10 , 20 ]. Moreover, this study examined if the hypothesized associations between variables may be different in relation to CSE since in the work-family literature, personality factors are salient [ 35 ].…”

“…Bhargava and Baral [ 19 ] identified supervisor support and other job characteristics (e.g., job autonomy and variety), while Lo Presti et al found work-family organizational support to be an antecedent of WFE [ 21 ]. Hence, social support is an important antecedent of both directions (FWE and WFE), and co-worker support and workload seem to be fundamental variables that can either favor or hinder FWE development [ 35 , 36 ]. In short, while resources can either facilitate or enrich their subsequent job experiences [ 37 ], demands, on the other hand, can prevent and contrast enrichment, in turn generating conflict between the job and family domains.…”

“…These are working conditions that concern different family aspects such as family workload (i.e., a family demand) and family social support (i.e., a family resource). As for family resources, it has been shown that they have a predictive role with respect to enrichment [ 38 ], as well as family support that seems to have fundamental variables that can either favor or hinder the FWE development [ 35 ]. Likewise, Bhargava and Baral [ 19 ] identified family support as an antecedent of WFE, while in a meta-analytical review [ 34 ], family role, overload family stressors, and family demands, together with supportive antecedents such as spousal support and familiar climate, were found to have significant effects on the conflict.…”

“…CSE emerged as a significant predictive factor in relation to enrichment [ 19 , 59 ]. In fact, according to Jain and Nair [ 35 ], CSE was found positively related to family-to-work enrichment (FWE).…”