Work–Life Conflict in China: A Confucian Cultural Perspective

Abstract

The abstract is published online only. If you did not include a short abstract for the online version when you submitted the manuscript, the first paragraph or the first 10 lines of the chapter will be displayed here. If possible, please provide us with an informative abstract.In the last three decades, work-life scholars have devoted significant effort to understand individuals' work-life experiences, particularly work-life conflict. However, recent literature has found that prior findings on work-life conflict tend to be inconsistent when cultural values are considered. Cultural values influence the meaning and enactment of work and non-work roles, and consequently, the nature and strength of individuals' work-life experiences. In other words, workand non-work-related values in a particular culture are likely to lead to some unique occurrences (i.e. only existing in that culture) of work-life conflict, and the strengths of the relationships vary between unique and universal occurrences (i.e. also existing in other cultures) of work-life conflict. It is thus crucial that work-life scholars re-investigate work-life conflict in a particular culture and context. In this chapter, we review and synthesise previous work-life research conducted within the context of the Confucian culture and inspect the unique and universal antecedents and outcomes of work-life conflict. We also extend the discussion from "work-family" to "work-life" to acknowledge other non-work 1 2✉ 3 1 2 3 aspects such as community, education, and after-work entertainment. Lastly, we discuss why work-life conflict has unique antecedents and outcomes in a Confucian culture and their relationships with universal antecedents and outcomes of work-life conflict.

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