Title: Work overload, parental demand, perceived organizational support, family support, and work-family conflict among New Zealand and Malaysian academics
Abstract: Work and family represent two central domains in the lives of many employed men and women. Several factors have contributed to a greater blurring of the boundaries between work and family (O'Driscoll, Brough, & Kalliath, 2004), including increased percentages of women in the workplace, more dual-earner couples and single parents, changed family role expectations, and greater use of technologies which can enable work to be conducted anywhere, anytime. In trying to simultaneously meet the demands and responsibilities associated with work and family, many individuals are likely to experience between-domain conflict. Finding time for multiple work responsibilities and balancing the demands of work and family have been identified as major issues of concern for academic staff at all career stages, especially for female academic staff (Sorcinelli, 2007). Comer and Stites-Doe (2006) highlighted the importance of work-family issues given the rising trend in the number of academic women. Nevertheless, even though work-family conflict has sometimes been considered as primarily a women's issue, changing definitions of fatherhood (Winslow, 2005) have increased expectations for men to share domestic responsibilities, which in turn may increase the likelihood of men (as well as women) experiencing more work-family conflict. More empirical research is needed to examine the predictors of work-family conflict regardless of gender. Work-family conflict is posited to be bidirectional, such that work can interfere with family and family can interfere with work (Frone, Yardley, & Markel, 1997; Netemeyer, Boles, & McMurrian, 1996). Scholars (Adams, King, & King, 1996; Fu & Shaffer, 2001; Thomas & Ganster, 1995) have claimed that the two directions of work-family conflict have unique antecedents, with those for work-to-family interference emanating from the work domain and those for family-to-work interference from the family domain. Most research in the area of work-family conflict has employed samples from developed Western nations like Canada (Burke & Greenglass, 2001), the Netherlands (Demerouti, Geurts, & Kompier, 2004), Spain (Carnicer, Sanchez, Perez, & Jimenez, 2004), Finland (Kinnunen & Mauno, 1998), and with the United States being predominant (Anderson, Coffey, & Byerly, 2002; Boyar, Maertz, Mosley, & Carr, 2008; Frone, Russell, & Cooper, 1992; Parasuraman & Simmers, 2001; Wadsworth & Owens, 2007). Several studies of work-family conflict in Asia have also been conducted, such as Hong Kong (Aryee, Fields, & Luk, 1999; Fu & Shaffer, 2001; Luk & Shaffer, 2005), Taiwan (Lu, Kao, Chang, Wu, & Cooper, 2008), Singapore (Aryee, 1992; Kim & Ling, 2001), and Malaysia (Ahmad, 1996; Komarraju, 2006; Nasurdin & Hsia, 2008; Noor, 2002). These investigations have either examined the validity of Western findings on work-family conflict or tested a model of work-family conflict which was specifically tailored to one particular nationality. Realizing that how individuals in different countries experience work-family conflict may be culturally-bound (Luk & Shaffer, 2005), our aim in this research was to assess a model of the antecedents of work-family conflict in two very different countries: New Zealand and Malaysia. With a few exceptions (e.g., Hill, Yang, Hawkins, & Ferris, 2004; Spector, Allen, Poelmans, Lapierre, Cooper, O'Driscoll, et al., 2007; Yang, Chen, Choi, & Zou, 2000), little attention has been devoted to comparing the predictors of work-family conflict across countries. Yang et al. (2000) examined the effects of work and family demands on work-family conflict in the United States and in China. Work demands did not differ significantly between the two countries and contrary to prediction, did not have a greater effect than family demands on work-family conflict in China. Similarly, Lu, Gilmour, Kao and Huang (2006) explored relationships between work/family demands, work-to-family conflict and family-to-work conflict, and wellbeing outcomes in the United Kingdom and Taiwan, and found a stronger positive relationship between workload and work-to-family conflict in the British sample. …
Publication Year: 2012
Publication Date: 2012-03-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 34
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