Work–life balance
[2] Work can now be completed at any time and in any location, meaning that domains are more likely to be blended and boundaries barely exist.
[6] The roots of this theory can be traced back to the early 20th century, when industrial revolution was separating economic work from the family home.
The structural functionalism theory, which emerged following WWII, was largely influenced from the industrial revolution and the changes in the social role of men and women during this period.
Structural functionalism theory believes in the existence of radical separation between work (institution, workplace, or market) and families.
These institutions are called "greedy" in the sense that they make all-encompassing demands on the commitment and loyalty of individuals, and tend to discourage involvement in other social spheres.
[11][12] When a person is involved in two greedy institutions—be it child care and university, or family and the military,[13] or others—task and role conflicts arise.
A 2020 LinkedIn survey based on over 2.9 million responses concluded that employees struggling with work-life balance were 4.4 times more likely to show symptoms of occupational burnout.
[6] The literature also reports the usage of the terms compartmentalization, independence, separateness, disengagement, neutrality, and detachment to describe this theory.
[15] In 1979, Piotrkowski argued that according to this theory employees "look to their homes as havens, [and] look to their families as sources of satisfaction lacking in the occupational sphere.
For example, WFC has been shown to be negatively related to job satisfaction whereas the association is more pronounced for females.
[21] Lu, Kao, Cooper, Allen, Lapierre, O'Driscoll, Poelmans, Sanchez, and Spector (2009) could not find any cultural difference related in work-related and nonwork-related outcomes of WFC when they compared Great Britain and Taiwan.
As an exception, Nielson, Carlson, and Lankau (2001)[22] showed that having a supportive mentor on the job correlates negatively with the employee's WFC.
Another study (Wilson, Polzer-Debruyne, Chen, & Fernandes, 2007)[24] showed that training employees helps to reduce shift work related WFC.
[26] In contrast to work–family conflict which is associated with several negative consequences, work–family enrichment is related to positive organizational outcomes such as job satisfaction and effort (Wayne et al., 2004).
Personality traits, such as extraversion and openness for experience have been shown to be positively related to work–family enrichment (Wayne et al., 2004).
Next to individual antecedents, organizational circumstances such as resources and skills gained at work foster the occurrence of work–family enrichment (Voydanoff, 2004).
[31] Some research also shows that the utilization of provided resources such as child care support or flexible work hours has no longitudinal connection with WFC (Hammer, Neal, Newson, Brockwood, & Colton, 2005).
[34] Keeping in mind the support function, organizations should provide trainings for the supervisors and conduct the selection process of new employees.
Similar as for organizational support, the meta-analysis by Kossek et al. (2011) showed that general supervisor is negatively connected to WFC.
In terms of work–family enrichment, supervisors and organizations are also relevant, since they are able to provide with important resource (e.g., skills and financial benefits) and positive affect.
Their main findings are that study samples do include diverse family types, and most research relies on surveys.
