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Common measures of work-family conflict focus on a person's perception of conflict. However, these perceptual measures may not provide a complete picture of the range of specific instances of conflict individuals may experience. In the present study, we developed a psychometrically sound assessment of work-family behavioral role conflict through a multi-study process. In phase 1, an inductive approach was used to identify a list of specific behavioral instances of work-family conflict (both work-to-family and family-to-work) through focus group interviews. In phase 2, we reduced the total number of scale items, by eliminating behavioral items with importance scores below a minimum cutoff. In phase 3, we further reduced the total number of scale items and examined the intercorrelations between our new measure and two widely used perceptual measures of work-family conflict. Finally, in phase 4, we examined the incremental validity of the final behavioral measure above and beyond the most widely used measure of perceptions of work-family conflict (i.e., Carlson, Kacmar, & Williams, Journal of Vocational Behavior, 56, 249-276, 2000). Results indicate that the work-family behavioral role conflict scale explained a significant amount of incremental variance over a perceptual measure of work-family conflict for several important outcomes, including turnover, psychological strain, burnout, and depression. Overall, this study illustrates the benefit of assessing behavioral incidences of work-family conflict in addition to assessing perceptions of work-family conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The commentaries on our focal article agreed with its main premise that work-family research should follow new strategies to improve its practical impact, and made suggestions clustering into three main themes. The first theme built on our suggestion to improve the research focus, terminology, and framing of work-family research. These essays offered additional ideas such as decoupling work-family from work-life research, and examining contextual factors more deeply. The second theme focused on how to better apply the findings from work family research. These commentaries provided social change approaches for making work-family issues more central to key stakeholders and to organizations. The third theme focused on broadening our scope to the societal level. These editorials advocated tactics supporting the development of basic rights of work-life balance within and across nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although work-family research has mushroomed over the past several decades, an implementation gap persists in putting work-family research into practice. Because of this, work-family researchers have not made a significant impact in improving the lives of employees relative to the amount of research that has been conducted. The goal of this article is to clarify areas where implementation gaps between work-family research and practice are prevalent, discuss the importance of reducing these gaps, and make the case that both better and different research should be conducted. We recommend several alternative but complementary actions for the work-family researcher: (a) work with organizations to study their policy and practice implementation efforts, (b) focus on the impact of rapid technological advances that are blurring work-family boundaries, (c) conduct research to empower the individual to self-manage the work-family interface, and (d) engage in advocacy and collaborative policy research to change institutional contexts and break down silos. Increased partnerships between industrial-organizational (I-O) psychology practitioners and researchers from many industries and disciplines could break down silos that we see as limiting development of the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study provides and meta-analytically examines an organizing framework and theoretical model of work-family conflict. Results, based on 1080 correlations from 178 samples, indicate that work role stressors (job stressors, role conflict, role ambiguity, role overload, time demands), work role involvement (job involvement, work interest/centrality), work social support (organizational support, supervisor support, coworker support), work characteristics (task variety, job autonomy, family friendly organization), and personality (internal locus of control, negative affect/neuroticism) are antecedents of work-to-family conflict (WFC); while family role stressors (family stressors, role conflict, role ambiguity, role overload, time demands, parental demands, number of children/dependents), family social support (family support, spousal support), family characteristics (family climate), and personality (internal locus of control, negative affect/neuroticism) are antecedents of family-to-work conflict (FWC). In addition to hypothesized results, a revised model based on study findings indicates that work role stressors (job stressors, role conflict, role ambiguity, role overload) and work social support (organizational support, supervisor support, coworker support) are predictors of FWC; while family role stressors (family stressors, role conflict, role ambiguity, role overload), family involvement (family interest/centrality), family social support (family support, spousal support), and family characteristics (family climate) are predictors of WFC. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Psychological climate is defined as individual employee perceptions of their work environment. This study advances our understanding of the psychological climate construct by addressing a generally ignored issue of frame of reference through measuring psychological climate with an organizational referent (PCo) and an individual referent (PCi). PCo reflects employee perceptions of their organizational environment in general; whereas, PCi reflects employee perceptions of their own experiences within an organization. This study found that a) there are mean level differences between the two types of psychological climate, b) the two types of psychological climate uniquely predict job satisfaction, and c) a discrepancy between the two types of psychological climate is found to relate to job satisfaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper is a comprehensive meta-analysis of over 20 years of work-family conflict research. A series of path analyses were conducted to compare and contrast existing work-family conflict models, as well as a new model we developed which integrates and synthesizes current work-family theory and research. This new model accounted for 40% of the variance in job satisfaction, 38% of the variance in family satisfaction, and 35% of the variance in life satisfaction. In a critical examination of work-family linkages, a series of analyses excluding work-family conflict constructs and pathways resulted in a well-fitting and more parsimonious model that still accounted for 39% of the variance in job satisfaction, 37% of the variance in family satisfaction, and 33% of the variance in life satisfaction. Results indicate that direct effects drive work-family conflict models while indirect effects provide little incremental explanation in regards to satisfaction outcomes. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Previous monomethod research has found mixed support for nonlinear effects between certain job characteristics (e.g., job autonomy, job complexity) and outcome variables (e.g., job performance). We hypothesized that these weak nonlinear findings may be due to the prevalence of monomethod research that can lead to a lack of complete measurement and/or introduce common methods variance, either of which may mask the "true" shape of relationships. Using hierarchical regression analyses and a multitrait-multimethod (MTMM) research design, we found strikingly different results between monomethod and MTMM data when considering the relationships between three psychological climate variables and job satisfaction. While the monomethod results mirrored earlier inconclusive findings, the MTMM data indicated that nonlinear equations explained significantly more of the relationship between all three climate dimensions and job satisfaction. These results suggest that the use of MTMM data allows one to more effectively test for nonlinear effects. Furthermore, these nonlinear results suggest that the format of employee questionnaires should probably change from asking how much an employee has of certain constructs to asking does the employee want more or less of these constructs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]