Systematic approach to work-life balance research : theoretical development and empirical examination

Work-life balance research has been extensively studied in Western contexts with a focus on high-income and industrialized societies. However, it is not clear whether this largely Western conceptualization of work-life balance, applying a segmentation-oriented perspective, would be applicable for employees working in fast-changing, low-income, and/or pre-industrial societies. This thesis contributes to extant work-life balance literature by theoretically advancing and empirically applying a systematic approach to analyze the interactions between individuals' work-life experiences and their external environment, encompassing multiple social systems across the societal, workplace, and micro levels. Specifically, I address the research aim of a systematic analysis on the individuals' work-life experiences and their multilevel social environment by means of the following three studies: Study 1 (see CHAPTER 3) undertakes a multi-disciplinary systematic literature review and offers a systematic theoretical framework and future research agenda for process-oriented, multilevel, and multidimensional analyses of work-life balance support mechanisms. This review draws out the systematic and synergistic cooperation between individuals and their environments in order to mobilize sufficient resources for meeting individuals' work-life demands and achieving better work-life balance. Study 2 (see CHAPTER 4) offers a longitudinal quantitative study that examines how work and parental demands and resources from workplace- and micro-level social systems simultaneously shape the age-old but under-studied "time-money conundrum" and how it may influence British working mothers' work-life balance satisfaction and job retention via three mechanisms: resource depletion, resource accumulation, and resource investment. Study 3 (see CHAPTER 5) is an exploratory qualitative study which advances a holistic perspective of work-life balance and offers a systematic analytical framework for explicating the contextualized relationships between societal development patterns and people's demands, resources, and work-life experiences in the specific context of China through the lens of modernization theory. This holistic perspective underlines work-life synergy and advocates living a satisfactory life that encompasses complementary work and non-work accomplishments throughout the lifetime. This approach is in contrast to the Western analytic, segmentation-oriented perspective that dominates current work-life balance literature and focuses primarily on the pursuit of minimal conflict between the two distinct spheres of work and personal life.