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“To career” means “to move at a fast, reckless, or uncontrolled speed, similar to the original meaning of a horse’s gallop.” That’s about right. It should be clear by now that for many (if not most) people, the idea of a single, lifelong career is a relic of the past—something you’d expect to learn about on a tasteful Ken Burns PBS miniseries filled with black-and-white photographs of men in bowler hats. The question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” assumes that life can be neatly preordained. The audacity. So let’s bury that idea with a stake through its heart and move on, shall we?………Continue reading…
Source: Fast Company
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Critics:
Work and family studies historically focus on studying the conflict between different roles that individuals have in their society, specifically their roles at work, and their roles as a family member. Work–family conflict is defined as interrole conflict where the participation in one role interfere with the participation in another. Greenhaus and Beutell (1985) differentiate three sources for conflict between work and family:
- “time devoted to the requirements of one role makes it difficult to fulfill requirements of another” (p. 76);
- “strain from participation in one role makes it difficult to fulfill requirements of another” (p. 76);
- “specific behaviors required by one role make it difficult to fulfill the requirements of another” (p. 76).
Conceptually, the conflict between work and family is bi-directional. Scholars distinguish between what is termed work-to-family conflict (WFC), and what is termed family-to-work conflict (FWC). This bi-directional view is displayed in the figure on the right. Accordingly, WFC might occur when experiences at work interfere with family life like extensive, irregular, or inflexible work hours. Family-to-work conflict occurs when experiences in the family interfere with work life.
For example, a parent may take time off from work in order to take care of a sick child. Although these two forms of conflict—WFC and FWC—are strongly correlated with each other, more attention has been directed at WFC. This may because family demands are more elastic than the boundaries and responsibilities of the work role. Also, research has found that work roles are more likely to interfere with family roles than family roles are likely to interfere with work role.
Allen, Herst, Bruck, and Sutton (2000) describe in their paper three categories of consequences related to WFC: work-related outcomes (e.g., job satisfaction or job performance), nonwork-related outcomes (e.g., life or family satisfaction), and stress-related outcomes (e.g., depression or substance abuse). For example, WFC has been shown to be negatively related to job satisfaction whereas the association is more pronounced for females.
The vast majority of studies investigating the consequences of WFC were interrogating samples from Western countries, such as U.S. Therefore, the generalization of their findings is in question. Fortunately, there is also literature studying WFC and its consequences in other cultural contexts, such as Taiwan and India. 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.
Likewise, Pal and Saksvik (2008) also did not detect specific cultural differences between employees from Norway and India. Nevertheless, more cross-cultural research is needed to understand the cultural dimensions of the WFC construct. The research concerning interventions to reduce WFC is currently still very limited. 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.
However, other functions of mentoring, like the role model aspect, appear to have no effect on WFC. Therefore, the mechanisms how having a mentor influences the work–family interface remain unclear. In terms of primary and secondary intervention there are some results. Hammer, Kossek, Anger, Bodner, and Zimmerman (2011) conducted a field study and showed that training supervisors to show more family supportive behavior, led to increased physical health in employees that were high in WFC.
At the same time, employees having low WFC scores even decreased in physical health. This shows that even though interventions can help, it is important to focus on the right persons. Otherwise, the intervention damages more than it helps. Another study (Wilson, Polzer-Debruyne, Chen, & Fernandes, 2007) showed that training employees helps to reduce shift work related WFC. Additionally, this training is more effective, if the partner of the focal person is also participating.
Therefore, integrating the family into the intervention seems to be helpful too. There are various additional factors that might influence the effectiveness of WFC interventions. For example, some interventions seem more adequate to reduce family-to-work conflict (FWC) than WFC (Hammer et al., 2011). More research is still needed, before optimal treatments against WFC can be derived.
Work–family enrichment or work–family facilitation is a form of positive spillover, defined as a process whereby involvement in one domain establishes benefits and/or resources which then may improve performance or involvement in another domain (Greenhaus & Powell, 2006). For example, involvement in the family role is made easier by participation in the work role (Wayne, Musisca, & Fleeson, 2004).
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). There are several potential sources enrichment can arise from. Examples are that resources (e.g., positive mood) gained in one role lead to better functioning in the other role (Sieber, 1974) or skills and attitudes that are acquired in one role are useful in the other role (Crouter, 1984).
Conceptually, enrichment between work and family is bi-directional. Most researchers make the distinction between what is termed work–family enrichment, and what is termed family–work enrichment. Work–family enrichment occurs, when ones involvement in work provides skills, behaviors, or positive mood which influences the family life in a positive way.
Family-work enrichment, however, occurs when ones involvement in the family domain results in positive mood, feeling of success or support that help individuals to cope better with problems at work, feel more confident and in the end being more productive at work..
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