Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal

Research suggests that single mothers experience poorer mental and physical health than their partnered counterparts. This health differential has been attributed, in large part, to the chronic economic and social stressors to which many single mothers are exposed. Less research, however, has focused on the well-being of single mothers who are employed, despite their growing presence in the Canadian labour force. Using data from a telephone survey of employed parents in a mid-sized Western Canadian city conducted in 2005, the aim of this study was to: (1) compare the mental health of employed, single mothers relative to partnered mothers; and (2) explore the potential role of work-family conflict and psychosocial job characteristics as explanations for any observed differences in psychological distress. Analyses were restricted to 674 employed mothers (438 partnered and 236 single), who were 25-50 years old, with at least one child in the household under the age of 20 years. Bivariate analysis indicated that compared to partnered mothers, employed single mothers reported significantly higher levels of psychological distress, work-to-family conflict and family-to-work conflict. Single mothers were also more likely to be employed in a high-strain psychosocial work environment (i.e., high demand and low control). Multiple linear regression revealed that after adjusting for key sociodemographic characteristics, psychosocial work quality and work-family conflict, single parenthood was no longer statistically significantly associated with psychological distress. These findings suggest that being a single mother in and of itself need not result in poorer mental health, but greater attention needs to be paid to the economic and psychosocial work environment of single mothers, including policies to facilitate work-family balance.

Work and family are the most important spheres of human¡¦s life. These two spheres are not independent of each other. Work-family conflict arises when negative attitudes intrude into the other domain, or when experiences and intense involvement in one domain interfere with active participation in the other domain. It may cause absenteeism or turnover intentions. However, employees whose organizations provided work-family support report less work-to-family conflict. Telework is a common work-family supportive strategy. Teleworkers can periodic work out of the principal office, one or more days per week either at home, in a client¡¦s site, or in a teleworker center and aided by computer and telecommunication. Moreover, SOHO (Small Office, Home Office) is another popular work arrangement nowadays. Comparing with teleworkers, they are self-employed. Although combining work and family may help employees balance their work and family, the blurring of the boundary always make them feel even they are home they can¡¦t get away from work. The aim of this study is to gain an understanding of the work-family conflict, sex division of labor, job involvement and work-family conflict of these working-at-home employees. Below are the discoveries of this thesis: 1.The boundary between work and family is dynamic. When the life cycle of work and family changes the boundaries also changes. 2.Homeworkers did perceive work-family conflicts. Within six types of work-family conflicts, time-based work-to-family conflicts, strain-based work-to-family conflicts and strain-based family-to-work conflicts were the biggest problems for them. 3.The reasons why they choose working at home were work-related. Even women with children didn¡¦t work at home for family-related reasons. Moreover, almost all couples shared responsibility for housework. But working at home was not the only reason for the change of the sex division of labor. 4.Almost all homeworkers admitted that their job involvements were too high. The high job involvements might due to their work values, family values and family support.

The advance of technology brings the flourish and vigor in economy to global market. It also changes the way we do business. Every company is struggle to gain the competitive advantage. Peter Drucker (1999), a management master, points out that in the 21st century, the most valuable assets of an organization are knowledge workers and the productivity of knowledge workers. Last ten years, high-tech industries become the main force in Taiwan. However, there are some attributes under this industry that make employees hard to differentiate between work and life, for example, short period of product life cycle, nonstop product line and so on. The researches from Fassel(1990), Schaef & Fassel(1988) indicate that some companies are workaholics itself. Schneider(1987) thought that people will stay in a company suitable to himself/herself longer due to attraction-selection-attrition theory. Many researches pointed out that workaholics are more involved in work than other workers.(Fassel, 1990; Scott et al., 1997; Spence & Robbins, 1992). Therefore, maximizing the efforts from workaholics is an challenge. In this study, workaholism is defined as an independent variable. Other variables like health, work-family conflict and job performance are as independent variables. Besides, personal attributes and job characteristics are defined as antecedents. This study will take 136 engineers in high-tech industry to examine the effect of workaholism on other dependent variables, like health, work-family conflict and job performance. The findings in this study are as follows: 1. After using factor analysis to examine three dimensions of wokaholism from Spence & Robbins(1992), the result points out that job involvement is an unstable factor, but work enjoyment and driveness are applicable to this study. 2. The hypothesis that there is a significant effect of health on work enjoyment and driveness is partly supported. Driveness is a risk factor related to health because it has a negativ effect on general health, social function and mental health. Besides, work enjoyment has a positive effect to general health, vitality, social function and mental health. 3. The hypothesis that there is a significant effect of work-family conflict on work enjoyment and driveness is supported. Work enjoyment has a negative effect on work-family conflict. However, driveness has a positive effect on work-family conflict. 4. The hypothesis that there is a significant effect of job performance on work enjoyment and driveness is partly supported. Work enjoyment has a positive effect on task and contextual performance. However, driveness has a positive effect on contextual performance. 5. The hypothesis that there are significant differences in work enjoyment and driveness among personal attributes is partly supported. No significant difference was found in work enjoyment among personal attributes. In addition, there is a significant difference for marital status in driveness. The married workers experience a higher level of driveness than unmarried workers. 6. The hypothesis that there is a significant effect of job characteristics in work enjoyment and driveness is partly supported. The result indicates that time control is positively related to work enjoyment. Monitoring demand and product responsibility are positively related to driveness. Method control is negatively related to driveness. 7. After using cluster analysis, three types of workaholics are identified in this study. They are enthusiastic workers, disenchanted workers and relaxed workers.¡@Among three types of workaholics, enthusiastic workers have a better health condition, job performance and a lower level in work-family conflict than other two types of workaholics. Furthermore, enthusiastic workers have a higher level in time control and method control than disenchanted workers.

The aim of this study was to examine the effects of social support, perceived control, locus of control and demand on adopting coping strategies to deal with workto- family conflict (WFC) and family-to-work conflict (FWC). A questionnaire was administered to Turkish dual-career couples with diverse occupational backgrounds (N = 300). Results suggested that (a) those who received social supported adopt problem-focused coping strategies through the effect of having high perceived control, (b) those with external locus of control adopted emotion-focused coping strategies which in turn increased family-to-work conflict, but not such relationship was observed on work-to-family conflict, and (c) work/home demands moderated the relationship between perceived control and coping strategies only when it was measured as a combination of both self-reports and objective demand indices. Practical implications of the findings are discussed along with the limitations of the study.

Abstract With the international age coming, a number of studies have been done regarding the management of expatriates, but little research has focused on the expatriates' decisions to quite their assignment. A comprehensive model is developed to test the cause of the expatriates' turnover tendencies. The model is applied both of the theories from socialization and work-family conflict. Date were obtained with a sample of 171 expatriates in Mainland China from Taiwan's international businesses. Results were indicated that work-family conflict and socialization have the direct effect on intent to leave organization and intent to transfer back prior to the completion of their foreign assignments. Work-family conflict, job similarity, organization support have the direct effect on intent-to-leave the job. Family support has both of the direct and indirect effects on the intent to transfer back prior to the completion of their foreign assignments. Parents' health and the youngest child's age have the indirect effect on the expatriates' intent-to-leave through work-family conflict. Expatriate's position has the indirect effect on the expatriates' intent-to-leave through expatriate's socialization. Implication for international HRM researchers and practitioners are discussed.

A Study of Female Managers¡¦ Coping Behavior with Work-Family Conflicts in Terms of Sex-Role Attitudes, Life-Style and Job Involvement Abstract In terms of human resources, female managers has come into a spotlight for their outstanding professional performance, efficiency and competitiveness in today¡¦s business world. According to the 10 managerial roles defined by Mintzberg(1973), female managers are required to take greater responsibility and spend longer working hours at their managerial job. Furthermore, family role expectations also require a female manger¡¦s time and energy. Therefore the fact that multiple role-demands compete a female manager¡¦s limited time is seen, and it is found that female managers are considered to face work-family conflicts more than their female counterparts working at the non-management level. The focus of this dissertation is based on the time-based interrole conflict proposed by Greenhaus & Beutell(1985) and is in accordance with three types of coping behaviors suggested by Hall(1972). This study was conducted in terms of sex-role attitudes, life-style and job involvement to understand how these factors interact with each other, affecting a female manager¡¦s coping behavior as a whole. Furthermore, how each of these factors affects a female manager¡¦s coping behavior with work-family conflicts is also discussed. Four Taiwanese female managers, who are working at the senior management level are interviewed, producing the quantitative data in this study. A case study approach was utilized and a semi-structured interview framework was used based on three factors mentioned above. This study concluded that sex-role attitudes, life-style and job involvement indeed affect a female manager¡¦s behavior to cope with work-family conflicts. It also suggested that better supportive organizational programs, sensitive family supports, and self-identity-clarified by a female manager herself- will aide them in handling work and family obligations, and will provide a ¡§no trouble back home¡¨ environment, allowing them to devote themselves to their managerial work. Keywords: sex-role attitudes, life-style, job involvement, work-family conflict, coping behavior

The Relationship among Work-Family Conflict, Job Burnout, and Turnover Intention of Female Professionals in High-Tech Companies Abstract Last ten and more years , high-tech industries grow prosperous in Taiwan. There are lots of professionals entering to the high-tech industries. Though the environment of high-tech industry is better than traditional industry-- the better payment and the better future vision, it is also the place which makes the job pressure, stress, and burnout. The job burnout, coming from the long-term stress, brings to individual the embarrassment in his life, family, and career development. The stress management in professional job becomes the future issue to those managers in high-tech industry. Today, the structure of global human resource has changed, large of educated women join the labor market, they are playing multiple roles. In the limitation of time and energy, it¡¦s easy to make the inter-role conflict during she hopes to play each role perfectly. Evidence is increasing that work-family conflict negatively influences individual¡¦s physical and psychological aspects. Under the high-tech industry speedy innovation and intense competition, employee¡¦s work-family conflict and the work stress are more catching the attention. Though female professionals are the developing resource in the labor market, they are also the crowd tending to work-family conflict. If the female professionals are always in the condition of stress and no proper way to diminish it, eventually, they will be burnout and withdraw from the working place. It will be big loss not only to individuals but also to the companies. This study examined the relationship among burnout, perceived Job stress, and turnover intention using 165 female professionals from the companies in Science-Based Industrial Park, Hsinchu, in particular, whether job burnout played a mediating role and social support played a moderating role in the stress-burnout process . The results indicated that : 1. Among the three components of work-family conflict, work interfering family was in high degree. And among the stressors, family involvement, and kids pressure were in high degree. 2. Among the three components of burnout, the exhaustion phenomenon was in high degree. 3. Work-family conflict was positively significant to job burnout. 4. A significant positive correlation was identified between job burnout and turnover intention. The exhaustion and cynicism components of burnout were positively significant predictors of turnover intention. 5. Job burnout was found to have significant mediating effect between work-family conflict and turnover intention. 6. Boss support, one of the social support components, was negatively associated with job burnout and turnover intention. In the moderating effect, most social support in higher-grades groups influenced work-family conflict and job burnout, and job burnout and turnover intention more significantly than lower-grades groups. Key words: work-family conflict, job burnout, turnover intention, social support, high-tech company, female professional.

Research on organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB) has focused on the positive aspects of the construct, neglecting the possibility that individuals who engage in OCB may suffer negative consequences. Thus, the present study expands the literature by examining the possibility that OCB is also related to negative individual-level factors, such as work-to-family conflict (WIF). In a replication and extension of Bolino and Turnley's (2005) research, the present study offers an in-depth analysis of the relationship between OCB and WIF, examining two potential mediators (work time and role overload) and two potential moderators (gender and perceptions of OCB as discretionary). Two hundred and ninety-six participants, recruited from the alumni database of a large southeastern university, Craig's List, and a snowball approach, completed surveys. Additionally, supervisor-ratings of OCB were obtained for a sub-sample of 35 participants. Study hypotheses were tested using zero-order correlations and multiple regression analyses. No support was found for a relationship between OCB and WIF, nor was there support for the moderating role of gender and perceptions of OCB as discretionary. Theoretical and practical implications, as well as future directions, are discussed.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal