Recent years have witnessed a growing concern for individuals’ abilities to effectively manage work and family. Employees are demanding balance between work and personal life and employers, who are interested in attracting and retaining talent, are looking for ways to respond. One way employers are responding is by implementing work-family initiatives and encouraging a family-supportive culture. In this thesis, I investigate the relationship of such resources (family-supportive organizational perceptions-FSOP and perceptions of implementation of work-family initiatives) and contextual demands (role overload) with the work-family interface (work-to-family conflict and enrichment).
In response to research calls to highlight the role of the individual in shaping the relationships between work and family experiences, I introduce the construct and measure of balance self-efficacy. I define balance self-efficacy as one’s beliefs about one’s own ability to manage resources, demands, and stakeholders from the work and family domains. I argue that balance self-efficacy mediates the relationships between resources and demands from one side and the work-family interface from the other side.
I draw on the Conservation of Resources Theory and the Work-Home Resource Model to propose that balance self-efficacy is a personal resource that enables the individual to perceive less conflict and more enrichment between work and family. I propose that balance self-efficacy is largely drawn from the individual’s perception of his or her context. Hypotheses were tested in a sample of 420 participants employed at a financial institution in the United Arab Emirates. Hypotheses were tested using multiple regression and Bootstrapping techniques using PROCESS by Preacher and Hayes (2008).
The results show that the individual’s cognitive assessment of their own ability to manage work and family (balance self-efficacy) relates negatively to work-to-family conflict and positively to work-to-family enrichment, thus suggesting that balance self-efficacy is not only a resilience resource that employees refer to in moments of conflict but also an enriching resource that allows the individual to view participation in the work domain as beneficial for participation in the family domain. Results also suggest that the employee’s perception of the messages emitted by the organization in the form of perceptions of family supportiveness and perceptions of implementation of work-family initiatives relate positively to an increased sense of balance self-efficacy. Contextual demands, in the form of role overload, relate negatively to balance self-efficacy.
This thesis aims to contribute to the resource-view of the work-family interface and highlight personal agency in determining perceptions of conflict and enrichment between work and family. It does so by focusing on the individual’s assessment of their beliefs in their own ability to manage work and family and the role of organizational context in determining that sense of efficacy. By doing so, the purpose is to shed the light on the malleable aspects of the work-family experiences that can be positively manipulated. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:mcmaster.ca/oai:macsphere.mcmaster.ca:11375/18190 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Zanhour, Mona |
| Contributors | Connelly, Catherine, Business |
| Source Sets | McMaster University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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