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Three Essays on Employee's Personal Resource Allocation Decisions in Work and Life

Due to changes in workforce structure, household structure and the nature of jobs, today's working adults face the challenge of balancing their work and life. However, employees do not only passively react to the incompatible demands from work and life - they are active agents who make decisions about their own total life. For example, individuals make decisions about the amount of energy that they spend on work/life (WL) activities. Thus, I write three essays to understand the antecedents and consequences of employees' personal resource allocation decisions. In the first essay, I study the decision itself. That is, I identify and examine four profiles of employees' WL behavioral involvement. The studied behaviors include job behavioral involvement, organizational citizenship behavior, and life involvement. In Essay 2, I examine the antecedent of the behavioral involvement decisions – WL value, which is expressed as centrality, importance, and priority. Although an individual's behavior is argued to be directed by value, it cannot be fully understood without considering the context. Thus, I examine the influences of three external factors, including financial pressure, job demands, and perceived organizational supportive culture, on the value-behavioral involvement relationship. In Essay 3, I focus on the consequences of individuals being involved in different combinations of WL behaviors. Based on the conservation of resource (COR) theory, I argue that individuals who allocate a great amount of resources to life are more likely to utilize WL benefits offered by the organization. Furthermore, understanding work-life balance (WLB) as a psychological construct, I argue that when an individual's behavioral involvement is consistent with their WL value, he or she is more likely to experience satisfaction with regards to his or her WLB.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:unt.edu/info:ark/67531/metadc1707243
Date08 1900
CreatorsGuo, Wenjuan
ContributorsHancock, Julie (Julie I.), Cooper, Danielle (Danielle L.), 1978-, Pavur, Robert J.
PublisherUniversity of North Texas
Source SetsUniversity of North Texas
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis or Dissertation
Formatviii, 121 pages : illustrations, Text
RightsPublic, Guo, Wenjuan, Copyright, Copyright is held by the author, unless otherwise noted. All rights Reserved.

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