Work-to-family conflict, positive spillover, and boundary management: a person-environment fit approach

Abstract

This study adopted a person-environment fit approach to examine whether greater congruence between employees’ preferences for segmenting their work domain from their family domain (i.e., keeping work matters at work) and what their employers’ work environment allowed would be associated with lower work-to-family conflict and higher work-to-family positive spillover. Different facets of work-to-family conflict (time-based and strain-based) and positive spillover (affective and instrumental) were examined. According to latent congruence modeling of survey data from 528 management employees, congruence was negatively related to both time-based and strain-based work-to-family conflict and positively related to work-to-family instrumental positive spillover as expected. However, contrary to expectations, congruence was negatively related to work-to-family affective positive spillover. Implications for how boundary management processes may affect both positive and negative experiences of the work–family interface are discussed.

Introduction

Significant societal changes in the division of labor and allocation of family responsibilities have occurred over the past three decades. As the proportion of women in the labor force has increased in virtually every nation, adherence to the traditional family structure of a male breadwinner and female homemaker has declined and the representation of dual-career partnerships, single-parent households, and other nontraditional family structures has increased (Marks, 2006). A considerable literature has emerged to examine the implications of such changes for individuals’ experiences of the work–family interface (Eby et al., 2005, Frone, 2003). Two primary perspectives have been offered in this literature on the interdependencies between individuals’ work and family domains. One perspective, which focuses on negative interdependencies, suggests that individuals may experience conflict between their work and family roles due to limited time, high levels of stress, and competing behavioral expectations (Eby et al., 2005, Greenhaus and Beutell, 1985). The other perspective, which focuses on positive interdependencies, suggests that work and family roles may be mutually beneficial due to the spillover or transfer of positive experiences from one role to the other (Edwards and Rothbard, 2000, Greenhaus and Powell, 2006). Although these two perspectives differ in focus, the question they collectively raise is how individuals may simultaneously minimize negative and maximize positive outcomes of engaging in both work and family roles.

What has been loosely called “boundary theory” (Ashforth et al., 2000, Kreiner, 2006, Nippert-Eng, 1996) suggests a possible answer to this question. According to boundary theory, cognitive, physical, and/or behavioral boundaries (“fences”) may exist between individuals’ work and family domains. These boundaries may be sharpened, which leads to role segmentation, or blurred, which allows for role integration; segmentation and integration are regarded as opposite ends of the same continuum (Ashforth et al., 2000, Kreiner, 2006). Individuals vary in the degree to which they prefer to segment work and home life (Rothbard, Phillips, & Dumas, 2005). Further, workplaces vary in the degree to which they “supply” the conditions or resources that enable individuals to segment work and home life (Kreiner, 2006). Employers that provide a workplace environment that is congruent with employees’ segmentation preferences could contribute to reduced work–family conflict and increased work–family positive spillover among employees. Thus, a person-environment fit approach (Edwards, 2008, Jansen and Kristof-Brown, 2006, Kristof-Brown et al., 2005) that examines employee-employer congruence in work–family boundary management may increase our understanding of the work–family interface.

Despite the wealth of research on work–family phenomena (Eby et al., 2005, Frone, 2003), several gaps exist in the work–family literature. First, although person-environment fit has become a “central concept” in organizational research (Edwards, 2008, p. 167), few attempts have been made to apply this concept to the examination of work–family phenomena (for exceptions, see Kreiner, 2006, and Rothbard et al., 2005). Second, although individuals may simultaneously experience work–family conflict and positive spillover, these constructs have seldom been examined within the framework of a single model; instead, research has generally examined conflict and positive spillover as separate phenomena (Frone, 2003, Powell and Greenhaus, 2006). Third, although available instruments assess work–family conflict (Carlson, Kacmar, & Williams, 2000) and positive spillover (Hanson, Hammer, & Colton, 2006) along multiple dimensions, conflict and positive spillover are typically examined as overall constructs.

The goal of the present study is to address the above gaps. Specifically, it adopts a person-environment fit approach in examining the linkage between congruence in individuals’ work–family boundary management preferences and their work environment’s boundary management “supplies” (Kreiner, 2006) and specific facets of conflict and positive spillover. Further, it adopts a new approach to the assessment of person-environment fit, latent congruence modeling (Cheung, in press-a, Cheung, in press-b), that is well suited for the examination of congruence issues in work–family research. Although work–family boundary management, conflict, and positive spillover may occur bi-directionally (Hanson et al., 2006), this study focuses on the direction of work-to-family because phenomena in this direction are more likely to be influenced by an organization’s practices and policies (Friedman & Greenhaus, 2000).