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The purpose of this paper is to answer the following research questions: what characteristics do key Belizean educational leaders value in teacher applicants and why? What hiring tools do they use to ascertain whether teacher applicants have the characteristics they prefer?

The authors utilized a mixed-methods approach drawing upon three data sources – face-to-face interviews with Belizean educational leaders, field notes, and government documents. A card sorting activity of applicant characteristics and tools was embedded into the interview.

Informants preferred motivation, caring, subject matter knowledge, and teaching skills. Intelligence was perceived as a potentially negative characteristic unless coupled with other characteristics, such as strong teaching skills, motivation, and caring or the umbrella of other characteristics, such as content knowledge or university training/credentialing. Professional characteristics, such as where one went for teacher training and academic performance, were perceived as having less relative importance than personal characteristics. Least important were applicant demographics. Consistent with the extant literature, Belizean informants perceived the interview, evidence of prior experience, and certification as the most important tools in vetting and hiring applicants.

The exploratory study is limited by the small sample of informants, but provides insights into preferences for applicant characteristics and hiring tools in an understudied international context. This study informs future research that may seek to survey representative samples of various stakeholder groups (i.e. general managers and principals) for their preferences in applicant characteristics and hiring tools from across Belizean schools and educational providers.

The study adds to limited research on preferred teacher characteristics among educational leaders responsible for hiring and/or working with teachers and to the limited international educational leadership research.

In 1987, Claire Logan, a sales representative for a garment manufacturer in New York City, was looking forward to her first bonus after moving to a commission‐based pay schedule. She had brought in over US$5 million in sales for her employer, including a new $2 million account with a major department store, and was owed a $15,000 bonus. After receiving a partial payment of $5,000 from her employer, Logan discovered she was pregnant and informed her boss. Within days she found herself out of a job and short $10,000 of the bonus owed to her. Logan filed a complaint against her employer with New York City's Human Rights Commission and four years later settled her claim of discrimination for $45,000.

In this chapter, we review empirical research evidence regarding coping and work–family conflict. Limitations and gaps associated with the existing literature are discussed. Of special note is the finding that there is little systematic research that examines the process of coping with work–family conflict. Building on the general stress and coping literature, we present a theoretical model that is specifically focused on the process of coping with work–family conflict, and highlight presumed personal and situational antecedents. Finally, the chapter concludes with an agenda for future research.

The statistics are certainly impressive: over the last two decades, women have made extraordinary advances into the managerial ranks of corporate America. From 1982 to 1983, for example, the number of female executives jumped from 1.4 million to 3.5 million (“More and more, she's the boss,” 1985, p. 64). In 1989, women accounted for 40% of all corporate managers in the United States — double the percentage just 15 years ago (“The mommy track: Juggling kids and careers,” 1989, p. 134).

The purpose of this paper is to assess the relative influence of personality (locus of control) and situational control (job autonomy) on the experience of work‐to‐family conflict (WFC), family‐to‐work conflict (FWC), and positive work‐family spillover (PS).

Using data from the 2002 National Study of the Changing Workforce (n=3,504) and from O*Net, an independent database of occupational characteristic ratings, regression analysis was used to test direct effects, relative weights analysis was used to determine the relative influence of locus of control and job autonomy on work‐family outcomes, and mediation analysis was used to examine the mediating influence of perceived job autonomy.

Dispositional control (i.e. internal locus of control) was more strongly associated with the outcome variables than was situational control (i.e. objective job autonomy). As expected, internal locus of control was negatively related to WFC and FWC, and positively related to PS. Job autonomy, however, was unexpectedly related to higher levels of FWC and was unrelated to WFC and PS. Relative weights analysis revealed that situational vs dispositional control were differentially related to the outcome variables. Perceived job autonomy mediated the relationship between locus of control and WFC and PS.

The correlational design prevents conclusions about causality.

Knowing that both personality and job autonomy are important in understanding work‐family outcomes enables managers to intervene appropriately.

This study increases our understanding of the role of personality in relation to work‐family outcomes. In addition, it used a novel technique to partial the effects of situational and dispositional control, and used an objective measure of job autonomy.

This paper aims to analyze the factors contributing to employee professed knowledge of work‐family practices offered by employers and the accuracy of their knowledge.

Survey data from four studies (ns=276, 2,877, 2,810, and 310) were used to relate employee demographics to their professed knowledge regarding the availability from their employing organizations of work‐family practices. For a subset of one study (n=140) the accuracy of employee perceptions was compared to the practice availability as reported by HR counterparts.

Women, employees with dependent care responsibilities and individuals with longer organizational tenure professed greater knowledge of practice availability. Employee attitudes were more related to employee perceptions than to the actual practices as reported by their HR manager. Employees who perceived their organization as family supportive were more likely to over‐report practices that their HR managers said did not exist, rather than to under‐report them. Professed knowledge and accuracy of the knowledge varied substantially among practices.

This study suggests that the relationships between practices as reported by organizations and attitudes of their employees are likely attenuated by inaccurate employee knowledge.

Organizations likely fail to reap full benefits of their enacted practices and should have strategies to better communicate their existence.

In summary, the results of this research give suggestions to reap the benefits of programs, it behooves organizations to think creatively about how best to communicate their existence, as well as reduce the time and effort that employees must expend to learn about program availability.

Self-employment is presented as enabling people to better balance their work and family roles but research on its effectiveness is equivocal. We collected survey data from 280 self- and organizationally-employed certified public accountants and conducted a multivariate analysis comparing positive spillover and conflict between the two groups.The self-employed reported less work-to-family conflict with no differences with respect to family-to-work conflict or positive spillovers. However, there were different patterns between male and female subsamples: self-employed males experienced less conflict and more positive spillover than male employees, whereas self-employed females had less of one form of conflict but more of the other.

Occupational stress and the role of the family and other non-work activities continue to be an important area of research for organizational scientists. In our sixth volume of Research in Occupational Stress and Well Being, we offer seven intriguing chapters that examine several key issues in work and non-work stress research. The theme for this volume is exploring the work and non-work interface.

Recently, more and more North American women have been choosing to pursue careers in management and the professions. The invasion of women into these once exclusively masculine domains has been accompanied by a host of problems, many of which were unanticipated. In the articles presented here we examine the nature of these problems and provide some suggestions about what can be done to help resolve them.

Tammy D. Allen, Ph.D., is a professor of psychology at the University of South Florida. She received her Ph.D. in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from the University of Tennessee. Her research interests include work and family issues, occupational health psychology, mentoring relationships, career development, and organizational citizenship behavior. Her research has been published in journals such as Journal of Applied Psychology, Personnel Psychology, Journal of Management, and Journal of Vocational Behavior. She is currently associate editor for Journal of Occupational Health Psychology and serves on the editorial boards of Journal of Applied Psychology, Personnel Psychology, Human Performance, and Journal of Vocational Behavior.