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This study examines the impact of work-to-family conflict (WFC) on depression for employed husbands and wives in Japan, the moderating role of own psychological family involvement in the relationship between WFC and depression, and the moderating role of spouses’ family and job involvement in the relationship between WFC and depression.

We use a matched sample of Japanese employed husbands and wives to examine the relationships between inter-spousal dynamics about work–family conflict and psychological well-being.

We found that (1) the effect of WFC on depression was larger for wives, (2) husbands’ and wives’ own psychological family involvement did not moderate the relationship between WFC and their depression, and (3) spousal family and job involvement operated as a moderator only for husbands. While WFC reduced husbands’ depression when their wives were highly involved in their jobs psychologically and behaviorally, WFC increased husbands’ depression when their wives were highly involved in family at both psychological and behavioral levels.

Employers need to take into account the importance of looking simultaneously at the ways employed husbands and wives work when trying to understand how workplace conditions may be changed to ameliorate psychological well-being for spouses.

This study suggests that an experience of conflict between work and family is likely to deteriorate the psychological well-being for employed husbands and wives in non-Western contexts like Japan. Furthermore, spousal involvements in family and work domains are likely to play moderating roles in the relationship between WFC and depression.

The purpose of this article is to explore the impact of life cycle stage, specifically parenting stage, on work‐family conflict among working parents to determine whether discernible differences are evident among those individuals at the early stage of their parenting cycle compared with those with older children.

An explorative study was undertaken among parents employed within the Irish hotel sector. The questionnaire was distributed to 22 hotels and 76 individuals who reported having children responded. A number of measures were used to assess the impact which a number of factors, namely job stress, job involvement, managerial support and colleague support, may have on working parents' work‐life conflict. Correlation and regression analysis are performed to test the hypotheses proposed.

The research findings provide initial support for the possibility that the factors influencing work‐family conflict differ for each of the parenting groups analysed. For all parents with dependent children it was found that job involvement, job stress and colleague support all have predictive powers in terms of explaining the antecedents of work‐family conflict.

The findings provide a compelling case for the need to begin to address work‐family conflict in a more holistic manner, examining both the immediate and long‐term consequences for employees with childcare responsibilities.

The ability to design and implement specific, targeted responses to employees' work‐life needs is an area where HRD can make a real and significant contribution. Strategic HRD has the potential to reduce the misappropriation of organisational resources by ensuring a focused and targeted response, thereby minimising the fruitless pursuit of “one size fits all” approaches to this complex issue.

The paper seeks to lay the first key foundation‐stones in framing the debate in relation to work‐life balance in terms of the entire working lives of individuals and not just specific snapshots during the course of that employment. The paper is critical of current organisational thinking in relation to employees' work‐life balance needs and challenges HRD professionals to begin to examine this important and complex issue in a more holistic manner.

Despite widespread acknowledgement that work‐family conflict and career success are salient issues that impact individual wellbeing and organizational effectiveness, there is little research that studies how the two concepts are related. The purpose of this paper is to develop and present a tentative framework for understanding the relationships among antecedents of interrole conflict between work and family and career success.

Drawing on existing theoretical and empirical evidence the paper develops and presents a conceptual framework of the relationships between domain‐specific variables, work‐family conflict, and career success. The paper also presents propositions based on the relationships suggested by the framework.

The framework suggests that individual‐specific variables will be more likely to predict family‐to‐work conflict and perceived career success, while work‐specific variables will be more likely to predict work‐to‐family conflict and perceived career success. It also suggests that such domain‐specific variables influence both work‐family conflict and career success.

Future research should examine empirically the linkages suggested by this framework, along with other domain‐specific and, perhaps, cultural‐specific variables that may explain or predict dimensions of organizational cultures that are most relevant to the types of work‐family conflict and to indicators of career success. The paper suggests that employees and employers would be well advised to identify appropriate strategies for balancing work and non‐work domains in such a way that employees strive to perform work and family roles successfully, and employers ensure that employees have the necessary “infrastucture” and tailored‐made family supportive programs to encourage them to achieve dual‐success: success in family relationships and success in careers.

This paper makes a valuable contribution to both the work‐family conflict and career success literatures by being one of the first to examine the effects of domain‐specific characteristics on the relationships between these important organizational concepts and by revealing that managing work‐family conflict and career decision making is relevant for employees, employers, and career consultants.

Shows the results of a survey about the antecedents of work‐family conflict in a sample of Spanish employees. Analyses and discusses the influence of job‐related and non‐related factors. The results indicate that both groups of factors are antecedents of work‐family conflict. Even though gender is not a significant variable to explain work‐family conflict, the empirical study found differences at the time to explain the antecedents of men and women's work‐family conflict. A few family‐domain and work‐domain perceptions had a strong influence on work‐family conflict such as the gender roles, importance of family, job flexibility and job mental and physical requirements. Some of these perceptions suggest the influence of a culture where traditional gender roles still prevail and family as an institution is very strong. Functional mobility and educational level are also antecedents of work‐family conflict. However, job category level, marital status, and social benefits do not have any influence on work‐family conflict in the multivariate analysis, but the bivariate analysis showed that they have indeed an influence on the work‐family conflict according to the hypotheses developed in the research framework.

Looks at the 2000 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference held at the University of Cardiff in Wales on 6/7 September 2000. Spotlights the 76 or so presentations within and shows that these are in many, differing, areas across management research from: retail finance; precarious jobs and decisions; methodological lessons from feminism; call centre experience and disability discrimination. These and all points east and west are covered and laid out in a simple, abstract style, including, where applicable, references, endnotes and bibliography in an easy‐to‐follow manner. Summarizes each paper and also gives conclusions where needed, in a comfortable modern format.

Few studies have investigated the relationship between work-family human resource practices and firm-level outcomes. Several organizational studies have addressed the antecedents to firm adoption of work-family initiatives; however, the majority of work-family research investigates the relationship between work-family practices and individual-level outcomes. The current paper begins by providing a critical analysis and synthesis of the extant work-family literature. In addition, we integrate the organizational learning research on firm commitment to work-family policies and the human resource model. We suggest that the level of firm commitment moderates the relationship between work-family policies, the human resource model, and firm performance. Several propositions for future work-family research are presented.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how family member employees’ communicative experiences within their families affect their perceptions of the workplace. The influence of family business employees’ perceptions of family communication patterns on family satisfaction, family involvement, and work involvement within their family businesses were explored.

A total of 138 family business employees, representing 81 family businesses, were surveyed. The questionnaire contained measures of family communication patterns, family involvement, work involvement, family satisfaction, as well as several demographic questions. Path modeling was used to analyze two proposed models of family involvement and work involvement.

Conversation orientation was related to perceptions of family satisfaction and perceptions of family satisfaction were related to perceptions of family involvement. While both proposed models were consistent with the data, no significant relationships were found between conformity orientation and perceptions of family satisfaction and between perceptions of family satisfaction and work involvement.

While not only exploring family business employees’ experiences through a unique communicative lens, this study also provides several practical implications for family business owners and managers.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the reasons given by nurses for working part-time; compare the work experiences, satisfactions, and psychological well-being of nursing staff working full-time vs part-time; and identify possible antecedents and sources of leverage to encourage part-time nurses to work full-time.

An online survey was developed, pre-tested and validated, and sent to the regional associations of nurses in Spain for distribution to their members. Data collection involved a cross-sectional design. A total of 2,094 valid questionnaires were completed online. The majority of responding nurses were located in Catalunya and Gipuzkoa. Respondents were given 15 reasons and asked to indicate the extent to which each played a role in their decision to work part-time. Job context and job content scales bearing multi items reliable measures were also employed. All scales met the criteria of reliability.

Nurses working full-time included more males, were older, had longer nursing experience (both job and unit tenure), reported higher levels of both job resources (autonomy, self-development opportunities), higher levels of positive work attitudes (job involvement, affective commitment, work engagement), more medication use, and a higher intention to quit. Full-time and part-time nursing staff were similar on marital status, levels of social support (supervisor, co-worker, spouse, and family), self-reported absenteeism, levels of burnout, levels of psychological well-being (psychosomatic symptoms, self-reported health), and potential accident propensity. Some of the more concrete results include: first, reasons for working part-time were varied with some being voluntary (going to school) and others involuntary (poor health). Second, different clusters of individuals likely exist (e.g. students, caretakers, transitioning to retirement or other career options). Third, part-time nursing staff tended to report a more negative workplace (less autonomy, fewer opportunities for self-development) and less favorable work attitudes (less engagement, job involvement, and affective commitment) than their full-time counterparts.

First, all data were collected using self-report questionnaires, raising the possibility of response set tendencies. Second, all data were collected at one point in time, making it difficult to determine cause-effect relationships. Third, although the sample was very large, it was not possible to determine its representativeness or a response rate given the data collection procedure employed. Fourth, the large sample size resulted in relatively small mean differences reaching levels of statistical significance. Fifth, many of the nurse and work/organizational outcomes were themselves significantly correlated inflating the number of statistically significant relationships reported. Finally, it is not clear to what extent the findings apply to Spain only.

Health care organizations interested in encouraging and supporting part-time nursing staff to consider working full-time may have some sources of leverage. Part-time nursing staff indicated generally lower levels of commitment involvement and engagement compared to their full-time colleagues. Part-time nursing staff in this study reported lower levels of job resources, such as autonomy and self-development opportunities. Increasing nursing staff input into decision making, increasing levels of nursing staff empowerment, increasing supervisory development that in supporting and respecting the nursing staff contributions, reducing levels of workplace incivility, and improving nursing work team functioning would make the work experiences of part-time nursing staff more meaningful and satisfying. In addition, offering more flexible work schedules and tackling the stereotype associated with working only part-time would also address factors associated with working part-time. A more long-term strategy would involve enhancing both the psychological and physical health of nursing staff through the introduction of a corporate wellness initiative. Increasing the work ability of nursing staff by improving their psychological and physical well-being addresses a common factor in the part-time work decision.

There is a call in the paper for Spanish authorities to consider implementing the “Magnet hospital program” which is one model that has been shown to improve nurse and patient outcomes and is one solution to the shortage of hospital nurses in attracting them to work on a full-time basis. The process of Magnet recognition involves implementing 14 evidence-based standards.

Experts claim that the part-time phenomenon is a growing trend and is there to stay. The authors still do not know sufficiently about the HR implications for having a large workforce of part-time employees. In this paper, a tentative attempt was made to better understand this phenomenon, especially when there is a shortage of qualified nurses in the health sector. Several promising research directions follow from this investigation. First, nurses working part-time need to be polled to identify factors that would encourage and support them should they desire to change to full-time work. Second, the authors learn more about the relatively low levels of involvement, commitment, and engagement of part-time nurses, a phenomenon that most organizations wish to minimize.

This study examined the relationship of managerial and professional women’s and men’s perceptions of organizational values supportive of work‐personal life balance and their job experiences, work and non‐work satisfactions and psychological wellbeing. Managerial women reporting organizational values more supportive of work‐personal life balance also reported greater job and career satisfaction, less work stress, less intention to quit, greater family satisfaction, fewer psychosomatic symptoms and more positive emotional wellbeing. Managerial men reporting organizational values more supportive of work‐personal life balance also reported working fewer hours and extra hours, less job stress, greater joy in work, lower intentions to quit, greater job, career and life satisfaction, fewer psychosomatic symptoms and more positive emotional and physical well‐being. Multiple regression analyses indicated more independent and significant correlates of organizational values supporting work‐personal life balance among men than among women. Possible explanations for why men might benefit more from such organizational values are offered.

After summarizing what has been learned so far, the purpose of this review is to suggest several promising avenues for future research on work-to-family enrichment (WFE) and family-to-work enrichment (FWE).

This is a literature review. After reviewing the existing research and searching for gaps in the literature, new areas of research will be proposed to fill these gaps.

While much has been learned about the antecedents and consequences of work–family enrichment in both directions, WFE and FWE, much remains to be learned.

Three important outcomes – job performance, organizational citizenship behavior, and counterproductive work behavior – need to be studied regarding WFE and FWE. Although supervisor support has been studied, the field needs to incorporate leadership theories and models to understand this phenomenon. Additional predictors of work outcomes – including emotional intelligence, leadership, emotional labor, social support, gender, and cross-cultural variables – need to be examined. Experience sampling methods and advanced research methodologies should also be used.

Although prior research has demonstrated the important effects of WFE and FWE, the practical effects on organizations in terms of job performance still need to be investigated.

The literature review conclusively demonstrates that WFE and FWE are both related to job satisfaction and family satisfaction.

This is the first review to summarize the existing meta-analytical research in this area and to propose the particular avenues of research advocated in this article.