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The purpose of this paper is to consider the implications of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic for future research on the intersection of gender, work and family.

This paper offers personal reflections on needed research in a post-pandemic future.

This paper identifies several promising areas for future research on the intersection of gender, work and family.

The paper offers numerous recommendations for a post-pandemic research agenda, including future research on essential workers, virtual workers, workers with enhanced family demands, single employed parents, social supports and issues of gender associated with these populations and topics.

The paper reinforces the value of social supports at the individual, family, organizational, community and societal levels.

The paper discusses implications for future research of an original event, the COVID-19 pandemic, as it is still transpiring.

Posits that work‐family issues have received research attention during the last two decades. Discusses work‐family conflict stating this usually involves lack of job and family satisfaction, with more inner‐family conflicts. States a number of companies have shown promise on the work‐family challenge.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a selection of papers within the issue that discuss the work‐family interface.

The themes of the papers in the issue are outlined

The papers address the following: conflict, facilitation and individual coping styles across the work and family domains; generational differences in work‐family conflict and work‐family synergy for Generation X, baby boomers and matures; the development and transmission of work‐related attitudes; a cross cultural comparison of female managers attitudes, experiences and career choices; the impact of individual and organisational characteristics on work‐family conflict and career outcomes, and the variation of work life integration experiences of mid‐career professional women.

The paper introduces the special issue which provides a varied mix of theoretical approaches and multi‐level perspectives to scope out and explain the links between work and family life.

The purpose of this brief paper is to introduce the papers in this special issue of Journal of Managerial Psychology, focused on “Complexities and challenges in the work‐family interface”.

The paper first introduces the theme of the special issue, and a brief outline of each paper contained in it is given.

There is concern that progress in the work‐family research area has been somewhat restricted and may have failed to take sufficient account of the complexity of work‐family issues.

The literature on the work‐family interface is complex, and theory in the field is uncertain and under‐developed. The papers in this special issue should further understanding of the challenges and complexities underscoring the work‐family interface.

Are organizations responding to significant changes in Australian labour force demographics by providing more family‐friendly programs? This article explores whether or not variations across companies in the implementation of work‐family programs and policies relate to demands of key constituent groups. Findings of the present evaluation indicate that certain employee demographic factors, particularly employees with dependents, women, union members, and long‐serving employees are more likely to predispose an organization to offer work‐family benefits. Employers need to be able to characterise the demographics of their workforce to plan the type of policies and programs that might be most suitable and contribute to productivity outcomes.

Dual‐career families were first identified and discussed by British researchers but subsequent research has been predominantly American. This article first discusses the social context for couples combining careers and family in Britain. It then addresses the questions of whether gender roles within the family, and employers′ expectations are changing with the growth of dual‐career families. It concludes that change is slow to occur and that changes in work and family are interdependent. Implications for further organisational change are briefly discussed.

One of the major challenges for managing human resources in the 1990s is to appropriately respond to employees having to manage the dual responsibilities of home and work (Paris, 1989). Balancing work and family has been considered a women's issue, with the question being whether women could handle both the home demands and the responsibilities of a paid job. Yet the entrance of women into the workforce has also required major role adjustments by their husbands. According to the traditional model of work, husbands prioritize work over family with the wife providing the necessary emotional and physical support to keep the husband in “good working order” (Pleck, 1977). In today's society, this model is no longer widely applicable, as men in dual earner families receive less emotional support than their single‐earner counterparts (Burke, & Weir, 1976; Keith, & Schafer, 1980) and tend to assume greater family responsibilities (Holahan, & Gilbert, 1979; Weingarten, 1978).

Stewardship behavior is an important embodiment of the spirit of employee ownership, which is critical to the sustainability of companies, especially under the influence of the COVID-19 epidemic. Most previous studies have focused on how to motivate employees’ stewardship behavior, but little is known about how stewardship behavior affects employees themselves. The purpose of this study is to explore how employee stewardship behavior affects their work-family interface based on the conservation of resources (COR) theory.

In this study, structural equation modeling was conducted using two-wave survey data from 323 employees through three internet companies in Southern China.

Results reveal that engaging in stewardship behavior is positively correlated with both positive emotion and emotional exhaustion. Positive emotion and emotional exhaustion, in turn, mediate the effects of stewardship behavior on work–home interface. Family motivation influences the strength of the relationships between positive emotion or emotional exhaustion and work–family interface, that is, high family motivation strengthens the positive association between positive emotion and work–family enrichment and weakens the positive association between emotional exhaustion and work–family conflict.

This study suggests that managers should give employees more support and care to ease the worries of engaging in stewardship behavior. Also, organizations should recruit employees with high family motivation, which can reduce the negative effects of stewardship behavior on work–-family interface.

Based on an actor’s perspective, this study examines both the positive and negative effects of stewardship behavior on employees themselves, thereby increasing understanding of the dual effect of stewardship behavior. In addition, this study further elucidates the mechanisms that moderate the positive and negative effects of individual family motivation on their engagement in stewardship behavior within the COR theory.

Work–family conflict is one of the most challenging stressors for construction industry professionals to cope with emotional problems. This study aims to propose a model linking work–family conflict and high-quality relationships among project team members and explore mediating effects of life and job satisfactions.

A theoretical framework was established based on the spillover theory and social exchange theory. Data were obtained by a questionnaire survey conducted with 328 respondents working in construction projects. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test interrelationships among work–family conflict, job satisfaction, life satisfaction and high-quality relationship.

The results indicate that work–family conflict is negatively associated with both job and life satisfactions of construction professionals. In addition, there were direct and positive relationships between satisfaction domains and high-quality relationship capacity. The findings further support that job satisfaction plays a mediating role between work–family conflict and high-quality relationship among construction professionals, while life satisfaction does not mediate the relationship.

The effects of interrole conflicts on the context of satisfaction have been investigated previously; however, there is a lack of knowledge regarding its influence on high-quality relationship among project team members. This study extends the body of knowledge on high-quality relationships among project team members to understand how conflict and satisfaction factors influence interpersonal relationships in construction project management.

The purpose of this qualitative study is to identify and highlight the challenges faced by the dual-career couples with one or multiple child/children in maintaining their work–family balance based on family systems theory.

The author purposely selected 26 families (52 participants) in Bangladesh where both husbands and wives work on a full-time basis having one or multiple child/children. The author used focus group discussion (FGD) technique to identify the challenges encountered by them.

After summarising the FGD results, the study identified several challenges faced by those dual-career couples, such as inability to differentiate between professional and family lives, lack of quality time for partners/children, challenges to raise children, lack of childcare centres and lack of professionalism of care workers; and tension and anxiety for their child/children while at offices.

The author expects the results of this qualitative study to be conductive as groundwork for upcoming research studies concerning dual-career couples with child/children. The author also hopes that such results will assist the human resource managers in efficiently crafting and executing some policies regarding dual-career couples with one or multiple child/children.