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Work from home has become as regular as the traditional commuting system after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Previous studies have discussed the influence of working at home on the work–family interface. However, there is limited understanding of how diverse workforces manage their work–family issues with various family-friendly policies. This study aims to bridge this research gap by examining the collective influence of work conditions and family-friendly policies on work–family balance.

A survey experiment featuring two working conditions (work from home or commuting) × four family-friendly policies (household subsidy, family-friendly supervisor, financial profit, paid leave vs no policy) was approached based on 703 valid responses in China.

The results indicate that family-friendly policies are more effective under the work-from-home condition than the commuting condition, household subsidies and financial profits are considered more helpful for work–family balance under the work-from-home condition and employees’ policy preferences depend on personal identity and work conditions, which help them maintain work and family issues concurrently.

This study explores the joint impact of work conditions and family-friendly policies from a situational perspective. This study indicated that professional organizations need to perform delicacy management considering policy preferences. Moreover, changing working arrangements help employees facilitate their work–family balance.

This case study is best suited for courses in career management, stress management, work–life management or science of well-being in organization behavior (OB) or human resources management (HRM). This case study is targeted at the MBA or executive development programs. The learning outcomes of this case study are as follows: to analyze the challenges in balancing Suraj Kumar’s (the protagonist) work–life balance situation and identifying the main causes of such a conflict. What are some strategies that could be used to address these issues? To develop a plan to balance work responsibilities with family and personal life. What specific actions could he take to achieve this balance? To design a training program for employees that addresses work–life balance issues. What topics would you cover in the training, and what methods would you use to deliver the content? To create a proposal for a flexible work arrangement program that an organization could offer to its employees. What would be the benefits of this program, and how would it be implemented and managed? To develop a business case for why an organization should prioritize work–life balance for its employees. What are the potential benefits of doing so, and how can the organization measure the impact of its efforts?

This case study discusses conflicts due to competitive priorities that people face in balancing the pressures, roles and responsibilities between their professional life (careers) and their personal life, and the trade-offs that they make across these multiple aspects of their lives. This case study revolves around Suraj Kumar, a successful consultant, who was offered a promotion as the executive director for the social sector. This promotion would require extensive travel and time away from his family. Kumar was struggling to balance his work responsibilities with his family life and his involvement with the Smile and Shine Foundation, which supports the education of children from economically weaker sections of society. He was reflecting on his past and present and trying to figure out how to prioritize his commitments while also achieving his personal and professional goals.

This research has shown that a case discussion and role-play can be effective for a less experienced audience. Instructors can provide multiple perspectives to stimulate reflection and debate. For executive MBA or executive development programs, a self-reflection exercise is recommended. Participants in these programs may have personal experience dealing with or may know others who have dealt with work–life balance issues, making self-reflection a valuable tool.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 6: Human resource management.

Smart device use for work during family time is a growing issue of concern and is likely exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors test a broad range of well-being outcomes (job anxiety, job depression and insomnia) to extend the literature. Work–family conflict was included as a mediator with age as a moderator.

The study uses representative data from 422 New Zealand employees across a wide range of occupations, sectors, and industries from late 2020. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) of the data was used and moderated mediation analysis was conducted.

Overall, hypotheses were supported, with mWork positively influencing work–family and family–work conflict, and all well-being outcomes. Work–family and family–work conflict acted as mediators and age interacted with mWork leading to more conflict for older workers. Finally, moderated mediation effects were supported with age acting as a boundary condition, whereby the indirect effect of mWork on well-being outcomes increases as age increases.

The findings highlight the danger of using mobile devices to work in family time and highlight the additional risks for older workers.

The mWork literature has a limited focus on well-being outcomes, and the New Zealand data provides insights from a largely underrepresented population in the literature. Further, the use of age as a moderator of mWork towards well-being outcomes provides further originality.

This paper explores how gender-related issues are communicated in Korean family-run conglomerates (chaebols) and the roles of women within these businesses. It also addresses to what extent the communication of chaebols about female employment and career development reflects the perception of gender representation in these organisations.

By paying attention to gendered discourse in Korean chaebols, this paper examines what is said and written about gender issues in glottographic statements (texts) and non-glottographic statements (charts and other visuals) of annual reports (ARs) published by five chaebols since 2010. The paper uses a Foucauldian framework to develop the archive of statements made within these ARs.

Although there is an increase in female-employee ratios, ARs show that number of women at the board or senior management level continue to be small. ARs tend to provide numbers related to female employment and retention in their non-glottographic statements, yet these numbers occasionally differ from and frequently are not explained by glottographic statements. The strategies used by chaebols to improve career prospects for their female staff are only vaguely described and rarely evaluated.

This paper looks beyond the existing discourse analysis on “talk and text” by also investigating claims made through graphic and linear/pictorial elements and their interplay with text. This approach opens new understandings of how gendered discourses are constructed and how they (unintentionally) fail to resolve issues and perceptions related to female employment and career development in Korea.

This study investigates how compulsory citizenship behavior (CCB) restricts police employees from fulfilling their family responsibilities [i.e. work–family conflict (WFC)] and affects their psychological health. The authors also examined putting family first (PFF) as a conditional variable on the association between CCB and WFC.

This quantitative study collected data from 341 police employees on convenience basis. Further, the authors tackled the issue of common method bias (CMB) by collecting data in two waves.

The data were analyzed through structural equation modeling (SEM), and the result revealed that WFC mediates the association between CCB and police employees' psychological health. In addition, the authors noted that individuals high in PFF were less likely to experience WFC in the presence of CCB.

This study contributes to the scant literature on police employees' psychological health. Specifically, this study is the first to investigate the mediating role of WFC between CCB and psychological health with the boundary condition of PFF.

This study aimed to examine the relationships among discriminary culture against women, hierarchical culture, sexual harassment and work–family conflict in the workplace.

Data were collected from female employees in South Korea. Structural equation modeling was employed to analyze 202 responses obtained through a self-report survey.

The findings indicate that (a) discriminatory culture against women and a hierarchical culture were positively related to sexual harassment, and (b) sexual harassment positively affected work–family conflict. Additionally, both a discriminatory culture against women and a hierarchical culture had indirect effects on work–family conflict, which were mediated by sexual harassment.

This study can help researchers better understand the relationship between organizational culture and the work experience of female employees by examining the mechanisms that influence their work–family conflict.

The study assessed the impact of technostress creators, work–family conflict and perceived organisational support (POS) on work engagement for employees operating within the virtual and hybrid work settings. The idea is to redefine the antecedents of work engagement in work settings that are characterised by excessive technology and work–family conflict.

Data gathered from 302 academics and support staff employees at a selected university in South Africa were utilised to assess the abovementioned relationships via variance-based structural equation modelling.

The combined effect of technostress, work–family conflict and POS on work engagement indicates that work–family conflict is a critical component in the relationship between technostress and work engagement. Although POS is seen as a job resource that lessens stress, the study found that the influence of work–family conflict is stronger than that of POS; hence, a negative influence is reported on work engagement. Despite the presence of support, overwhelming technostress creators and work–family conflict issues increase demands and influence work engagement negatively.

The results noted that, in hybrid and virtual work settings, managers can drive employee engagement by focussing on designing more favourable work–life balance (WLB) policies, providing adequate information communication technology (ICT) support, fostering aspects of positive technology and defining the boundaries between work life and family time.

The managers need to realise the detrimental effects of both technostress and work–family conflict on work engagement in virtual and hybrid work settings. Expanding the personal and job resources of individuals in hybrid and virtual settings is critical to enable them to meet the additional work demands and to manage the strain imposed by technostress. Instituting relevant organisation support has proved to be inadequate to address the challenges relating to technostress and work–family conflict. Therefore, introducing WLB policies that assist employees to set clear boundaries between work and family time to avoid burn out and spillover is critical. This is especially important when dealing with technostress creators in the remote work setting. Additionally, providing adequate ICT support as well as training related to use of different devices and software should be part of the organisational culture.

A manageable and reasonable workload should be maintained bearing in mind the complexity and ambiguity associated with the hybrid work setting. Managers should make allowances for employees to adjust managers' schedules to accommodate personal obligations, as well as adjust employees' workloads to accommodate family responsibilities. As for the coping strategy of technostress and work–family conflict, considering the positive effects of the supportive work environment is important.

This study provides a model on the interaction of the redefined antecedents (technostress and work–family conflict) of work engagement in high-tech environments such as virtual and hybrid work settings.

This study aims to propose a conceptual model that examines the role of ethical climate on work–family enrichment in the restaurant industry, which is one of the most vulnerable sectors affected by global crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic. The mediating effects of psychological attachment and psychological capital and the moderating effects of job autonomy were also investigated to enrich understanding of ethical climate and work–family enrichment.

The conceptual model was evaluated by using a quantitative–qualitative mixed-methods approach. In Study 1, survey data was collected from a sample of 405 restaurant frontline employees and analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling. In Study 2, interviews were conducted with eight restaurant frontline employees and analyzed thematically. The data for Study 1 and Study 2 was collected from Jharkhand, a state in eastern India.

The results of Study 1 show a direct relationship between ethical climate and work–family enrichment. The mediating effect of psychological attachment and psychological capital on that direct relationship was also established, whereas job autonomy was found to be a significant moderator that negatively affects psychological attachment and work–family enrichment. The qualitative insights in Study 2 shed additional light on the rationales of the effects observed in Study 1 through the voices of restaurant frontline employees whilst triangulating the quantitative findings in Study 1.

This research contributes novel insights that explain how ethical climate positively shapes work–family enrichment through the lens of psychological attachment and psychological capital, albeit cautiously, given the negative effect of job autonomy. Nevertheless, this research remains limited to restaurant frontline employees, thereby necessitating future research in other service industries to improve the generalizability of its findings.

This research offers a seminal extension of the direct effect of ethical climate on work–family enrichment (i.e. the “what”) by theorizing and validating the mediating (i.e. the “why”) and moderating (i.e. the “how”) effects of psychological attachment, psychological capital and job autonomy.

This study examines women entrepreneurs' understanding of motherhood and entrepreneurial career and how they negotiate this combination with their gendered understandings and social norms in Sri Lanka.

Data were collected using in-depth, semi-structured interviews from 20 entrepreneurial mothers in the Western Province of Sri Lanka. Sub-samples were taken to achieve demographic heterogeneity.

This study found that entrepreneurial mothers do not perceive their business as separate from their motherhood understanding. They believe that their profession is a part of motherhood responsibilities. This study also found that to negotiate a combination of roles, these mothers employed two coping strategies at different levels: family and business.

As the sample size is small, an extended research strategy would be more effective. Future research could seek to identify strategies that women entrepreneurs use to balance their business–family life.

This research provides implications for balancing business and family life for women entrepreneurs.

The paper extends the cultural and geographical scope of the literature on women entrepreneurs' business–family life experiences.