Stability and change in levels of work–family conflict: A multi‐study, longitudinal investigation

Effects of strain on boundary management: findings from a daily diary study and an experimental vignette study

Introduction

Transformations in the work-nonwork interface highlight the importance of effectively managing the boundaries between life domains. However, do the ways individuals manage the boundaries between work and nonwork life change from one day to the next? If so, which antecedents may explain these intra-individual fluctuations in boundary management? Drawing on boundary management, spillover, and resource theories, we investigate daily changes in segmentation preferences and integration enactments as a function of experiencing strain in work and nonwork life. Assuming that changes in segmentation preferences reflect an individual's strategy to regulate negative cross-role spillover, we suppose that strain increases individuals' segmentation preferences; at the same time, however, it could force individuals to enact more integration.

Methods

We test our assumptions with data from two studies with different methodological approaches. The first study uses a daily diary research design (Study 1, 425 participants with 3,238 daily observations) in which full-time professionals rated strain in work and nonwork life, segmentation preferences, and integration enactments every evening for 10 workdays. The second study uses an experimental vignette research design (Study 2, 181 participants), where we experimentally manipulated strain in work and nonwork life and investigated causal effects on participants' hypothetical segmentation preferences.

Results

The results of multilevel modeling analyses in Study 1 show that segmentation preferences and integration enactments fluctuate from day to day as a function of strain. More specifically, strain is related to preferring more segmentation but enacting more integration. Study 2 replicates the results of Study 1, showing that strain causally affects segmentation preferences.

Discussion

This two-study paper is one of the first to address daily fluctuations in segmentation preferences and integration enactments, extending our knowledge of temporal dynamics in boundary management. Furthermore, it demonstrates that strain is an antecedent of these daily fluctuations, offering starting points for practical interventions.

The Dobbs Decision and the Future of Occupational Health in the US

Access to abortion care has a profound impact on women's ability to participate in the workforce. In the US, restrictions on abortion care have waxed and waned over the years, including periods when abortion was broadly permitted across the nation for most pregnant people for a substantial proportion of pregnancy and times when restrictions varied across states, including states where abortion is banned for nearly all reasons. Additionally, access to abortion care has always been a reproductive justice issue, with some people more able to access this care than others even when it is structurally available. In June 2022, the US Supreme Court handed down the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, returning to states the ability to determine restrictions on abortion, including near-total bans on abortion. In this anthology, ten experts share their perspectives on what the Dobbs decision means for the future, how it will exacerbate existing, well-researched issues, and likely also create new challenges needing investigation. Some contributions are focused on research directions, some focus on implications for organizations, and most include both. All contributions share relevant occupational health literature and describe the effects of the Dobbs decision in context.

Role of agile leadership in managing inter-role conflicts for a satisfying job and life during COVID-19 in a VUCA world

This study investigated how agile leadership played its role in managing inter-role conflicts during the chaotic period of the COVID-19 pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic was much more than the survival of the fittest and coming out of it alive. Organizations were under immense pressure to resume their normal operations in not-so-normal situations. This period of turmoil and agony brought a broad array of inter-role conflicts, which posed challenges for leaders to manage them effectively. The satisfaction at job and the satisfaction in life were the two most important endeavors for the employees to fight. This study explores how leadership agility helped employees manage their work–family and family–work conflicts, consequently impacting life satisfaction and job satisfaction simultaneously. Moreover, role ambiguity, role conflict, and role overload are important intervening role stress factors that impact inter-role conflict management. So, role stress is a moderating factor in the direct relationship between agile leadership and inter-role conflict. This is a two-phased time lag study with a quantitative design for data collection. The first phase of data collection comprises of analyzing the impact of agile leadership on inter-role conflict management, keeping in view the intervening impact of role stress. The second data collection phase examines how inter-role conflicts impacted life satisfaction and job satisfaction during COVID-19. The data were collected from faculty working in higher education institutions in Pakistan, as the education industry was the second major sector that was affected because of COVID-19 after the health care industry. This research found that agile leadership plays a significant role in determining job satisfaction and life satisfaction. Agile leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic helped to manage work–family (AgileL -> WFC -> JS β = 0.1020, p = 0.0112 and AgileL -> WFC -> LS β = 0.1361, p = 0.0014) and family–work conflicts (AgileL -> FWC -> JS β = 0.1598, p = 0.0017 and AgileL -> FWC -> LS β = 0.1160, p = 0.0093) and reduce role stress. Future researchers might include marital satisfaction, as the inter-role conflicts highly impacted marital satisfaction and resultant imbalances among dual-earning couples. Comparative studies in this regard, explaining how dual-earning couples managed to sustain marital health and the role of leadership in developed and developing countries would be enlightening.