A qualitative investigation of the work-nonwork experiences of dual-career professional couples without children

PurposeThis paper aims to investigate the idiosyncratic relationships between work and nonwork among dual-career professional couples (DCPCs) intentionally without children, considering individual members' role salience, nonwork responsibilities and care or career orientation.Design/methodology/approachInterview data from 21 Canadian and American couples (42 individuals) was used to explore the research question: How do DCPCs without children perceive their work-nonwork balance?FindingsDCPCs without children are a heterogenous demographic. Some couples are career oriented, some care oriented, some exhibit both orientations, shaping their experience of work-nonwork balance. Unlike popular stereotypes, they do have nonwork responsibilities and interests outside of their thriving careers. Similar to their counterparts with children, they face conflicts managing work and nonwork domains.Originality/valueBased on theories of role salience, work-nonwork conflict, enrichment and balance, the authors suggest that analyses of work-nonwork balance should include nonwork activities other than child caring. The authors further propose that the experience of the work-nonwork interface varies according to whether couples are careerist, conventional, non-conventional or egalitarian. The study also demonstrates that work-nonwork experiences are relational in nature and should be explored beyond a strictly individual perspective.

Role salience and satisfaction in working adults: a contribution to the individuals’ well-being

ABSTRACTA study about role salience in the counselling and career management context with an adult sample revealed the tendency for the individuals to place more importance in other roles beyond those they tend to spend more time and energy with: work and family. The aim of this research is to present more results that confirm this trend, in different organizational contexts, and also the satisfaction with the occupational, family and leisure life roles. The study samples included working adults, ranging from 60 to 116 participants, and the instruments used were the Salience Inventory and the Life Roles Satisfaction Scale. The results corroborate the referred trend and reveal higher levels of satisfaction with other activities than with the occupational one, and correlations between role salience and satisfaction with the life roles. Therefore, it should be considered strategic by the organizations to implement policies aiming to facilitate the balance between the different roles played by their employees. Noteworthy are the interventions in counselling and career management and the increasingly frequent use of remote work. Some considerations are made on the importance of helping individuals to deal with their levels of satisfaction and well-being in the current competitive, unpredictable and unknown labour market. RESUMENCon base en un estudio sobre la relevancia de los roles con una muestra de adultos que solicitaron ayuda en el contexto de asesoramiento y gestión de carrera, se encontró una tendencia a dar más y más importancia a los roles que no sean los que generalmente los individuos tienden a gastar más de su tiempo y energía: el trabajo y la familia. Este estudio tiene como objetivo presentar más resultados que confirmen esta tendencia, en diferentes contextos organizacionales, y también la satisfacción obtenida con los roles de vida profesional, familiar y de ocio. Las muestras en estudio incluyeron adultos trabajadores, cuyos totales oscilaron entre 60 y 116 participantes, y los instrumentos utilizados fueron el Inventario de Saliencia de Actividades y la Escala de Satisfacción con los Roles Vitales. Los resultados corroboran la tendencia mencionada y revelan mayores niveles de satisfacción con otras actividades que la profesional, y correlaciones entre la relevancia de los roles y la satisfacción con los roles de vida. Por consiguiente, debe considerarse estratégico que las organizaciones implementen medidas destinadas a facilitar el equilibrio entre los diferentes roles desempeñados por sus trabajadores. Cabe destacar las intervenciones en asesoramiento y gestión de la carrera y el uso cada vez más frecuente del trabajo remoto. Se hacen algunas consideraciones sobre la importancia de ayudar los individuos a lidiar con sus niveles de satisfacción y bienestar en el actual mercado laboral competitivo, impredecible y desconocido.

A Qualitative Exploration of Role Salience among Malaysian Professional and Managerial Dual-Career Couples

This paper explores work and family roles salience in the context of dual-career couples in Malaysia. Semi-structured qualitative interviews has been conducted on 18 couples in professional and managerial position. The data were transcribed and analyzed using template analysis. The findings revealed that several factors namely culture, religious values, gender, work characteristics and personal preferences influence the couples’ role salience. Women tend to face more struggles to maintain the salience of both roles despite the fact that couples regard both roles to be central to their lives. Factors such as culture and religious values influence the couples’ role salience making them holding to traditional gender attitude and reduce the impact of family to work. Some couples are more affected with spouse work condition or personal preferencesleading them to practice less traditional roles in their family arrangements.Conflicting views within couples also exist, which influence their challenges and satisfaction. This study adds to the work and family research using couple-level analysis in a non-Western context. The qualitative data gained has also enabled the study to extend the understanding on how the dynamic of the interaction between culture, religion, gender, work characteristics and personal preferences come into play to shape couples’ role salience and consequently their work-family experiences and perceptions.

Role Salience and the Growth Intention of Women Entrepreneurs: Does Work-life Balance Make a Difference?

Work and family are two of the most competing and salient roles in the life of every individual. As such, individuals often make behavioral decisions based on the relative salience (work or family) they attach to these life roles. Given that growth intention is a vital behavioral choice in the life of an entrepreneur, this study examined how role salience influences the growth intentions of women entrepreneurs. Moreover, for most women entrepreneurs, their family domain is highly entwined with the business domain, and as such, having an adequate work-life balance is often a vital personal goal. Thus, this study also examined the influence of work-life balance on the growth intentions of the women entrepreneurs as well as its moderating effect of on the relationship between role salience and growth intentions. Based on self-reported data from women entrepreneurs (N = 300), the findings of this study using logistic regression analysis revealed that both work role salience (b = .88, p < .001) and work-life balance (b = .73, p < .001) have a positive effect on the growth intentions of women entrepreneurs. Additionally, work-life balance also moderated the relationship between work role salience and growth intention such that the positive association is strengthened at high levels of work-life balance (b = .90, p < .001). The study culminates with a discussion of the implications and suggestions for future research.

Personal Cognitive Factors Affecting Career Aspirations of Women Working in Financial Sector in India

Although much has been researched on the external contextual forces as barriers to women’s career development, there is a need to assess the role of women’s internal forces (personal cognitive) in determining their aspirations for advancement in career. The study aims at investigating the direct linkages among several personal cognitive factors in shaping up the career aspirations of working women. AMOS-based ‘structural equation modelling’ was performed and the results revealed a significant influence of occupational self-efficacy, proactive personality, work role salience and gender role attitude as cognitive factors in explaining the aspirations of working women for advancement in career. The findings present important implications for women as individuals, families, supervisors and organizations.

Individual, Spousal Factors and Work–Family Conflict: A Study from Sri Lanka

Work–family conflict (WFC) has emerged as a challenging issue all over the world. Based on identity, scarcity, basic human values and crossover theories, we examined how life role salience, value of self-enhancement, gender and spouse’s emotional stability affect WFC. Data were collected using questionnaires from 167 dual-earner couples in Sri Lanka. All the variables, except for emotional stability, were measured from the focal employee concerned. Emotional stability was measured from the spouse. Four moderated multiple regressions were conducted to test the proposed model. This study found that a higher level of occupational role salience predicts work-to-family conflict. Further, results indicated that a higher value of self-enhancement increases work-to-family conflict, gender determines the level of family-to-work conflict, and spouse’s emotional stability directly crossovers to reduce family-to-work conflict of the other spouse. Hence, it is evident that not only individual factors but factors related to significant others such as spouses also create WFC. This research contributes to the advancement of the existing understanding on WFC as life role salience, values and crossover effect of spousal factors are still under-researched areas in work–family literature.

Moderating Role of Thought Suppression Between Work Centrality, Life Role Salience and Dyadic Adjustment in Emergency Service Providers

Dyadic adjustment is a major facilitating factor in lifestyle of Emergency Service Providers (ESP). This research hypothesized that work centrality and life role salience are likely to be positively related to dyadic adjustment of ESP and thought suppression is likely to moderate the relationship between the above mentioned. using a within group research design, a sample of 110 male emergency service providers with age range from 24 to 40 years was obtained from Rescue 1122 headquarters and two government hospitals of Lahore, Pakistan. Dyadic Adjustment Scale (Spanier, 1988); Work Centrality Scale (Paullay, Alliger, & Stone-Romero, 1994); Life Role Salience Scale (Amatea, Cross, Clark, & Bobby, 1986); and White Bear Suppression Inventory (Wegner & Zanakos, 1994); were translated in Urdu. The findings indicated that occupational role commitment has significant positive relationship with dyadic adjustment while parental and homecare role commitment has significant negative relationships with it. Hierarchal Moderated Regression revealed that thought suppression significantly moderates the relationship between variables. This research offers an avenue to researchers to explore the trauma coping strategies and their influence in other healthcare professionals and implementation of couple and counseling therapies for those working under stressful conditions.