Enabling Managers to Achieve Work-Family Balance: A Demands-Control Model of Housework Behavior and Family Satisfaction

Abstract

The interplay between work and family has received a great deal of attention in the last two decades. We know very little, however, about the organizational factors that enable managers achieve a good balance between their work and family lives. Following Karasek (1979) demands-control model, we hypothesized that managerial workload will interact with time flexibility and task autonomy to predict the division of household labor, which in turn will influence family satisfaction. A sample of 103 managers reported their workload and their spouses reported the division of housework activities and their level of satisfaction with family life. Results show that time flexibility and task autonomy at work moderated the relationship between managers work demands and their spousal ratings of housework overload. As time demands increased, managers with low time flexibility contributed less than their spouses in household work (as reported by the spouse) than managers with high flexibility. A similar pattern emerges regarding travel and task autonomy. In turn, spousal housework overload had a negative impact on family satisfaction. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for managerial job redesign.