Identifying energy and emotion-based conflict: Development of a refined work-life conflict scale.

Abstract

While work-family conflict, and more broadly work-life conflict, has traditionally been conceptualized through the dimensions of time, strain, and behaviour, an expansion of these dimensions should prove advantageous for measurement and comprehension. Specifically, energy and emotion-based conflict have been cited as possible factors that would be beneficial to the measurement of work-life conflict. While these forms of conflict have been discussed as viable areas of expansion in the work-life conflict literature, there has yet to be a systematic empirical attempt to include both energy and emotion as their own distinct dimensions. In the present research, items were identified and/or created to represent energy and emotion-based forms of conflict to explore their feasibility in work-life conflict measurement. Energy and emotion were identified as distinct dimensions of work-life conflict through four studies of construct validation. Collectively, a four-factor solution of time, behaviour, energy, and emotion was supported. Multi-wave data indicated that energy and emotion-based conflicts were incrementally predictive of outcomes, including job satisfaction and job-related burnout, above and beyond other measures. By combining and expanding existing literature to include energy and emotion as independent dimensions, this research creates a more encompassing scale that more comprehensively represents the construct of work-life conflict.