Spilling over

Abstract

Existing research has suggested that work–family conflict is associated with a host of negative consequences. One dimension of work–family conflict, known as strain-based conflict, occurs when workplace problems negatively impact the quality of home life. Unfortunately, there has been limited research on strain-based conflict among police officers, especially those in non-Western nations, and the existing research has failed to examine the relationships between a full range of relevant workplace characteristics and strain-based work–family conflict. Using survey data from Indian police officers, this study examined the association of time-based conflict, behavior-based conflict, role conflict, role ambiguity, role overload, role underload, perceived dangerousness of the job, supervision, views on training, job autonomy, and job variety with strain-based conflict. This study’s findings indicate that time-based conflict, behavior-based conflict, role conflict, and role overload were associated with higher levels of strain-based conflict in an ordinary least squares regression analysis. Job autonomy and views of training were associated with lower levels of strain-based conflict in a multivariate analysis. The findings also suggest a need to further study the impact of how work environment variables affect work–family conflict, particularly strain-based conflict, among police officers across a variety of nations.