The Role of Personality in Influencing Work–Family Balance Experience: A Study of Indian Journalists

Abstract

While an increasing body of research has investigated the situational factors affecting balancing of work and family roles, there is still scarcity of research on the relationship between personal factors and work -family balance (WFB). Therefore, the purpose of this article is to estimate the effect of big five personality traits (openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism) on the four dimensions of WFB i.e. work-to-family conflict [WFC], family-to-work conflict [FWC], work-to-family facilitation [WFF] and family-to-work facilitation [FWF] among Indian journalists. From the perspective of WFB, journalists are regarded as an interesting group that has rarely been examined by the scholars. The study validated the ‘fourfold WFB scale and ‘big five personality’ scale in the Indian context. Further, results revealed that big five personality variables emerged as significant predictor set for all the four dimensions of WFB. Unexpectedly, conscientiousness did not reduce WFC, given the unpredictable nature of journalism that pressurizes even a conscientious journalist to sacrifice his family life and work lousy hours. Openness behaved like a double-edged sword that escalate both conflict and facilitation experiences. However, extraversion did not increase facilitation experience for journalists. These findings suggest media organizations to conduct personality test for recruiting suitable candidates, whose personality traits make them best suited to the stressors of journalism profession. Moreover, knowledge of employees’ personality traits may increase the effectiveness of organizational interventions that aims to enhance employees’ WFB.