Abstract
In response to the rising number of individuals who have to combine work and home responsibilities, organizations increasingly offer work-home practices. These are HR-practices such as telework and part-time work that can help employees to combine work and home roles. However, extant research on the relationship between work-home practice use and both work-to-home conflict (i.e., work interfering with private life) and home-to-work conflict (i.e., private life interfering with work) shows inconsistent results. In this study, we posit that employees’ work-home conflict does not so much depend on whether or not they use a specific work-home practice, but rather on (1) the degree to which their (non-)use of this practice is in line with their preference (i.e., volition) and (2) the pressure they experience from the work and/or the home environment to act in another way than they prefer (i.e., perceived work pressure and perceived home pressure). Hypotheses are tested for two specific work-home practices (i.e., home-based telework and part-time work) in both a field study and an experimental between-subject vignette study. Results show that work-home conflict is affected by volition, perceived work pressure and perceived home pressure; yet, some differences were found between the two types of work-home conflict (i.e., work-to-home and home-to-work conflict) and between the two types of work-home practices. Our results nuance the dichotomy between users and non-users of work-home practices that has been dominantly used in the work-home practice literature to date and point to similar predictors of work-home conflict among both the group of users and the group of non-users. These findings may encourage researchers to examine characteristics of employees’ work-home practice use (e.g., volition, perceived pressure) in addition to the mere use of these practices when studying their effectiveness.
Highlights
Due to increased female labor market participation, the rise of single-parent and dual-earner families and changing gender norms (Hammer et al, 2002; Neal and Hammer, 2007; Kossek and Ruderman, 2012; Butts et al, 2013), a growing number of employees today has to combine work with other life roles (Greenhaus and Powell, 2003; Kalliath and Brough, 2008)
We focus on two specific differences: (1) the degree to which employees’use of a specific work-home practice is in line with their preference; and (2) the pressure they experience from the work and/or the home environment to act in another way that they prefer
In line with the arguments frequently used in research on moderating factors, we focus on the following two differences: (1) differences in the degree to which employees’use of a specific work-home practice is in line with what they would preferably do, and (2) in the extent to which employees experience pressure from either the work environment or from their private life to act in a different way than they prefer
Summary
Due to increased female labor market participation, the rise of single-parent and dual-earner families and changing gender norms (Hammer et al, 2002; Neal and Hammer, 2007; Kossek and Ruderman, 2012; Butts et al, 2013), a growing number of employees today has to combine work with other life roles (Greenhaus and Powell, 2003; Kalliath and Brough, 2008). Work-Home Practice Volition and Pressure new reality, organizations increasingly offer work-home practices to their employees (Thompson et al, 1999; Beauregard and Henry, 2009); i.e., practices which provide additional resources (i.e., flexibility or time) to employees to facilitate balancing their different life roles (Kossek et al, 2010). As expected, that employees who make use of workhome practices experience less work-to-home conflict and/or less home-to-work conflict (Byron, 2005; e.g., Hammer et al, 1997; Anderson et al, 2002; Madsen, 2003). If studies find effects of work-home practice use on work-home conflict, effect sizes are generally very small (Gajendran and Harrison, 2007; Allen et al, 2013)
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